After watching the two series of this show I was not going to write anything here, but now, a few weeks later, the characters are still live in my mind. So it must deserve a review. Even though the show does not come with great pretentions. It is a spoof version of the Vikings - which I have not seen. The gory period drama meets the sensibilities of The Office and some of the slap stick of Life of Brian. A couple of things to cover at the start. First, the dialogue is in English - unless you watch the Norwegian version. They shot the whole thing twice and all the actors speak (accented) English. Second, it really is gory, especially in the first few episodes. Once or twice, the gore is not at all necessary and these scenes would have been better dropped. After two or three episodes, though, I did not notice this so much. I think there was actually less later on. The main strengths of the series are the characters and the off beat comedy. There's Orm, the chieftain who thinks their warrior village would really be better off appointing a creative director and building an "installation", the straightforward warrior, Arvid, his very good friend, the warrior "maiden", Frøya and the theatrical baddy, Jarl Varg. Watch out for the ritual burial at sea, and the ritual putting to death by fire - in the rain. But perhaps the best is the ineptitude of Orm as he discovers that he has to "lead" a minor raid on a settlement in Britain. Sadly, the writers have moved the plot at the end of the second series into a place that's going to make the start of the third series - apparently already commissioned by Netflix - very difficult to pull off.

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