The sub-zero drama returns, picking up weeks after where season one left off, only to reveal that what took place before was just the tip of the iceberg. Anyone who read my review of the pilot season of Sky Atlantic’s Fortitude will know that while I thought it was quite an enjoyable show when it premiered, I didn’t think it quite warranted the hype it got a couple of years ago.
Nonetheless, I was still rather excited for the drama to return this year. As it turned out, I actually got into the second season a lot more, with the show becoming the highlight of my Thursday evenings for the last ten weeks.
I think it’s fair to say that the show took a more supernatural/horror twist this time around, and with that transition came a couple of brilliant performances, most notably from Richard Dormer, who returned as Sheriff Dan Anderson, but not quite as we knew him last season. Upon returning, it soon became clear that Dan had been a rare survivor of the wasp infestation; however he was far from his old self.
Dormer played an absolutely terrific part this season! He gave Dan a real sense of unpredictability – one that left you unsure of what he would do next, or what he was truly capable of. He was brilliant to watch as he descended further into madness with each episode that passed, and is one of the reasons why I’m highly anticipating a third season of Fortitude.
Also worth mentioning is the introduction of Robert Sheehan in the role of Vladic, or The Shaman, whichever of the two you prefer. I thought he was great as the so-called saviour of Fortitude following the infestation. He also added very nicely to the snowy landscapes (if you get what I’m saying), which is always a bonus. His character went head to head with Dormer’s Dan, and there was something that was so tense about the scenes in which the two of them came face to face. They worked really well together in my opinion, really enhancing each other’s work.
I found this season to be far more gripping than the first. It seemed to get going much quicker than the pilot did, perhaps because it just picked up where it had left off, and didn’t need to set the scene from scratch all over again. To start off with, a lot of silly things happened, and while it was fast-paced, a number of things weren’t making a lot of sense.
However, the story developed more as it went along, and soon enough everything began to fall into place. When this started happening, the show started to get a lot better, and the week long wait for each new episode got pretty awful. Unfortunately though, things were too good to be true because, as is always the case with big British dramas (although with such a stellar international cast, I don’t quite see how I can call it British all by itself), it ended stupidly.
When the last episode finished, I genuinely sat there on the living room floor, staring at the end credits and was like, “are you trying to piss me off?”. What a way to end it, you know? This show was on top form for nine and three quarter episodes and it managed to undo all of that in a ten minute timeframe with an explosion and a handful of bullets.
It was the big-budget TV show equivalent of hearing you’ve got five minutes left to finish an exam paper you’re only half-way through, so you just start writing random stuff on the paper and hope for the best. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. All I can say is I hope that season three materialises, because that’s the only thing I can think of that will justify such an ending.
Overall, for the large part, season two of Fortitude was way better than the first. It was good to return to characters that we were already familiar with in the aftermath of the devastation we witnessed last time around. Some of the actors really proved themselves as things unfolded, and the story, if I can try to put the ending to the back of my mind, was far more gripping than that we had to follow before. I’d recommend the show to you, but just be prepared for an ending that was somewhat half-baked.
