TV Review: Trapped (Season 1)

There’s a first time for everything, and here goes my first attempt at reviewing a TV series for the guys over at Jumpcut. What better place to start than the brand new Icelandic TV series, “Trapped”.

Scandinavian drama has been creeping onto our screens with a growing presence over the last few years, and with some calling this the “Golden Age of Television”, it’s not difficult to see why. Leading the way in this market we have ‘The Killing’ and ‘The Bridge’ – bleak urban thrillers that have managed to entice subtitle-phobes to take a chance on the knitted jumper wearing detectives, unearthing grizzly cases with award-winning results. Venture over to the Nordics, specifically Iceland, and we have ‘Trapped’, another foreign-language drama making waves on UK television screens.

It’s the most expensive TV series ever made in Iceland (costing just over £5.2 million), comprising of 10 episodes, and has since been met with widespread critical acclaim. A series conceived, produced and directed by Baltasar Kormákur (pictured above), the man behind the ‘Everest’ film that hit cinemas last year, who takes us out of the dark and gloomy cities and drops us in the small isolated fishing town of Seyðisfjörður. Emerging post-economic collapse in present day Iceland, regularly covered with blankets of snowfall, the scene is set, and over the course of the series this little town will be shaken to its very core.

Read my full season review here