Nordland '99

I nearly gave up at first - it starts with a bunch of drunk, angsty, promiscuous teenagers, depicted so accurately it was off-putting - but I'm glad I persisted.

I'm not nostalgic for the 90s; I was young then and it was a dull decade; but the thriller aspect was fun - over the top to just the right degree to be exciting, but also to hint truthfully at dark social realities.

The small town was brilliantly portrayed, populated by druggies, thugs, squalid in-breds living in filth and abusing their kids, moralising locals, and the long-suffering normal people forced to live far too close to them. It was all very realistic in my experience of small towns, and really brought the series to life.

The characters and acting were also very good - even the more extreme characters were just like people you might have been unlucky enough to encounter in real life; and many of them do that Nordic thing (also common in my society) of conveying their deepest emotions with a single twitch of the face.

An excellent, well-written and well-executed genre piece - highly recommended!