Iceland has been much in the news with the resignation of its prime minister over links to Mossack Fonseca and offshore argy-bargy, things that don’t sit well with an electorate dragged through economic collapse and depression since 2008. The very real financial crisis looms large in Trapped, a tightly wrapped, elemental 10-part thriller set and shot in the remote eastern town of Seyðisfjörður, where the discovery of a torso in the harbour sets off a whodunit that threatens to implicate just about everybody while a blizzard snows them all in. A wily import to BBC Four’s Saturday night slot, it aired in chilly February and, for maximum empathy, it is advised you watch the DVD without the heating on.
Created by Baltasar Kormákur, best known for directing the films 101 Reykjavik and The Deep, Trapped dresses the armature of a traditional police procedural with the incestuous political and social intrigues of a sort of disaster chamber piece. The storm and subsequent avalanche cut the town off and delay the arrival of flashy detectives from Reykjavík, leaving ursine police chief Andri in charge of the investigation, with a Danish ferry impounded in the port.
The provincial investigator coping with a major crime is a Scandi-standby, but this is a particularly small town (population: 1,200) and a single act of foul play spreads like ice on a windscreen into human trafficking, municipal corruption, Chinese property investment and a prologue involving sex and arson. There’s something whiffy about the fish factory, too.
It ticks all the Nordic noir boxes: the esoteric credits sequence seemingly based on Cocteau Twins record sleeves; a minimalist electronic score (by Oscar-nominated Jóhann Jóhansson); inclement weather; existential gloom. But it also conjures the plodding comedy of Fargo with its thick-coated cops crunching across a snowbound landscape, and when we first enter the three-person police station, officers Ásgeir and Hinrika (the Icelandic names feel joyously mythological) are dealing with an urgent double-parking violation. “It is illegal to park by a fire hydrant,” says one, while another plays computer chess. But soon the trio are examining a headless, limbless body, believed dumped off the ferry, whose captain will delight fans of The Killing since he’s the barrel-shaped bloke who played bereaved father Theis Birk Larsen.
Terse domestic dramas play out against the backdrop of the investigation, with many of the cast figuratively or maritally trapped (geddit?). Stoic Andri’s visiting ex-wife is stranded with their spoilt daughters and her new partner, who is literally half the man the bearded police chief is (you could wrap yourself in Andri and survive any snowstorm). Meanwhile, the weaselly mayor’s wife is seeking her pleasure elsewhere, and an Oedipal struggle is taking place between old Gudmundur and harbourmaster Siggi, who glimpses his schoolteacher wife engaging in thermal exchange with a younger man in her office. With a little geographic adjustment, you might even call the tone Strindbergian, if not for the occasional gag: “Bloody Danes! Like we’re some sort of dumping ground for dead bodies!”
Mid-series, the downbeat Andri, a man who is not a natural cheerleader, must reluctantly reassure the assembled townsfolk in a church. I began to think affectionately of him, particularly at his most exasperated. “We’re snowed in and understaffed,” he gasps at one point. “Our equipment’s so dated, I had to borrow a car.”
