I've been enjoying a lazy holiday weekend, including watching the Steve Van Zandt series Lilyhammer, perhaps the best known entry in a Wikipedia list called "Norwegian comedy television series." It's a bit of a pioneering show, not for its content, but for its distribution: its the first series that Netflix made by itself (albeit in conjunction with Norwegian TV). The whole first season simultaneously went online earlier this year.
It's about an interesting premise: a mob informant (not that much of a stretch for Van Zandt, post-Sopranos) chooses to hide out in a witness protection program in Norway, largely because of idyllic memoires of the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer. "Lily-hammer" is how Van Zandt's fish out of water pronounces the city's name, and that's just the start, as the made man runs up against not just a Nordic culture, but an extraordinarily bureaucratic one at that. (Or, as it's described, "the multi-headed, but basically pleasant, troll that is Norwegian society.") Sometimes a little blackmail can clear things up...
A second season is set to start shooting soon, the shoot delayed because of Van Zandt's day job as right-hand-man to the touring Bruce Springsteen. By the time I finish the first season, I know I'll be well ready for the second.
