LOUIS BURKE | Culture | CONTACT
New Norwegian crime drama The Berserker hits streaming services this weekend, promising lovers of the Scandi Noir genre the same thing they have seen before but with some new actors.
Based on the 2018 novel of the same name, The Berserker is screenwriting by novelist Erlend Undset who stated he wanted to make his novel into an original and subversive mini-series, before realising he could make the same amount of money by copying and pasting a few things from earlier in his career.
According to Undset, he is not sure why Scandi Noir has been such a popular crime fiction genre amongst English speakers, suggesting that seeing the seedy underbelly of an chilly yet otherwise uniform region makes viewers feel better about themselves.
It is for this reason that Undset decided he could no longer remove the child trafficking subplot from the final version of The Berserker so as to not disappoint audiences who tuned in to see that very thing.
“I thought we could make do with a few alcoholic pedophile characters but what audiences really want is some fucked up child trafficking,” stated Undset.
“There will still be plenty of new things for lovers of the genre. For starters, our main character is a woman in this one but don’t worry, she and her partner have to learn to get along if they are going to solve this case!”
As stated by Undset, The Berserker will follow protagonist Kata Thulin as she and her new, rogue & morally grey partner try to solve a string of serial murders that are somehow linked to disappearances in the ‘80s and at least half a dozen child exploitation rings.
“When they are looking for the killer sometimes they find his calling card, sometimes a new victim but almost every time they find solid evidence of a multinational child trafficking circuit.”
