Trapped - "DON’T BUY ANY FOOD FROM ICELAND"

Spoiler alert - don't read if you want to watch Trapped but haven't caught up yet

My mum is sending my weekly emails summarising the plot and offering a review, with a certain je ne sais quoi, of the Icelandic drame Trapped. I've posted the previous three after asking her permission. This is the first one she sent me after I said I'd be making them public.

Enjoy: 

DON’T BUY ANY FOOD FROM ICELAND

(or is this series really an elaborate “knocking copy” advert from rival firms?)

There is something in the air in that small port. However smart you are in the big city, when you arrive there you become as dim-witted as the locals. This particularly applies to policemen, who develop an alarming facility to lose bodies  - dead or alive – sometimes in spectacular fashion.

Our local hero – who each week resembles more closely a middle-aged Orson Welles – appears to be patching up his marriage, which up to now has looked as dead as …well, the torso or the local mayor… by luring his estranged wife to his own house which he is building himself (no mean feat when you consider the hours he works) which has no central heating in the middle of winter. I am no house builder, but really, if you have got the outside walls up and the interior ones, wouldn’t you then put the central heating in, rather than a few shelves and cupboards? Then, oh my god, there they are taking their clothes off, getting into bed, and we assume having sex. But hold on, your breath would show coming out of your mouth if there was no heating, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t have your head out from under the blankets, let alone your shoulders. Oh, just let it go Lesley…

More puzzling to me is the body shape of our local hero. He works night and day AND IS NEVER SEEN EATING A SANDWICH, LET ALONE A MEAL. To get into the shape he is you would be stuffing doughnuts and junk food down you as if there was no tomorrow, wouldn’t you? He rarely drinks either. Last night I observed him holding a cup of coffee a couple of times, but the mugs were put down without him taking a sip, let alone a slurp. He sipped one cup of coffee, once. YOU WATCH, next week I’m right. 

So, he doesn’t eat, rarely drinks and rarely sleeps. Is this going to develop into some sort of zombie horror?

Now, the credits – I’ve worked it out. Ever since the banking crash, the Icelanders are desperate for income. The film company is multi-national, including the financing. Someone local asked the finance guys whether the local extras would get paid. Yes, says the outsider, if their name appears in the credits then they get a payment. “I’ll give you a list of their names,” says a local. And he hands over the electoral register. 

Oh, and what’s happened to the kids?  Even the teenagers seem to have disappeared.

That’s all for now folks!

Mum/Lesley