Viaplay’s ‘The Fortress’ Delivers a Big Parable Thriller About Small-Minded Nationalism
John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent LILLE, France — The gauntlet thrown down by the opening stretches of Viaplay banner title “The Fortress,” one of nine series in main competition at Series Mania, is to believe that this is fiction. News footage plays of a pandemic, then a war; huge protests rage around the world as Norway’s prime minister addresses his nation to announce that Norway is building a wall to keep everybody else out. That’s been done before (Israel) and in metaphorical terms (Brexit). Cut to nine years later: Norway is a bucolic paradise, Sweden next door a refugee camp hell, until strange bacteria kills fish and then humans, and Norway will, foreseeably, need international help and “what starts as a wall, ends as a prison,” comments Filippa Wallestam, Viaplay Group chief content officer.