February 2016
Consider all the potential themes that could be addressed by a video series named Occupied. It could be a workplace comedy, a war drama or it could address whether we are too preoccupied to be occupied where we should be. This series does all of that and more with the depth and quality to rank it way up there with the best video series such as Breaking Bad, Six Feet Under and the Sopranos.
Occupied (Okkupert) is a new Norwegian TV that is now available from Netflix on demand. “The series is as “a multi-layered political thriller which envisages what would happen if Norway were to be invaded by Russia in order to seize the nation's oil resources.” Wikipedia
The characters are deep and complex, the situations are more than plausible for a story set in the near future. and it has just the right amount of action to maintain the correct intensity level.
The key characters range from the nation's Prime Minister to a struggling restauranteur. That allows the plot to address both the large and small moral and strategic dilemmas created when major geopolitical events impact daily life.
A major theme is that even the best intentions of smart and concerned people can have terrible consequences. Evidence of the show's ambiguously nuanced approach to character and plot development is that the series' few detractors in the Netflix reviews can't agree on whether the show has an excessively left or right wing point of view.
Occupied also works as a fascinating metaphor for many current issues and raises many essential ethical questions. Could the Russia-Norway conflict depicted in the story actually be a metaphor for the causes of terrorism in nation's politcally and economically dominated by the interests of outsiders? When is mass immigration a threat to a nation's security and identity? When is resistance to repression an act of patriotism, a hate crime or treason? How can a people avoid behaving like their enemies when they are in a violent conflict? Is losing a conflict with a bully a better option than engaging in a bloody and most likely futile war?"
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