Because of the brutal arctic blast that threw a big yuletide monkey wrench into the plans of millions scheduled to fly to see friends and/or family for Christmas, the title of this show caught my attention. Then a trailer for the show made me laugh. People having emotional meltdowns due to the flight cancellations while Michael Bublé was singing "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas" in the background.
I watched the first episodes of the Norwegian TV series, A STORM AT CHRISTMAS. The shows are dubbed in English.
"What the hell? I'm Santa!" The opening scenes of the first episode made me laugh. A Black man dressed as Santa gets delayed at the airport security check-in. We follow him and see that he's an employee. He's the airport's version of a department store Santa. Kids sit on his knee and tell him what they want for Christmas. We also see a family struggling to get off a train that arrives at the airport. It's struggling with luggage and against the gusty winds and blowing snow.
Flights have been delayed or cancelled at the Oslo airport and travelers are stranded. There's that family, an ill-mannered pop music star and her polite assistant, a musician who's just received a bad review in the newspaper, two lovers who hook up in an airport restroom for the handicapped and a gregarious young man wearing a loud print shirt. We also see an airport bartender who seems to be having some personal health issue and the female airport priest who aids passengers.
You just know that, somehow, some of these stranded lives will intertwine. I thought of the movie LOVE, ACTUALLY and the even older movie, AIRPORT. The first episode is 40 minutes, the second is 30 minutes long. I liked them very much when they made me laugh. I preferred those moments to the dramatic bits, but the dramatic bits held my interest when they highlighted characters such as the airport priest. She's having her own emotional and spiritual confusion. She wonders if she's really contributing to the world around her "because life can make it hard to understand which way to go."
In Episode #2, she will encounter an elderly gentleman traveling alone who does not speak her language. She works to determine where he came from or where he's going. A STORM FOR CHRISTMAS seems like the kind of short foreign TV series that will inspire an American version for a cable channel. Here's a trailer. It's subtitled but, as I wrote, the series airing on Netflix is dubbed in English.
In the second episode, a well-dressed, foul-mouthed and absolutely slapable first class passenger butts in line at a ticket counter because she's been inconvenienced by the Norwegian snowstorm. You'll love how the counter clerk deals with her. (By the way, if you watch that episode, 8000 krona is $800 American.)
A STORM FOR CHRISTMAS now on Netflix. Try it. You may like it. Happy Holidays.
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