From this Friday, May 6, Arte.tv is putting online “State of Happiness”, a multi-award winning Norwegian series at the Canneseries festival, which offers us a fascinating chronicle on the beginnings of oil in the North Sea.
What is it about ?
The story of a changing country, that of a city and four young people plunged into a whirlwind of events. It’s the summer of 1969, in the small coastal town of Stavanger. International oil companies have been drilling there for years, but these boreholes have still yielded nothing.
The companies were therefore preparing to leave when, on Christmas Eve 1969, during the night, the gas torch on the Ocean Viking oil platform suddenly ignited… And everything could then change.
Season 1 of State of Happiness is available in full from this Friday, May 6 on Arte.tv.
The black gold rush
With State of Happiness, Arte sets aside the usual series of the “Nordic Noir” genre such as The Killing, The Bridge or even Trapped to offer us a Norwegian chronicle on the beginnings of oil in the country. This fiction in 8 episodes transports us directly to a small Norwegian village in the late 60s and tells us the fate of four characters from different social backgrounds.
With the epic backdrop of the black gold rush in the North Sea, this series, written by Mette M. Bølstad to whom we owe the Nobel fiction in particular, follows Christian Nyman (Amund Harboe), son an entrepreneur, Anna Hellevik (Anne Regine Ellingsæter) her fiancé city clerk and daughter of farmers, Toril Torstensen (Malene Wadel), a young woman working at the Nyman cannery and coming from a religious background, and finally Jonathan Kay (Bart Edwards), son of an American lawyer responsible for announcing to the Norwegians his wish to put an end to their contract.
Marius Vervik – NRK – Maipo F
Through these four characters, the State of Happiness explores the story of a changing country. Driven by a folk-pop soundtrack, the series questions how to reconcile capitalism and social progress, prosperity and the welfare state? If men are at the center of political and economic negotiations, the female characters are not left out, Anna and Toril being the perfect representation of female emancipation.
Note that State of Happiness has already been renewed for a season 2 still written by Mette M. Bølstad, which will take place 5 years later and will explore the period from 1977 to 1980.
nobel