Spoiler alert: this blog is for people watching Fortitude on Sky Atlantic. It discusses plot points from the first 10 episodes of season one.
If all you’ve seen of Sky Atlantic’s Arctic-set drama Fortitude is the massive advertising campaign, you’ll probably assume you have the gist of what the show is: a brazen attempt to elbow in on the Nordic noir market, with a dollop of Broadchurchian murder mystery, and a dash of Twin Peaks oddness – polar bears, creepy kids – added in for good measure.
And, in truth, if you were judging Fortitude on its first four episodes alone, that would have been a reasonable assessment. From the off it resembled the starkly lit froideur of Scandicrime shows, as well as a familiar face in The Killing’s Sofie Gråbøl, while the set-up – outsider in a secretive town – had more than a hint of Broadchurch about it. Set in a small arctic mining town populated by a mix of Scandinavians and Brits, the series opened with not one but two deaths. The first looked like a mercy killing by a nature photographer, Henry, (Michael Gambon) saving a research scientist from being eaten by a polar bear; the second, a brutal murder of the town’s chief research scientist Professor Stoddart (Christopher Eccleston). Stoddart had made enemies of many of the other residents, including a pair of miners who had found some mammoth remains in the permafrost and were trying to get Stoddart to pay for them, and the mayor of Fortitude (Gråbøl), whose plans for a massive hotel had been put on ice by the professor’s decision to carry out environmental tests on the excavation site.
The laconic DCI Morton (Stanley Tucci) arrives from London to investigate both deaths, and has to contend with the mysterious town sheriff, Dan Anderssen (Richard Dormer), and his recalcitrant police staff. In each of those opening four episodes, the finger of suspicion swerves in the direction of a different townsperson, and each week a salient piece of evidence puts someone else in the frame. So far, so familiar, and while the show’s stunning cinematography was lovely to look at, the plodding pace of proceedings began to drag.
But then, in its fifth episode Fortitude dramatically changed tack. In a flashback scene, Stoddart’s murderer was revealed: Liam, the little boy who had been struck down by a mystery illness in the show’s first episode. Suddenly unencumbered by this weighty reveal, the show was able to veer off into entirely uncharted territory. Its central mystery became not “whodunnit” but “whydunnit” – contemplating free will, fate and man’s capacity to do some truly horrible stuff. In the very next episode there’s a truly gruesome copycat attack on the town doctor, committed by her daughter Shirley (the supermarket worker being force-fed towards obesity by her creepy lover Markus). Like Liam, Shirley had been suffering from a fever before carrying out the attack, raising the possibility of demonic possession.
Since then, the show’s flirtation with the supernatural has become a long-term commitment. We’ve had oozing mammoth remains, cannibalistic animals, Inuit shamanism, and, in the most recent episode, a swarm of insects flying out of someone’s mouth. Meanwhile, the show’s other murder mystery – what really happened to the scientist being eaten by the bear? – has rumbled on, taking some surprising turns of its own, culminating in a bizarre and brilliant Beckettian two-hander between Morton and the dying photographer Henry in the snowy wastes.
It’s difficult to convey how unusual all of this is. Thanks to its serialised nature, modern television relies on consistency; from soaps to genre shows to crime dramas, we tend to have a fairly good handle of what to expect from episode to episode. Fortitude, by comparison has thrashed around wildly, from grimy revenge drama, to John Carpenter-style sci-fi horror, giving the effect of several different shows running concurrently.
For the most part, these sudden tonal shifts have been invigorating, yet it’s possible that, in its desire to discombobulate the audience, Fortitude has occasionally gone too far. Take, for example, Shirley’s attack on her mother’s midriff, carried out with a fork. From the ominous shots throughout the episode you might have expected that something horrible was going to happen, but the sheer brutality of the scene was entirely unprecedented, a four-minute long evisceration shown in a surgical level of detail. For my money it was one of the most explicit things ever seen on television, and certainly not in keeping with the general 15-certificate-level violence we had witnessed up to that point. I can’t help but think it might have alienated more than a few viewers.
Fortitude has made other missteps. While Stanley Tucci has been excellent as Morton, and Richard Dormer fast-improving as the grizzled, conflicted Sheriff Dan Anderssen, too many of its other cast members has been left twiddling their A-list thumbs, underserved by weak characterisation. Frank and Jules, played by Nicholas Pinnock and Jessica Raine, should have been some of the show’s most interesting characters – coming to terms with their son’s murderous act, while also wrestling with Frank’s infidelity – but too often their scenes resembled second-rate kitchen-sink drama. Even Michael Gambon’s usually sure hand couldn’t save Fortitude’s raging Lear figure Henry, whose role amounted to little more than some florid speeches about everything going to hell in a handcart. Even more pointless has been the story of Ronnie, a miner who went on the run with his daughter because he worried about being falsely implicated in Stoddart’s death, and spent ages wandering around the wilderness looking pained. Ronnie has spent the last few episodes silently expiring in a cupboard after being hacked apart in another copycat attack. Not much of a character arc.
For these reasons Fortitude ranks several rungs below the top tier American dramas Sky clearly desires the show to be considered alongside. Yet for its faults, Fortitude remains adventurous and admirably bonkers television. Sky has hinted that some cast members will return for the just-announced season two – if they survive. But until then, I’ll be sad to leave this strange and unsettling world behind.
