Mammon: a gritty Norwegian Noir thriller

The six-part Norwegian conspiracy drama Mammon demonstrates once again how if you’re willing to read subtitles and skip famous American actors there’s a huge pool of brilliant drama to enjoy which shows time and again how big budget special effects not only aren’t needed by often distract from getting basics like scripts, lighting and music right.

The series kicks off with a journalist investigating financial fraud that implicates his own brother, getting drawn into a search for truth that encompasses the media, politicians and the financial elite.

Mammon is dark and at times frustratingly imperfect, trying to be not only tense but also meaningful, with repeated allusions to the Bible and darker family tragedies. Those don’t quite come off, but do provide an edgy backdrop to a conspiracy thriller which has its full quota of twists and coincidences and yet has at heart an idea that makes it all hang together.

Without giving away any spoilers, the key agreement which brought the conspirators together and then drove their apparently bizarre and outlandish behaviour does – just about – make sense as a dramatic and almost desperate attempt to keep each other in line. The apparently utterly absurd events in episode one do also end up with a reasonably plausible explanation, though it’s one that is easy to miss.

Add to this brilliantly done music that adds an uneasy tension and a nice little line in feints during the plot, presenting but then not always following through on some of the clichés of such dramas, and it’s always exciting stuff.

If you like this, you might also be interested in King’s Game and Flame and Citron.

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Buy Mammon here.