"Beforeigners": snotty fate and a thousand years of belching experience

The Norwegian crime mystery series “Beforeigners” (ARD) resists the usual monotony of series in a pleasantly calm way.

Admittedly, that may certainly apply to every idea, but sometimes there are some that need a little more to come up with than the unfortunately for many years commercially clichéd investigators-with-trauma-related-quirks-have-visions monotony. For example, the Norwegian … yes, what actually … crime and mystery series (?) “Beforeigners” combines so many genre-spanning elements (all of which you’ve seen elsewhere before, but rarely so pointedly interwoven) that it’s a real joy – which, however, only occurs if you get involved with this “more” of complex oddities and, above all, the original premise of the series.

And it says that in the “now” time, through unexplained time gaps, a lot of “time migrants” (originally the eponymous mixture of “Before” and “Foreigners”) involuntarily appear, who come from three epochs of the past. Said periods of time or their pure-born are not historically defined in more detail, but – even if it is a period of time extending over two million years, as is the case with the “Stone Age” for example – merely subdivided into the Stone Age, people from the late 19th Century and – and that’s what it’s all about – migrants from the time of the Vikings. The latter is also part of the early Middle Ages, lasting around 300 years. So far, so good and therefore somewhat confusing.

“Beforeigners” (ARD): The slightly different culture shock

But even if the foreseeable clash of cultures, which is presented here in an extremely pleasantly calm way, is of course good for some (sometimes meant humorously) friction, the Beforeigners, regardless of their historical colour, are all more or less necessarily integrated into modern society. And the main character, the Viking Alfhildr Enginnsdottir, embodied by Krista Kosonen in a wonderful mixture of snotty fate and thousands of years of belching experience, has even made it into the Oslo criminal police, where she knows how to deal with modern technology with astonishing confidence, but still travels in time instead of with Suitcase or bag, with a chunky wooden chest.

At this point, to go into the rather manageable crime plot in a more targeted manner, whose complex temporal entanglements go hand in hand with the quite expected time travel tricks, would be just as wasted time as a more precise description of the character personnel recruited from a total of four levels and their also overlapping entanglements, because the peculiar one The charm of the series actually lies in the fact that the viewer simply accepts the time migration premise as given and – as difficult as it is sometimes – not to question it further.

“Beforeigners” (ARD): Modern refugee problems meanwhile creep in

The fact that the problem of modern refugee movements is also dealt with here in one go is rather subtly trickled in, because the series (despite archaic Vikings and Stone Age people) fortunately largely dispenses with the very coarse socio-critical cudgel. The topic creeps into the plot more between lines and is not important for its course, if you disregard the expected complications, prejudices and the associated side-war scenes, but it still rounds off the overall picture of the scenario perfectly. That, too, a renunciation of anything too moral, an absolute plus point for the pure entertainment level of the series.

Finally, two things should be noted: I (who, for lack of an adventurous life of my own – and long before modern streaming services were offered – dedicated myself to watching TV series very early on and am therefore a quite experienced predictor of the most diverse plot twists) didn’t often get the inevitable cliffhanger surprise at the end of the season hit so suddenly in a series. Well, I had suspected it a little bit, but all the more primarly that it actually happened that way.

“Beforeigners” (ARD): Good title music makes good series

On the other hand, it should be noted here that good series also generally have good title music. And even though I initially thought that “Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City” preceding “Beforeigners” was a terrific cover version of an early hit by the hard rock band “Whitesnake”, which bravely defied all fissure trends, I had to realize that this is the original by Bobby “Blue” Bland, which I had criminally completely slipped through my fingers to date – and accordingly even earlier.

Alfhildr Enningsdottir that wouldn’t really matter, but I wanted to mention it at least once for the sake of the chronological order, despite all the temporal confusion. (Joerg Schneider)