PURK: Lisa (Ine Jansen) demonstrates her best interpretation of Edvard Munch. Photo: TV 2 / PROMO
Lousy name. Pretty funny crime comedy.
Sunday 17 March at 13:01
«Can»
Norwegian series in six parts
With: Ine Jansen, Jonis Josef, Trond Espen Seim, Lars Berge, Iben Akerlie, John Carew, Lars Berrum, Big Daddy Karsten, Ole Soo, Anette Hoff, Tone Danielsen, Sigrid Husjord
Screenplay: Trond Kvernstrøm, Hallgrim Haug, Tobias Nordbø, Marie Hafting, Katie Hetland and Kjetil Indregard
Director: Hallgrim Haug
Premiere on TV 2 Play Sunday 17 March
Shown from 22 to 24 March on TV 2 Direkte
Narcotics investigator Lisa (Ine Jansen) has lost her husband and colleague Jostein in a raid. She must balance her grief against her crystal-enthusiastic mother-in-law (Anette Hoff), and at the same time deal with her increasingly demented mother (Tone Danielsen).
Yes, and things aren’t going so well at work either.
Colleagues and gangsters with varying street intelligence and weapons expertise circulate around this. As well as a macaw.
Tommy (Lars Berrum) and Bikkja (Big Daddy Karsten) are two useless gangsters in electric cars the size of a fishbowl box, who use Petra Marklund as meditation. Isak (Trond Espen Seim) is an MDG-saved intermediary with bangs, a solar panel and a global ecological perspective.
Shirouh (Jonis Josef) is naively fussy in a character role, sometimes parodic, sometimes very close to his stand-up comic self. Tone Danielsen adds human warmth and joy to dementia diagnosis.
VILLAIN: Shirouh (Jonis Josef) shows the correct use of a shotgun, i.e. that you shouldn’t shoot yourself in the foot. Photo: TV 2 / PROMO
In any case, it is Ine Jansen who masterfully lifts the action, in her combination of impressive stoic calm and hidden Ally McBeal-like outbursts of frustration.
It seems contrived at first. Hardly anyone has been as unaffected in stressful, life-threatening situations this side of “Blues Brothers” (1980).
Of course, she has Jahn Teigen’s “Optimist” as her ringtone.
There are several such simple, occasionally slightly dystopian drips in these six episodes. The only really inexplicable thing is the use of the NRK Rogaland caller Mia Kristiansen about Mallorca blues like a phone call.
Series creator Trond Kvernstrøm and director Hallgrim Haug lean towards early Guy Ritchie (“Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels”, “Snatch”). The timing is thus as it is, since the Guy Ritchie series “Gentlemen” recently premiered on Netflix – and shows how it can also be done.
TWO SMOKING ONIONS: Tommy (Lars Berrum) and Bikkja (Big Daddy Karsten) are good at being bad. Gangsters, that is. Photo: TV 2 / PROMO
“Purk” is an overly generic title for a series that in no way wants to be generic. Nevertheless, it does not dare to be as wild and explosively crazy as its potential suggests.
Haug’s career as a cinematographer is clearly the basis for each and every picture. It is a pleasure to watch.
Despite its exaggerations, I’m guessing new records for the number of actors who use anger as a creative method during an episode, it is a deliberately pale and well-cut crime comedy. With unusually confident use of music, including Unit Five on the credits.
The exchange of words could have been better, and the script even less predictable. But you have to be entertained by the whole.
The last episode also opens a new season. I really hope something will come of it.