Fortitude Season 2

DVD Wholesale Quick Overview:

Looking back at Fortitude’s debut two years ago, one wonders if the show’s creators perversely wish that it had received less publicity. Striving to keep up with the original programming of Netflix and Amazon, Sky threw record sums behind its brooding Scandi thriller, hiring A-listers such as Michael Gambon and Stanley Tucci to film on location in Iceland, and pulling headline-grabbing marketing stunts that included setting an eight-foot mechanical polar bear loose across London.

The industry expected a phenomenon. What it got was a decent drama that mirrored its central characters: likeable, good-hearted, but flawed. Set in the fictional town of Fortitude – a sleepy, mountainous outpost of Arctic Norway – the first series followed Sheriff Dan Andersen (Richard Dormer) and Governor Hildur Odegard (The Killing’s Sofie Gråbøl) as they investigated the murder of Christopher Eccleston’s short-lived professor. With more bodies piling up alongside the discovery of a festering mammoth corpse, intrigue was rarely in short supply, but nor were the plot holes, reels of clunky dialogue and storylines that stumbled around in the dark without purpose.

-Alex Bellotti

The first season of Fortitude was frustrating. It had so much promise but became tangled in its own story threads, trying to cram in so many weird ideas and images it became overly complicated, irritating and confusing. Kudos for not settling for being just another Nordic noir clone (even though it often aped the style and even starred The Killing’s Sofie Gråbøl) but the final resolution to the big mystery was unsatisfying. After a two-year break we head back to the snowy wastes of Fortitude, an isolated community on the edge of the Arctic Circle, once again attempting to bridge the gap between (ahem) The Bridge and Twin Peaks.

The blood-drenched flashback to 1942 that opens season two doesn’t bode well for a more streamlined sophmore outing. However, it soon settles into its rhythm as a headless corpse is found at the side of a remote icy highway. The question moving forward is whether creator Simon Donald will resist the temptation to muddy his narrative with extraneous details and convoluted subplots or stick to a solid murder mystery.

-Henry Northmore

It left us hanging two years ago with the revelation that an outbreak of frenzied murders had been caused by the larvae of a prehistoric parasitic wasp freed from the thawing carcass of a wooly mammoth – and just one episode into its return it brings us a decapitated body, a dog with its spine torn out and the apparent cannibalisation of a baby.

Yes, Fortitude is back – in all its mad, gory, moody glory – and straight away I’m hooked again.

It’s as atmospheric as ever – even more so in this first episode, thanks to the rare ‘blood aroura’ that soaks the night sky crimson. Against the stark backdrop of the glaciated landscape, the town’s warmly lit bar looks as cosy as hell, providing a place for locals to drink, chat, squint warily at one another and occasionally break into a fist fight. Recent events have taken their toll on Fortitude.

-Paul Jones

DVD Wholesale Main Features :   

Actors: Starring Sofie Gråbøl, Richard Dormer, Stanley Tucci, Dennis Quaid, Michael Gambon
Format: Color, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: Pidgin English
Subtitles: English
Region: Region 1
Number of discs: 7
Rated: NR – Not Rated
Run Time: 1020.00 minutes
ASIN: B075FXG3L1