Known for his role as Ragnar Lodbrok in Vikings, Travis Fimmel is starring in a thrilling new series on Netflix. Here’s what you need to know about The Boy and the Universe.
Travis Fimmel gained enormous notoriety thanks to his legendary role as Ragnar Lodbrok in the series Vikings, broadcast between 2013 and 2020. If the Australian actor has also distinguished himself in other projects such as Warcraft: The Beginning, Raised by Wolves and more recently Kandahar, he has not yet found a significant role on our screens.
If he is expected in the casting of Dune: Prophecy, a spin-off series from the Dune universe reinvented by Denis Villeneuve, Travis Fimmel returns in force in a new Netflix series, which has just landed on the platform, which could to give it back some deserved light.
The interpreter of Ragnar returns to his native lands in a moving role for which he is unrecognizable in the seven-episode adaptation of Trent Dalton’s semi-autobiographical novel which has sold more than 160,000 copies in Australia since its publication in 2018.
Travis Fimmel as a courageous stepfather and drug dealer in Australia in the 80s
Produced by Joel Edgerton and created by John Collee (Master and Commander, Happy Feet, Tarzan), The Boy and the Universe is a police drama set in Brisbane in the 1980s. It particularly follows the journey of a young boy, Eli Bell, played by Felix Cameron (Penguin Bloom).
The latter is confronted with the harsh realities of life, as well as the imminent dangers that threaten his family. Because young Eli doesn’t live in a family like any other: an abandoned father, a brother who has become mute, a mother struggling with her addiction, a heroin-dealing stepfather, and a notorious criminal babysitter…
And as if that weren’t enough, Eli maintains a correspondence with an inmate with whom he discusses the vagaries of life, and the questions that cross his mind. If the social environment in which Eli evolves, engulfed in spite of himself by the criminal world, is not the simplest and bathed in violence, the fact remains that love and protection are omnipresent.
Netflix
Despite the obstacles – as suffocating as they are moving – that pile up on his path, Eli Bell strives to listen to his heart and understand what “becoming a good person” means. Everything will change when he answers a mysterious phone call coming from a red telephone in the basement of his house.
This initiatory adventure has the strength to confront the innocent and imaginative gaze of a young boy with the brutal reality of the adult world, with a pleasant kindness and accuracy even if the very crude and violent tone means that the series is not recommended for those under 16 years old.
The Boy and the Universe finds its balance by mixing genres between social drama, black comedy, gripping thriller and slapstick adventure. We become passionate about the journey of this very atypical blended family and we become strongly attached to all these unique personalities, torn between their hopes and their demons.
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The Boy and the Universe can count on an impeccable cast, with personalities that some series fans will recognize such as Simon Baker (Mentalist), Phoebe Tonkin (The Originals), Anthony LaPaglia (FBI: Missing) and Christopher James Baker (Ozark) .
Among the new talents, we can count on the notable presence of Sophie Wilde (The Hand) and Lee Tiger Halley. Somewhere between Shameless, Moonlight and Ozark, The Boy and the Universe is an exhilarating, family and mysterious adventure that does not fail to move and make you smile.
The Boy and the Universe series is available on Netflix.