Nobel

I highly recommend this series which is a perfect balance of military action and political intrigue.

"In NOBEL, two stories carefully intertwine as a returning soldier and family man becomes a pawn in a political international game. As the stakes grow higher he is forced to discover just how far one should go in the name of peace."

Nobel has a beautiful and well done vignette

I had seen this series pop up on Netflix and added it to my watch list. When I realized it was Norwegian and subtitled in English, I relegated it to the forgotten portion of my list. One day I decided "what the heck,I'll give it a shot" boy am I glad I did!

Nobel is an 8 episode Netflix original. The Story follows Erling Riiser, a Norwegian special forces operator in Afghanistan. He and his team are involved in several high profile missions and when he returns home his past comes back to haunt him.

Erling's Wife Johanne works for the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. She and her husband are thrust into a geopolitical mess involving a Norwegian Oil deal. Brokering peace is often a bloody and dirty affair.

I wont give much more of the plot away, because I highly recommend watching the series.

Analysis

There are a few things that I really enjoyed about this series.

First of all, the audience isn't spoon fed the plot like you get in a lot of american movies and shows. This series forces you to think and unwind the tangled relationships of the characters. The meaning is presented in a much more subtle way as well. Nobel confronts the emotional,mental and physical damage to soldiers and civilians from war. 

Nobel also highlights many of the contradictions and connections between daily life and war. A few examples of this are...

Erling having to kill a young boy similar in age to his son back home.

Erling and his team destroy opium fields and production facilities and witness drug smuggling facilitated by Norwegian government programs while Erling's own father, a former jockey who had a bad accident, suffers from heroin addiction.

While watching the show, in your mind you struggle to reconcile many of the realities of war and are constantly questioning the cost of peace.

Counter balancing these questions is Erling, who shows a pure and almost brutal honesty about his experiences and situation.Moments of discussion with his young son reveal the moral dilemmas of war and the harsh reality soldiers face.

As an American I was deeply fascinated with the perspective of the Norwegians and Norwegian military. I think it is important to view events, especially those in which comes at such a high cost, through a different lens.

Americans in many ways are insular, especially when it comes to media. Nobel was a welcome change to my usual viewing.

I would describe Nobel as a mix between the show House of Cards and the film 13 hours.

Nobel is a complex mix of geopolitics, war and business. There is a push and pull between the desires of bureaucrats and politicians and the truths of war the special forces confront everyday.

Nobel does a great job of displaying the complexity of the situation in Afghanistan. Both the allies and the enemy are not depicted as being monolithic. It is clear that you cannot paint everyone with the same brush. There are a variety of interests on both sides seeking peace, money, war, influence etc..

You will question the cost of war and the devastation it leaves in its path. 

The show has a perfect balance of military action and political intrigue.

I highly recommend watching this series. At the moment there is no indication whether or not there will be a season 2. 

If you have seen the show, I would love to know your thoughts in the comments below.

If you are a Norwegian Steemian give a shout out in the comments below!

Source

"Nobel is a 2016 Norwegian television series that premiered on NRK on 25 September 2016. It depicts Norway’s military involvement in Afghanistan.It was produced by Monster Scripted for the Norwegian broadcaster NRK and was broadcast under the title Nobel – fred for enhver pris (Nobel – Peace at Any Cost). The series under the title Nobel was made available on Netflix for streaming on 13 December 2016."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4591834/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_(TV_series)

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