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I started watching Occupied not so much for the series itself, but to practice my very rusty Norwegian. By the middle of the first episode, I was hooked. Occupied is set in a near future where the new prime minister, a member of the Green Party, has started building a Thorium reactor for green energy and has halted all fossil fuel production. This is a big deal, Norway is one of the top non-Arab oil producing countries in the world, if you didn't know that already. The EU, faced with the cutting off of their closest source of fossil fuels, decides to step in and force the Norwegians to turn the oil and gas production back on. They do this by allowing the Russians to persuade, by use of the threat of full-scale military occupation, the Norwegians. They take over all the oil platforms in the North Sea, and maintain a large presence in Oslo to make sure the oil keeps flowing. They claim they're there to “help” the Norwegians and supposedly, they'll all go home again once gas and oil production levels reach and are maintained at the earlier rates.

What I liked best about this series is how well the characters are developed. Each person is dealing with things in the way they see best, the prime minister is trying his best to keep a large military presence from being built up and to prevent the violence that could break out if that were to happen. He's concerned for the welfare of the people he is governing, and to heck with what they think of him and how he's handling the crisis. The Russian ambassador is trying to keep her superiors back in Moscow happy, and also trying to prevent a full-scale military invasion, while making sure the oil production doesn't falter. The journalist is interested in exposing the truth, no matter what the cost, until it puts his family at risk. His wife, whose restaurant is failing until the Russians at the Embassy across the street take an interest, wants her business to succeed and to take care of their family. There are other characters who are just as complex and make decisions based on what they believe to be the best course of action, whether for their own families or for the country in general. There is no black and white in this show, no good vs evil, just a lot of people trying to make the best of a bad situation.

The other thing that pulled me in has to do with the fact that Norway has been occupied before. The Nazis invaded on April 9, 1940 and occupied the country until Germany surrendered in May of 1945. They attempted to sneak up the Oslo Fjord to Oslo and capture the royal family and the parliament, but didn't count on any resistance from the little fortress of Oskarsborg in the Drobak Narrows. The guy in charge of the fortress sank the lead ship, the Blucher, and delayed the Germans long enough for the royal family and the parliament to escape across the North Sea in little fishing boats to the UK, where they stayed until the war was over in Europe. In the meantime, the Germans set up a puppet government headed up by Vidkun Qvisling (where we get the work Quisling, meaning traitor, from). During the occupation, Norwegians were kept under martial law, weren't allowed any outside newspapers or to own radios. There was a very strong Norwegian resistance force, and several of the kids I went to school with (in the little town of Drobak near where the Blucher got sunk) had grandparents who were active in the Resistance. I've been to Akershus Fortress in Oslo, where the Resistance Museum is located, and there's also a monument in the courtyard to the resistance fighters who were executed by firing squad in that same spot. After the occupation was over, Qvisling himself would be executed the same way in the same place.

The monument reads: They fought, they fell, they gave us all. Norwegian patriots were executed on this site during the war from 1940-1945.

Anyway, the point of that little history lesson was to give you an idea of how the Norwegians might feel about a second occupation. Heck, I'm not even Norwegian, and I had pretty strong feelings while I was watching the series.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the series, and I hope they make a second season, because not everything got resolved in the ten episodes of the first season.