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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

‘Lilyhammer’ might be the future of TV

Series’ delivery, multiculturalism push medium ahead

Van Zandt
David Zurawik Tribune News Services

E Street Band guitarist Steven Van Zandt is not one of the people I ever thought of in connection with the future of TV.

But with the third season of his Netflix series, “Lilyhammer,” streaming as of Friday, I am here to tell you he has become indispensable to any discussion of where the medium is headed.

While “House of Cards” is the series that generates most of our future-of-TV talk because of its digital and on-demand distribution model, “Lilyhammer” preceded “House of Cards” as the first original series from Netflix to drop a full season all at once.

And I’ll also tell you at least one way in which “Lilyhammer” is more intelligent, edgy and sociologically resonant than the Kevin Spacey political drama – in its ongoing critique of multiculturalism, the ideology that dominates American political life but is rarely explored in mainstream media.

Series creators Anne Bjornstad and Eilif Skodvin say they conceived of Van Zandt’s Frank “The Fixer” Tagliano as a “fish out of water,” a safe and reliable comedic device. But in the musician’s performance and his own scripting for the character, Tagliano has become a way for millions of viewers to explore American cultural imperialism as well as the pluses and minuses of a belief system that privileges individual ethnic, racial and religious identification over any allegiance to a national system of values.

Sound heavy? Don’t worry. “Lilyhammer” doesn’t play that way. In fact, the series sometimes goes too light and broad in its mix of comedy and drama.

And, by the way, Van Zandt is also supervising the music on “Lilyhammer,” which is why you see fabulous guest appearances and performances by the likes of rock legend Gary “U.S.” Bonds, whose 1961 version of “Quarter to Three” was an E Street Band staple on tours in the 1970s.

For those not familiar with the series, the journey of Tagliano, a New York mob underboss, begins when his beloved dog, Lily, is shot and killed during an attempt on his life by a rival mobster. In vengeance, Tagliano decides to tell the FBI everything he knows about his rival, hoping to put him in prison for life.

When asked by the feds where he would like to live in the Witness Protection Program, he shocks them by saying Lillehammer, Norway. He pronounces it “Lilyhammer,” hence the title.

“Didn’t you see the Olympics of ’94?” he says in response to the agents’ incredulity. “It was beautiful there: clean air, fresh white snow and gorgeous broads? And last of all, nobody’s going to be looking for me there.”

Of course, the Lillehammer in which he arrives under a new identity as Giovanni “Johnny” Henriksen is far from the postcard version shown in network-TV Olympics coverage.

The fundamental joke of Tagliano basing such a life-changing decision on the postcard-perfect lies of TV is yet another bit of clever cultural criticism – this one of American TV and its audience, the way it sells false images and how we lap them up.

The pilot is a gem, particularly as Tagliano tries to navigate the incredible bureaucracy of Norway as a self-described “immigrant.”

His first trip to the government office, wearing his Italian shoes, Chesterfield top coat and gangster night-on-the-town duds, starts with him trying to bribe his case officer for help in getting a license to own a bar. It ends with Tagliano being put in a remedial citizenship class that he will have to attend five days a week for six months.

He needs to have a “humbler attitude,” the American is told.

“You telling me I have to go to school six months just to learn to be a (expletive) immigrant?” he demands.

In a later episode, Tagliano is attracted to his female teacher and upset when a Muslim man in his class refuses to shake her hand because she’s female.

Tagliano slams the man up against a bathroom wall during a break in the class, and after calling him offensive names, threatens to harm him further if he does not apologize to the teacher and shake her hand.

While the bathroom scene plays out in a way that might lead some viewers to be critical of the Muslim who refused to shake hands, the teacher’s reaction when he subsequently does apologize and extend his hand shows she was not offended. She understood his belief system, even if it did appear to demean women.

There are no easy answers here, just a keen awareness of cultural differences – and constant reminders that we each see the world through the prism of our personal histories. There is also a synchronicity between that ideology and the technology and marketing that drives Netflix. While American TV criticism is mainly focused on U.S. and British audiences, Netflix is thinking globally with a series like “Lilyhammer,” which is seen in 50 countries.

It’s set in Norway and is made by a Norwegian cast and crew. But it stars an American actor playing an American-born and -bred character whose values often clash with those of Norway. It is simultaneously available in Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Swedish and Dutch.

No matter what country you are in, there are so many different languages spoken among the characters that you can’t view the series without subtitles. (I tried and missed a lot of the jokes.)

In a nod to its huge Brazilian audience, Season 3 opens in Brazil, where a member of Tagliano’s crew goes to marry a woman he met on the Internet. A good part of the first two episodes takes place in the sun and sand of Rio de Janeiro as opposed to the ice and snow of Lillehammer. It works dramatically and comically.

None of this is accidental, according to Van Zandt.

“I said in order to be the most relatable that we can be to the international community, I think we should be the most Norwegian we can be,” he said in a Netflix interview. “We should be as detailed and eccentric as you can think of, all those crazy little things that people consider quite normal in Norway – waiting six months for a driver’s license or the father having to go home and care for the baby for a couple of months to, by law, actually be the father.”

“The fact that I’m an American starring in a Norwegian show that’s mostly in subtitles but not completely – it’s an odd combination of things. But it’s an integration of cultures, which lends itself to be a bit of an archetype for the future.”