I hate CSI. I hate Law & Order. I hate NCIS. And I hate the endless precession of their various spinoffs. If I’m going to watch any crime or legal drama, there’s going to have to be a damn compelling reason for me to even think about giving it a shot. Luckily, it really won’t take much. For example, this Norwegian crime drama involves time travel! Hey, don’t leave. Come back, where are you going? Hey–

The Premise

Nicolai Cleve Broch plays Lars Haaland, a drug-addled senior homicide detective with the Oslo police department. I like to describe Lars as a hapless, in-shape father approaching middle age who likes to keep the salt and pepper in his hair separate. My wife likes to describe him as “fuckin’ Lars…”. Krista Kosonen plays Alfhildr Enginnsdóttir, a young former shield-maiden from the Viking era who suddenly finds herself in 21st century Oslo working as a recruit for the homicide department. As far as I can tell, she only owns one pair of pants.

Maybe some day I’ll write about Season 1, if I ever rewatch it again. The gist is that people, on a daily basis, keep suddenly appearing floating around in the bay in modern day Oslo. They originally, and inexplicably, come from three different, distinct time periods: caveman times, Viking times, and the late 19th century. These migrants have no choice but to integrate into contemporary society, and some of them have larger problems with that than others! Especially if they were considered royalty or high society in their respective time period.

Fuckin’ Lars…

Season 2, specifically, chases a theory that Jack the Ripper has “timigrated” to the present day and is running amok, slashing and disemboweling women left and right! They enlist the help of the London police department. There’s also at least two huge WTF twists, and, against canonical scientific opinion, it is definitively revealed that timigration can also work in reverse with contemporary victims finding themselves in past eras.

My Half-Baked Thoughts

Since this is HBO, there is a large amount of inappropriate language and a fair amount of titties! Once in a while there’s some nude cadaver genitals. As you can see, the full scope of nudity is a double-edged sword.

Also, with HBO usually comes better storytelling than you’d get from your brainless Mark Harmon-led vehicle. So, even though this show has its time travelling villains and its DoorDash-delivery servicing former Viking military commanders and its drug-addled Norse god hallucinations, it’s very well-done and rooted in reality with respect to character behaviors and interactions. Lars’ uncomfortable interactions with his pregnant college-aged daughter, Ingrid, seems like exactly how I’d handle the situation if it were to happen to my own daughter in 15 years: terrified, somewhat helpless and lost, but not angry. A perfect contrast to Ingrid’s stepfather, Gregers, a timigrant from the 19th century who maintains some very old-fashioned ideas about men, women, family, and honor.

Gregers defends his honor with fisticuffs at dawn.

Alfhildr faces some very different, less realistic challenges, being a transplant from from, like, the year 850 CE and everything. They just keep on compounding as time goes on, too. One of the more memorable moments of Season 1 involves her squatting, scrambling for moss, and shoving it down her pants in front of Lars. She stubbornly refuses menstrual pads, but is thankful when finally talked into it, and becomes a little less stubborn after that pivotal point. As a victim of involuntary time-travel (twice, actually, spoiler alert!), certain side effects start manifesting themselves: poor sleeping habits and sleepwalking, memory loss, “temporal distortion”. Certainly, a lot of this is because Alfhildr is extra-special, unusual timigrant, and that makes her the key to something bigger than anyone had bargained for. There, those are some good, vague words, right?

Don’t forget that some famous serial murderer who was never caught in 19th-century Britain is now possibly being a serial murderer in 21st-century Norway, but even that situation is left ambiguous and convoluted. There’s an entirely separate conspiracy at play here, what with the British seemingly responsible for the all the time-traveling in the first place.

Casual Fridays, my droogs!

OK, gotta spoil something big here. Go away if you don’t want to know. Get out.

The big reveal of Season 1 is that Alfhildr was a contemporary child who happened to time-travel to the Viking era. The big reveal of Season 2 is that Alfhildr is Ingrid’s daughter. Lars is her grandfather. Yes, we’re talking possible Lost levels of twisty pretzel-like “whatever happened, happened” continuity. It’s unclear if we’re dealing with Lost-style rigid rules of “the past and the future are set in stone” (the correct way), or the Back to the Future-style loosey-goosey rules of “altering the past will alter the future” (the wrong way), but if it’s the former…then we’re going to possibly see a whole storyline where Alfhildr interacts with herself. She may even set the series of events in motion that causes her to time-travel back to Viking times in the first place! She may even learn why it’s absolutely important to follow through on. We may even find out that this was the plan all along…

One more topic before I fuck off: the Volva. She’s a pagan seer of sorts who remembers Alfhildr from the past as a child. An awful character, a terrible person, but her overt homosexual advances toward Alfhildr (who already has it goin’ on) stir up some real primal reactions from yours truly. Played by Sweden’s Hedda Stiernstedt, she’s cute and stuff. Hubba hubba and whatnot.

You couldn’t do dashboard cocaine in the 9th century!

And Krista Kosonen totally spoke her English lines phonetically. I don’t have proof, but I’d bet on it. Just like Bela Lugosi’s Dracula!

Final Thoughts

Hey, you’re still reading this? This post is a mess!

I like this show and I need a Season 3, but it probably won’t even film until 2025 and then be available to stream until like 2027. There will only be six episodes. Infuriating. Unfathomable. Tom needs more Volva.

That’s all I’ve got. Happy Friday.