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Dystopia is a fascinating genre and the concept of The Fortress has something to sharpen our desire – almost masochistic – to imagine the world of tomorrow, so close, so far…
What challenges await us? What horrors will befall us? The Norwegian series, which begins tonight on Canal +, presents us with a world where Norway, faced with pandemics and waves of migration, decides to cut itself off from the rest of the world. Literally. A widely elected populist prime minister has a huge wall built along the country's borders. No more going back. The Scandinavian country will now have to cope alone. Turn away from Europe. From others. They have oil. They have huge lands to cultivate. The Nordic country thus chooses the path of total self-sufficiency. Nine years later, the chaos reigning on Earth proves it right! Hundreds of thousands of exiles flee countries ravaged by crises and climate change, knocking desperately on the wall's door, while Norway has become an Eldorado, almost the Noah's Ark of the human race…
Is the Scandinavian model, so often put forward, so virtuous that it can free itself from the rest of humanity? The authors of The Fortress – awarded at the Séries Mania Festival in 2023 – play at answering “yes”, in a crazy and disconcerting premise. We have fun scaring ourselves in front of this world that is going to hell and the authoritarian response that results from it. The staging is spectacular and provides that little shiver down the spine that we expect from a painting of this kind. Especially since the series has the intelligence to question the viability of such a society, compartmentalized and isolated.
But from there, we would like her to break the codes, to deconstruct modern geopolitics. However, The Fortress struggles to surf on the strength of its concept and gets bogged down in a didactic denunciation of a fantasized Norway, implicitly denouncing the isolationist tendencies of today's world still traumatized by Brexit. Although the intention is laudable, the political commentary is too soft and too conventional.
To this little dystopian game, we prefer the dramatic power of a Years and Yearswhich had something much more vibrant. More universal too. Chance or coincidence, we also find in The Fortress English Russell Toveyhero of the series by Russel T Davies and who this time plays a British migrant in search of a better life in Scandinavia.
The Fortress does not yet have a broadcaster in France.