‘Lilyhammer’ Director Øystein Karlsen on Injecting a ‘Scandi’ Sensibility into Acorn TV’s ‘Whitstable Pearl’
Ann-Marie Corvin Made by “Marcella” producerBuccaneer Media as an original for AMC’s BritBox rival Acorn TV, “Whitstable Pearl” has all the ingredients of a travel-friendly crime series with a female lead in a picturesque English town.And while the six part, 45-minute series slots in neatly with the streamer’s other small town crime canon, including Cotswold’s based “Agatha Raisin” and “Queens of Mystery,” Buccaneer execs Tony Wood and Anna Burns were keen to give the seaside town of Whitstable a Scandinavian edge.Enter Norwegian filmmaker Øystein Karlsen, whose writing/directing credits include hit dark comedy dramas “DAG,” “Exit” and “Lilyhammer,” who was duly drafted in to adapt Julie Wassmer’s series of seaside mystery novels.