Mini-Series: Hjordis

A Danish show about a public school teacher trying to put on a school play about bullying -- and how her school director and the parents keep bullying her to do it their way. Many, many excellent little touches, and a beautiful use of wry irony. The kids are really well acted, they're typical insecure school kids with foibles and phobias. The teacher has some insecurities of her own.

There are only four episodes, but Season One is dated 2015 so maybe there'll be a Season Two.

Doing a little research online on Hjordis I discovered it's a spinoff from another popular Danish TV program called "Rita." Rita takes place at the same school, and Hjordis is one of the minor characters in it. Rita has three seasons of eight episodes each, each forty minutes long (compared to Hjordis, four episodes of 26 minutes each.)

So, my Hjordis habit will be fed a while longer.

Watched it again with Mrs NoCo Sunday night and enjoyed it just as much the second time.

Made it through two episodes of Rita before bedtime. It's almost as good.

Have watched the first season (eight episodes) of Rita and episode 1 of season two. It's really good -- although Hjordis is the best character in it.

What's particularly noteworthy is the lighting. Very naturalistic but fabulous at highlighting tiny details. Masterful.

Finished the Rita series last night. It was a nice piece of work. Great values and sense of evolution of the characters.

Season 4 of Rita was posted this week to Netflix. Easily as good as the first three, and again Hjørdis is the best character.

Great values, wonderful acting, intelligent writing. Well worth seeking out IMO

Was surprised to find Season 5 of Rita on Netflix last night.  I had understood 4 would be the last season.

Anyway, in 5, Rita and Hjordis have started their own cooperative school and are struggling to make it work.  Like the other seasons, the writing is intelligent and thought provoking, and the acting is stellar.  The first episode is called "Fake News" and deals with a student who brings holocaust denial views to school and shares them.  Rita has to explain to him that this is a very Trumpian thing to do.

We're the laughingstock of the world.