A welcome second season of Fortitude, the detective thriller set on an isolated Svalbard island where murder, deceit and a brain-mashing virus kept audiences gripped through season one.
Landing back on the island’s chilly shores for the first episode in a new nine-part run we see the islanders recovering from the chaos of ‘the sickness’ and get to meet some of the new main characters (well someone had to fill the boots of Michael Gambon and Stanley Tucci, both of whom were bumped off) including Dennis Quaid as a struggling fisherman, Michelle Fairley, as Quaid’s terminally ill wife, and Ken Stott, a scheming government apparatchik.
Nordic superstition forms the theme of the early drama here: In 1942, a monstrous figure wreaked havoc just 60 miles north of Fortitude as a blood aurora burned in the sky. Well, shock horror, this same phenomenon flickers above present day Fortitude and for those conscious about making it through to the end of the series that cannot be a good thing.
Out there under ice, a priceless mammoth graveyard will continue to lure those driven by greed, the parasitic wasps that caused the outbreak are waiting for their next opportunity and an apparent accident with a snow plough reassuringly turns out to be a grisly murder and confirms that everything is as it should be in Fortitude. Grim times lie ahead!
Fortitude – Thursday 9.00pm on Sky Atlantic.
