[Crimson Dynamo]

War Sailor (Krigsseileren), a three-part drama on Netflix about the Norwegian
merchant navy in the second world war, is one of the best things you’ll see on TV this year.




War Sailor (Krigsseileren), a three-part drama on Netflix about the Norwegian
merchant navy in the second world war, is one of the best things you’ll see on
TV this year. But I doubt many other critics are going to rave about it or even
notice it, for some of the very same reasons that I think make it so cherishable:
it’s meandering, episodic, understated and made in Norway, with subtitles.

The dialogue is terse, sparse, which means you can concentrate on the visual
detail – both epic and intimate – superbly evoked by director Gunnar Vikene.
All the cast, especially the leads, have the most wonderful, expressive faces:
they could have walked straight out of a mead hall or fought in a shield-wall
in a Norse myth. It feels so right, so echt, in the way you just know it
wouldn’t be if, say, the BBC were to make an equivalent series about the
wartime merchant navy, which they’d no doubt ruin with anachronistic
casting and stereotyping.

Like Das Boot, it doesn’t take sides. It’s about human suffering and
endurance in war, not about goodies and baddies.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/...ilor-reviewed/