One of the best things you’ll see on TV this year: Netflix’s War Sailor reviewed

War Sailor (Krigsseileren), a three-part drama on Netflix about the Norwegian merchant navy in the second world war, is one of the best things you’ll see on TV this year. But I doubt many other critics are going to rave about it or even notice it, for some of the very same reasons that I think make it so cherishable: it’s meandering, episodic, understated and made in Norway, with subtitles.

Originally released last year as a feature film for the international category of the Oscars (where it was overshadowed by the more in-your-face All Quiet On the Western Front), War Sailor is the most expensive Norwegian movie ever made. But there’s nothing showy or obviously big budget about it. A lot of the money, I imagine, went on filming it out at sea (rather than in studio tanks), and on scenes like the gloriously realised U-boat looming over the torpedoed mariners in episode two.