We are out of the blocks and straight into 2024 – here we share some of the series and films we have been watching. So without further ado here is what we watched in January – Nordic picks.

TV SERIES: True Detective – Night Country | NOW TV

Wait what? How can we include True Detective? Well for one reason it is one of our favourite shows but also this season is based in Alaska yet filmed in Iceland. It has been great fun spotting some of the Icelandic and Greenlandic actors who are featuring in the series along with the rest of the brilliant cast.

TV SERIES: The Lost – Walter Presents/Channel 4

From one bleak situation to another – Walter Present’s first Nordic series to arrive this year is The Lost which sees a horrendous situation unfold when a truck driver transporting some immigrants over the Swedish and Danish borders makes a fatal error which leaves them all dead bar one witness. What follows is a tense thriller but it certainly isn’t the happiest of series to kick start your year with.

FILM: Ariel by Aki Kaurismaki | MUBI

Back in November when I spoke with Alma Poysti about her new film Fallen Leaves I confessed to never having seen a Aki Kaurismaki film (except for Fallen Leaves) – Alma smiled and said how she was almost envious of me due to the journey I can now go on discovering his work. That journey has now been made possible thanks to the amazing people over at MUBI getting hold of a number of his titles – including his most recent piece Fallen Leaves.

I picked out Ariel to start with and was absolutely sucked in and already I could begin to join the dots between this film and Fallen Leaves. I am going to really enjoy continuing this discovery of his work.

The film follows Taisto as he inherits a car and heads to Helsinki – but Taisto has a great knack of falling into alsorts of trouble and also manages to fall in love too.

FILM: Liberation by Anders Walter | Digital On Demand

It was quite refreshing to see Pilou Asbæk in a lead role returning to his Danish roots and steering clear of the villainous characters he’s become known for in Hollywood (where he excels, to be fair). Here he plays a school teacher caught up in serious quandary when he is put in charge of looking after a group of German refugees – does he leave them to starve and die of illness or does he do something to aid them but risk being vilified by his own countrymen.

Read our full film review of Liberation here

What series did you discover and enjoy this month? Anything we have missed and need to catch?