'Lilyhammer,'
you won't get whacked
Mobster saga is Netflix's first original series
By Tom Conroy
Feb 14, 2012
When TV characters are spun off from a show, they usually relocate. Frasier moved to Seattle; Joey moved to L.A.; and Trapper John moved to San Francisco.
Although it is not officially a spinoff, Netflix’s new series “Lilyhammer” is basically about what would happen if Silvio from “The Sopranos” entered the witness-protection program and was sent to Norway. Playing a mobster named Frank Tagliano but maintaining the same look and limited range of expressions that he used as Tony Soprano’s consigliere Silvio, Steven Van Zandt stirs up some mild fish-out-of-water comedy and drama. Though no way near the draw that “The Sopranos” was during its heyday, the series might tip the balance for those of us who are still on the fence about signing up for Netflix.
In the first episode, the new boss of Frank’s mob family tries to whack him, so Frank decides to cooperate with the FBI and rat out the boss. In exchange, he demands to be sent to the Norwegian city of Lillehammer, which he remembers from the 1994 Olympics as being beautiful and full of “gorgeous broads.” The place turns out to be drabber and duller than Frank expected.
Though Frank is an underboss from New York rather than a consigliere from New Jersey, he’s indistinguishable from Silvio. He has the same thick black toupee and permanent frown.
Van Zandt, who was best known as a guitarist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, never demonstrated much range as an actor on “The Sopranos,” and he doesn’t seem to be trying to broaden it on this show. When Frank is angry, the frown stays pointed down. When he’s pleased, his eyes brighten a little and the corners of his mouth lift slightly.
But his minimal moves prove to be enough for the low-key action in the first episode. On the train to Lillehammer, he straightens out a wannabe tough kid, in the process impressing a pretty single mother named Sigrid (Marian Saastad Ottesen).
A local bureaucrat, Johansen (Fridtjov Såheim), who is in charge of Frank’s integration into Norwegian society, tells him he might get a job as a pizza deliveryman. Frank says he wants to run a bar and offers Johansen a pile of cash to help “take care of whatever you got to take care of.”
When Frank learns that Sigrid is having trouble with wolves at her sheep farm, one of his classmates from his job-skills class tells him that in Norway killing a wolf is worse than killing a person.
Van Zandt is writer on the series, along with its two Norwegian producers, Anne Bjørnstad and Eilif Skodvin. Though the storytelling is mostly from Frank’s point of view, the satire is directed at the local culture. Frank often comes across as a hybrid of Crocodile Dundee and a traveling gunslinger, an outsider who may just be what the townsfolk need.
The premiere episode quickly sets up some stereotypical relationships. As was often the case in the old gunslinger movies, Sigrid, the love interest, is a schoolteacher. The city’s chief of police (Anne Krigsvoll) fills the sitcom role of the nosy neighbor.
The language issue isn’t really dealt with. Although we see Frank learning phrases like “Sorry, we are sold out of bread” on a Norwegian language tape, he soon can understand almost everything his new neighbors say, even though he continues to respond in English, which they generally understand. (The Norwegian halves of these unlikely conversations are subtitled.)
Still, the series feels authentically foreign, enough so that even its cliché elements feel fresher. If people go to Netflix for an alternative to the usual TV fare, “Lilyhammer” is a good choice.
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