TV81: Occupied

I was initially fascinated by Occupied’s timely and courageous premise of a near-future Norway deciding to end all oil production in the country for environmental reasons, resulting in the EU allowing Russia to invade Norway (and occupy it) to keep oil production going. This was a show with lots of promise. Unfortunately, the first two seasons of Occupied (on Netflix) have not lived up to that promise.

Henrik Mestad plays Norwegian Prime Minister Jesper Berg, the man who thinks the future of the planet is more important than trying to protect the status quo. He sounds like a pretty classy guy to me, but to say that some of his later decisions are morally questionable is an understatement. I won’t say what happens to Berg when the Russians take over, but I will note that Janne Heltberg also plays the Norwegian Prime Minister (Anita Rygh). 

There’s all kinds of intrigue involving resistance movements and spies and so on. Some of it is entertaining. Much of it is too convoluted. In the end, my biggest problem with Occupied is that there is too much going on and the show bounces around between the stories in a way that makes it hard to follow and stay invested, losing the big picture in the process. It doesn’t help that sometimes the story moves much too quickly and sometimes it moves too slowly.

The acting is generally good, though not outstanding. Occupied is a well-made and sometimes thoughtful TV serial that could have been much better, given the setting and the premise. It gets a solid ***. My mug is up.