13 messages over 2 pages: 1 2
montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4831 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh
| Message 9 of 13 10 September 2012 at 1:42am | IP Logged |
What's it a parody of? (if that's not too much of a spoiler)?
I haven't really looked into it at all. It was enough that it was set in a Nordic country
to guarantee my watching it!
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6912 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 10 of 13 10 September 2012 at 9:05am | IP Logged |
Isn't it just the typical "culture clash" thing, with a touch of humour? (We've seen it in movies like Crocodile Dundee, Coming to America, Rush Hour...)
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| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4775 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish
| Message 11 of 13 10 September 2012 at 9:12am | IP Logged |
Well, the premise of the show is basically "what if that guy from The Sopranos ended up in Norway?" Van Zandt's character is clearly modelled after his character in The Sopranos, and his "adventures" in Norway are used to satirize both fictional portrayals of Mafia and Scandinavian political correctness. Mostly the latter though.
Edited by vonPeterhof on 10 September 2012 at 9:14am
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| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4831 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh
| Message 12 of 13 12 September 2012 at 9:03pm | IP Logged |
Having seen the 1st episode, I can see the satiric character of it, and of course it is
"culture clash" as well.
I hadn't realised what a fine comic actor Steven Van Zandt was, but when I thought
about it, his "Silvio" character in "The Sopranos" was only about a notch this side of
self-parody, and all he had to do for this was ratchet it up a little, and the result
is hilarious.
In some ways his seeming to understand quite a lot of Norwegian was hard to find
credible. On the other hand, the character he plays is someone who has probably lived
by his wits for all his life, and has had to be able to understand and communicate with
people on much more than a verbal level, so with a mixture of English and what
Norwegian he's managed to pick up, you could see someone like him getting by. And it
was interesting that he had made at least an attempt to learn the language, unlike your
stereotypical English native speaker who assumes they can get by in English alone.
I was a bit disappointed, but not too surprised, not to be able to understand much of
what the native speakers said. I caught a couple of phrases that Van Zandt came out
with, but that was about it.
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6912 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 13 of 13 12 September 2012 at 10:29pm | IP Logged |
montmorency wrote:
I was a bit disappointed, but not too surprised, not to be able to understand much of what the native speakers said. I caught a couple of phrases that Van Zandt came out with, but that was about it. |
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How long have you studied Norwegian? I'd be surprised if I managed to (satisfyingly) follow the dialogue of a TV show in any of my minor target languages.
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