Acquitted

After reading the announcement of the series on German TV I was intrigued by the theme: A businessman returning to the small village in Norway, where he grew up and, after being a prime suspect in a murder at the age of 18, was acquitted of the crime. He left the town, made a successful career in the Far East, only to return after 20 years or so to save the main employer in the town from going bankrupt. Such a topic offers plenty of opportunities to make an intriguing TV-series. However, already after watching the first episode I was really disappointed. The actors walk, behave, and are dressed like clichés. The investors are of course all smartly dressed good looking young men, who prefer to travel by helicopter, but many of the details have nothing to do with the reality of this world. Their behaviour is irrational, and they take risks that investors would never take, even if they were driven by sentiments. After watching for a while, this gets so annoying, that the basically great theme of the series disappears into the background. There are really much better Scandinavian crime series to watch (like The Bridge), don't waste your precious time on this one.

Good things: The cinematography of the series is impressive. The actors give a solid performance. The music helps the atmosphere of the series to stay consistently gripping. Every second contains an excellent amount of uncomfortable tension that prevents the otherwise overdramatized script from falling into the soap opera category.

At the same time, the script is still plagued by some serious illogicalities. It is simply questionable whether an international high tech company could have been managed successfully by a woman whose behavior is seriously neurotic at worst and someone whose background is such a huge question mark could work as a big shot in an investment company and stay married with the same woman for 17 years.

Moreover, it is nothing short of unconvincing that the small town in which the events of this series take place could be so remarkably void of people who would just listen to reason and act sensibly under most circumstances.

Summary: While I still enjoy to watch the series, I can't help being nagged by the feeling that something just doesn't make sense in the script.

In recent years, next to Denmark and Sweden, Norway has produced a number of good crime drama series where events occur in a small and/or distant community, with is vices and virtues. In spite of being one of the richest countries in the world, the human basics are the same, plus thinly populated areas and common solitude make investigations more difficult.

All this we can see in Frikjent as well, with tensions up due to a tragic event taken place decades ago. Sometimes it feels that the depiction is too widespread and the role of some characters and episodes is insignificant (e.g. the company-related ones), but the general atmosphere is well depicted and most important performances are pleasant, particularly Nicolai Cleve Broch as Aksel and Lena Endre (a Swede) as Eva whose mutual communication forms the most intensive verbal scenes in the series. The mentioned persons are definitely worth watching in other films/series as well, which I have managed to achieve.

And what is definitely nicer than in Sweden or Denmark, is nature. Also here, beautiful Norwegian landscape and environment is a kind of supporting actor for creating mood and completeness.

How many times are they going to bring this guy in for the murder? It's tiresome. It's as if they ran out of ideas.

Just based on the scenery alone I can tolerate this 45 minute show (don't know why they advertise it as an hour as it isn't an hour). Anyway, I am only at episode 6, and I really think Tonje did it as it is obvious she is still in love with Aksel. Eva is an awful actress.