The show is entertaining-ish and the acting of the more experienced actors was alright. The main actress portraying the Norwegian politician Gro Harlem Brundtland did fine, although the Norwegian media, desperate for having a sensational, high-quality TV-show from Norway (unfortunately this isn't it) seem to overhype the show overall as well as the execution and portrayal of this famous politician because the actress nailed her distinct tone of voice. She did well, but Brundtland is also one of the easiest persons one could possibly portray or parody and I don't see how any reasonably average actress could fail to portray her. Not to take anything alway from the performance, but this is more about how the media, like this self-indulgent movie critic at the tabloid newspaper VG, so comically overhyped this (gave it 6/6) the same way he'd trash anything not adhering to his political preferences.
Now the mostly female creators of the show didn't want to spend all the necessary resources to use a setting of Norway in the 70s and 80s rather than today, which is suboptimal for the viewer but also understandable and doesn't ruin the show. So you see today's Oslo but the actors dressed like they would have back in the day. The mandatory correctness of cultural diversity was of course included in the show (it would take a lot of spine these days for a creator to dare doing otherwise), using a hip, modern-looking multicultural female as a Norwegian train conductor from the 70s with a generous amount of screen time for such a role (what was that all about?), a multicultural male (he's a fun actor btw) to portray a famous Norwegian politician and so forth. The media applauded these very mainstream aspects as being something of a "stroke of genius" because it was making the show thought-provoking and helping people realise it wasn't 100% historically accurate. Interesting. 15 years ago I'd incline to agree, but today this is the norm, and so the though-provoking act today would be to depict it with only ethnical Norwegians for example, and without man-bashing perspective making all women smart, decisive, straight-forward and morally virtuous while the men are the exact opposite - slow-witted, sneaky, clumsy and undetermined.
And that's probably the biggest flaw of the series: this is the type of show depicting historical events and people where they say at the beginning that this is not 100% historically accurate, giving themselves a carte blanche to take any liberty they want, and then hide behind the aforementioned statement. The problem is that they go very close to reality in most aspects, but can simultaneously focus on coherently twisting the truth in a few, narrow (often political and gender-related) areas to manipulate the viewer into believing the narrative of the creators, and if arrested on twisting the facts, they can always say that "we informed you it wasn't completely accurate." That's not how the human mind works - if you don't tell the viewer what's accurate and what's fiction, people will assume most is correct except the explicitly obvious. Most people won't take the time to google everything that happened and doing research on your own.
Funnily enough several politicians who knew the people depicted have criticised the show for dumbing down the men so much. One politician stated that she thought it was accurate, and that was Brundtland herself. She was portrayed by the female creators as unrealistically saint-like and massively more competent and virtuous than her male colleagues even when her family orchestrated a coup of the party's leadership to put her at the top, as shown in the series.
Apart from that, I think it's well-made and entertaining enough.
2 out of 4 found this helpful.
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