The first season of Lilyhammer came and went with little fanfare. As the first of Netflix’s original series, it can be regarded as the soft opening to a mini-revolution that, in its first full year, has yielded six Golden Globe nominations and seemingly endless critical praise for House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and more. The initial eight-episode run mirrored this pattern as it started out slow before building up to an impressive and dramatic finish. I gave it four stars out of five, but only because Netflix does not allow fractions.
The second season premiere, “Milwall Brick,” brings to viewers a show that is firmly in the next phase of development and in stride from the start. The first season, in which The Sopranos’ Steven Van Zandt plays Frank “The Fixer” Tagliano, was entirely about acclimating as a fish out of water; Tagliano’s (now Giovanni “Johnny” Henriksen) choice to relocate through the Witness Protection Program to Lillehammer, Norway, is essentially the entire premise of the season. Now that he has adjusted to life in small-town Scandinavia, he is in the process, as Frank Costello put it in The Departed, of making his environment a product of him. What is most appealing about Lilyhammer—beyond the charming cast and dry wit—is that it is not simply a fish out of water but an entire genre. Frank is in the process of terraforming Lillehammer to his lifestyle as he introduces the cosa nostra way of doing business to Norway. (The year) has been a big one) for terraforming.)
Although this is addressed for laughs in more obvious ways, including an homage to The Godfather to open the episode and closing it with a gentler nod to Goodfellas by playing out to Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” Lilyhammer deftly presents the culture clash through the transitions by each of Frank’s associates. Jan (Fridtjov Såheim), a former employee of the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Association whom Frank blackmails in the first season, is at once smarmy and dorky in ways that would never fly in depictions of the American Mafia. Frank’s right-hand man and the godfather of his children, Torgeir (Trond Fausa) is a vaguely ineffectual goofball who takes up knitting in order to make rompers for his godchildren. Both characters lack the machismo inherent in typical American men and criminals, which creates a fascinating dynamic for the genre. In shows such as The Sopranos, The Wire and Boardwalk Empire, characters exist in a world of subterfuge and gamesmanship, but in Lilyhammer the mostly honest characters fall in line behind Frank and are eager to please without an outsized concern for self-honor.