When the Dead Don't Stay Dead... (Post Mortem: No One Dies in Skarnes series REVIEW)
If a little group of cool people—let’s say, Norwegians—were playing a game of “What if…” around a toasty fireplace, and were on maybe their fourth round of akvavit shots when one of them said, “You know what I’d kill to watch? What if there was this zombie story… but with that family of undertakers from Six Feet Under… made by someone like The Coen Brothers [you know, Bjørn… the ones who did that Fargo, don’cha know?], in their early days… wouldn’t that be awesome?!”, then we might end up with Netflix's latest entry in the bloodsuckers genre.
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The premise: A pair of cops—a seasoned female officer and a younger male, still wet behind the ears [both of whom, I should add, appear to comprise the entire police force in itty-bitty Skarnes, Norway] are called to a puzzling scene: a local farmer has just found a young woman lying prone in his snowy field, very cold and very dead.
The first surprise? Rookie Reinert (André Sørum) not only knows (well, knew) the dead woman—Live Hallengen (Kathrine Thorborg Johansen); he’s also harbored a not-so-secret crush on her… something which it seems everyone in town (including his superior, Judith [Kim Fairchild]) has long known. (So, a little awkward, him being at the scene.)
Judith wants to write this unexplained death up immediately as “natural causes” (why? because autopsies are expensive, and their yearly budget in Skarnes doesn’t extend to such luxuries), but Reinert insists that some kind of foul play must've surely been involved. Reluctantly, Judith agrees to request a post mortem.
They call the town mortuary to come pick up the body … a family business owned by [gulp] none other than the Hallengens. [Yes, as in the very same Hallengens as the recently-departed Live... meaning that father Arvid (Terje Strømdahl) and brother Odd (Elias Holmen Sørensen) have to come pack up their daughter/sister. Such is life in a hamlet, folks!] The fact that—as Odd often says—“no one dies in Skarnes…” puts the exclamation point on that one. [If you have next-to-no clientele in your primary business—funerals—then you’re darn well going to jump on every take-this-body-to-wherever job that comes along... even when the task involves your kin.]
The second (and bigger) surprise? When Live is under the scalpel (of the medical examiner), she… comes back to life. (An extreme case of hypothermia, or... something else..?!?)
And just like that, you know that things are most definitely NOT what they seem, in Skarnes. (Like, not AT ALL.)
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Post Mortem is—for me, at least—an absolute delight. I love the slow-burn pace, as these slightly-odd (no pun intended, Odd!) characters work their ways through the strange happenings in their small, snowy town.
Their otherwise-“normalcy” is a big part of what makes this series so compelling. There's a really interesting family unit—the stern Arvid, the charmingly-bumbling Odd (and his sweet, patient wife, Rose), and the little-bit-off-kilter younger sister, Live—but also, the specter of Arvid’s dead wife, who… well, let’s just say, is sort of the beginning of everything (as we find out in hindsight). Odd—trying, as he is, to figure out a way to keep his family going and the business afloat when it seems no one dies, any longer—is especially relatable, and Sørensen is delightful in his characterization. [If compared to a Coen Brothers character, Odd would be like Jerry Lundegaard from Fargo, the guy with good intentions who gets into things waaaay over his head.] He’s a genuinely nice guy, who just craves some stability so he can feel comfortable starting a family with his wife… even though selling ridiculously-overpriced fancy caskets doesn’t come naturally to him (undertaker understatement, right there).
Johansen is so good as Live, a woman put in an impossible situation: figuring out how she’s alive when… she really isn’t, precisely? (Then there's that whole craving blood thing, yikes.) And Sørum’s Reinert is charming in both his not-remotely-secret pining for Live, and desperately clinging to his disbelief in what's happened to her (when finally forced to face facts).
Some of the most fun, though, comes from Fairchild, as Judith… for in her, we see a person who isn’t only experiencing the weirdness of now, but was also integral in trying to figure out the what of back then (when whatever happened to Odd and Live’s mother went down). After a second person winds up dead, and she starts suspecting Live, we go from seeing Judith as jaded and just phoning it in… to realizing her mind is actually quietly whizzing along like a computer, constantly working in the background, and that she will—someday—come up with an explanation for all the craziness. Fairchild has great range in this role, and I really dug her performance.
As always, I’m not going to spoil any of the bigger twists in Post Mortem for you… but I will recommend this wintry whimsy, wholeheartedly. It’s a lot of fun. It isn’t quite like anything else you’ve seen before (and seriously, who isn’t looking for that, right?)… but which you’ll probably find yourself right at home with, quickly. It’s about family. Unrequited love. Secrets and lies. Small-town life. And, erm, you know… the no-longer dead? (The undead? Zombies??)
If you’re a fellow fan of Nordic noir, and not entirely opposed to the idea of zombies (especially ones done rather differently)? Post Mortem is an absolute must-see.
~GlamKitty
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