Lilyhammer

A New York mobster chooses Lillehammer for his new life under witness protection. Frank Tagliano likes the idea of Norway considerably more than he likes adapting his methods to it. Lilyhammer turns that mismatch into a bilingual crime comedy.

Steven Van Zandt supplies the familiar gangster authority, but the local cast make the premise work. Frank cannot simply import his old arrangements without meeting different habits, expectations and forms of bureaucracy. His attempts to get around them generate much of the humour.

The series is knowingly improbable. It is less interested in the mechanics of witness protection than in what happens when somebody insists on treating a new home as another version of his old territory. The later plotting can become loose, but the contrast remains enjoyable.

If you know Van Zandt from The Sopranos, expect a much lighter and stranger use of that screen presence. Fargo is another useful comparison for crime against a cold landscape, although Lilyhammer is more openly a fish-out-of-water comedy.