TGIF, am I right? And for your viewing pleasure this weekend, I recommend Cover Story, a crime thriller from Iceland set in the world of tabloid journalism.
I’m three episodes into Cover Story, the winner of the Television Show of the Year Award at the 2012 Iceland Film and Television Academy’s EDDA Awards, and eager to get back to it. But before I do, let me fill you in on a few details so you can binge-watch it along with me.
Cover Story follows Lára (Sara Dögg Ásgeirsdóttir, I Remember You), a thirty-something single mum and tabloid journalist for Posturinn (The Post) in Reykjavik. When we meet her in the season opener, “The Girl on the Playground,” Lára is on maternity leave for her second child, on the outs with her husband, and on the hook for 800,000 ISK.
Elsewhere in the greater Reykjavik area, a young woman’s dead body is found hanged on the swings of a playground. Earlier she’d been partying with Hrafn Josephsson (Gísli Örn Garðarsson, Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands), aka Krummi (not pronounced “crummy,” in case you’re wondering), the handsome and wealthy CEO of Iceland Oil Ltd.
Hrafn is also the only Icelandic businessman who was left unscathed by the country’s financial crisis, so the hosts of a morning news/talk radio show see a comeuppance of sorts for him when the police take him in for questioning. He insists he’s innocent and hires Lára and her investigative skills to prove it. Journalistic ethics aside, she takes the gig, as that huge fine isn’t going to pay itself and neither is her editor, Nökkvi (Kjartan Guðjónsson, Áramótaskaup film series), or her husband.
The thing is, what Lára gleans from her digging is more fodder supporting Krummi’s guilt. And then there’s another victim.
By the end of the third episode, Hrafn has bought The Post and Lára hasn’t realized just how dangerous her work can be…
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Parallel to Lára’s storyline are threads involving her fellow tabloid journos, including their headline-grabbing stories and lost scoops about corrupt politicians and businessmen, the realities of editorial integrity and the threat of lost advertising revenue, and the perils their sources put themselves in.
A production of Sagafilm (Case), Cover Story — which has three seasons and a fourth in the works — is created and written by series director Óskar Jónasson (Reykjavik-Rotterdam) and Sigurjón Kjartansson (Trapped), and features Þorsteinn Bachmann (Trapped), Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir (Case), and Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson (Atomic Blonde).
The gritty, gripping, and hard-hitting Cover Story is now streaming in the US on Walter Presents.
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