I've just binge-watched Season 2 after - almost - not returning after season 1. Both seasons are a bit of a mess, to be honest, but the ride through both of them is not without a lot of fun.
On the plus side, the scenery is great and the acting excellent. Watch out, in particular, for Ken Stott's marvellously nervy bureaucrat in season 2. I also find Alexandra Moen's Norwegian accent totally adorable. However, one of the problems with the series - particularly in season 2 - is that almost every performance requires the adjective "deranged" from Denis Quaid to Richard Dormer - who has been like that for most of both series, to be honest.
The series also does that Game of Thrones trick of bumping off major characters without warning. This is fine in principle, but when (as happens in series 2) it's one of your your central characters, who you've just started to like after disliking them for most of season 1, getting their comeuppance, you are left for nobody to root for except a murderer who bites peoples throats out due to some mysterious - and not yet fully explained - genetic transformation.
The music - more noise really - does a good job in being unsettling and there are a couple of beautiful uses of John Taverner's The Lamb.
One final warning - the gore is horrific and completely unnecessary given that at the point I'm thinking of I had no particular interest in whether that particular character mutilated himself or not.
That said - and here's where I justify my..er..Fortitude - each episode had so much incident and was such an bonkers ride, that I found myself somewhat mesmerised. Don't expect a satisfying ending. Some people live and some people die, and I didn't care much for any of them, but by golly if a TV series with a story line like this can even get made (despite the gore), there's hope for the world, and even if Fortitude doesn't really work in itself, I applaud the ambition!
On the plus side, the scenery is great and the acting excellent. Watch out, in particular, for Ken Stott's marvellously nervy bureaucrat in season 2. I also find Alexandra Moen's Norwegian accent totally adorable. However, one of the problems with the series - particularly in season 2 - is that almost every performance requires the adjective "deranged" from Denis Quaid to Richard Dormer - who has been like that for most of both series, to be honest.
The series also does that Game of Thrones trick of bumping off major characters without warning. This is fine in principle, but when (as happens in series 2) it's one of your your central characters, who you've just started to like after disliking them for most of season 1, getting their comeuppance, you are left for nobody to root for except a murderer who bites peoples throats out due to some mysterious - and not yet fully explained - genetic transformation.
The music - more noise really - does a good job in being unsettling and there are a couple of beautiful uses of John Taverner's The Lamb.
One final warning - the gore is horrific and completely unnecessary given that at the point I'm thinking of I had no particular interest in whether that particular character mutilated himself or not.
That said - and here's where I justify my..er..Fortitude - each episode had so much incident and was such an bonkers ride, that I found myself somewhat mesmerised. Don't expect a satisfying ending. Some people live and some people die, and I didn't care much for any of them, but by golly if a TV series with a story line like this can even get made (despite the gore), there's hope for the world, and even if Fortitude doesn't really work in itself, I applaud the ambition!