More 4's latest Friday foreign drama takes up where 'Spin' left off. Paris is replaced by Stockholm but the skullduggery, betrayal and downright dirty politics are all present and (in)correct. Disgraced former Chief of Staff Elin (Louise Peterhoff) is waitressing when she is re-recruited. The previous occupant has supposedly gone on sick leave but we know that Sarah was tailed and that her abandoned car is in the woods. She was last seen pleading with Annika, a middle-aged mum who supports the far right. When Annika is threatened, things start to look conspiratorial. And intriguing. And generally like a timely and engrossing drama. Hurrah.
One of the current 'Walter Presents' picks of foreign-language television on the 4 family, this six-parter is pretty timely in the wake of the 2015 attacks in Paris. The President is assassinated but no-one claims responsibility. As always in a power vacuum, various ministers jostle for power, by fair means or foul, and one of their main assets is the modern spin doctor. At the emotional heart are a pair of these sharp operators, Simon Kapita (Bruno Walkowitz) and Ludovic Desmeuze (Gregory Fitoussi), old friends but divided by their current jobs supporting opposing candidates for power. Fitoussi will be familiar to British viewers from 'Spiral', 'Mr. Selfridge' and 'Odyssey'.
This is the sort of thing that can be slick to the point of superficiality, and it keeps up the pace with various skullduggeries and deals going on, but Walkowitz makes a sympathetically human agent for truth in the treacherous world around him. This looks set to tackle sexism and racism, not to mention the deep unpleasantness at the heart of the democratic establishment, head on.
This is a six-part co-production of Norwegian, Danes and Brits, about the race to develop nuclear weapons in WWII. The Germans have Werner Heisenberg, Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry in the early 1930s; the Danes have Niels Bohr; the Norwegians have a plucky Professor and the Brits have Anna Friel as one of those clipped gals who knew what was wanted to win a war, by golly. What the Norwegians also had, and everyone wanted, was heavy water, which you need for a nuclear bomb, so the Nazis invaded Norway.
Does it bear any resemblance to history? Who knows, beyond the intellectual heft of Heisenberg et al and the invasion. It's gripping, though. Think 'Foyle's War' with subtitles and more at stake than a missing ration book or some dodgy tractors. Only a few of the major players knew the stakes were high, and even they weren't sure what they were creating. Scary.
From the team who brought you 'Neighbours'.... Remember last year's 'The Crimson Field', about a group of nurses in France and Belgium in WWI? This is the Aussie version, with the game young ladies in the Dardanelles, patching up the Commonwealth casualties. Or not, as the case may be, since they constantly tell each other their daily death score and how long they've been awake. It must be a bit like the current NHS.
What the English version veered towards, the Antipodean drama barrels straight into. We're presented with the no-nonsense Matron, her more amenable Deputy, the Flighty One, the Religious One (a hick Kiwi, by the by), the Outspoken Tomboy and the One with a Secret. Except it isn't kept secret very long and the whole situation has been neatly resolved by the end of the episode. (Nurse Elsie is secretly married to a soldier, which is strictly against the rules, but he happens to be the son of a recent Aussie Prime Minister, so that's OK).
Apparently this is all loosely based on real correspondence and memoirs of nurses in the field, but we can only assume a large dose of 21st Century soap was added . There's a bit of fake blood histrionics, but they have a lot of time to visit the Pyramids in the risque company of fighting men, and wear brazenly modern pyjamas and silk kimonos.
If the men's experiences are dramatized in films like 'Gallipoli', and the women's in television like this, it seems Australian women have as unfair and unequal a deal as they did a century ago.
