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Fortitude Episode 6 starts with a flashback, jumping a few episodes back to when Frank was having it away with Elena. Jules is seen heading out without a hat on, and is chanced upon by Henry, who insists frostbite can severely knacker your ears and wants her to take his hat because he doesn’t live far away and can make it home without it. She refuses, but since she’s wearing a big parka jacket, WHY DIDN’T SHE JUST PULL HER BLOODY HOOD UP!!?!???
We’ve gone back to the night Charlie was murdered, so we will find out who killed him, but who will explain why he’s got weird, low-placed horizontal windows in his kitchen? That doesn’t make sense! You can’t see diddly squat out of them! Still, Charlie can see plenty out of his floor-to-ceiling windows in the lounge, and, outside is Liam Sutter, who climbed out of his bedroom and walked all that way with nothing on his body except for pyjama bottoms. While Charlie’s trying to rub the lad’s feet warmer, the boy inexplicably picks up the chopping board and thwacks Charlie over the head. But why?
When Frank gets home, he finds Liam covered in blood and not at all talkative, hence why Frank’s shirt was later saturated in blood. So his alibi re: Charlie is water-tight!
Still, if Fortitude had no plans to do anything better than give us a ‘Bobby Beale’ reveal, a la Eastenders, then at least it only took halfway through the series to do so, rather than waste the viewers’ time for nearly a year.
Cut (pun not intended) to Morton and Petra looking at Charlie’s cadaver in the morgue – accompanied by Dan – and find a child’s fingernail inside a laceration. Morton, Hildur and Dan want to wake Liam up while he’s inside the hyperbaric chamber, but if they do before he’s fully recovered, he’ll be in unbearable pain. Decisions, decisions, eh? Liam offers few answers, but is soon flailing around, wanting to be let out of there, but before you can shout “Audrey Rose!”, he’s given a sedative by Doctor Allerdyce and he’s out for the count again.
After all this, not a single person in Fortitude can believe Liam was the killer. And quite right, too, because it’s utter bollocks!
When the time comes, Jules will surely be saying to Frank, “We need to talk about Liam!”.
Ronnie’s still not feeling too clever, out in the middle of nowhere, and when he shouts at his daughter, Carrie, she retorts that she doesn’t want to live there anymore, but would rather return home; Shirley’s not feeling too well following last week’s encounter with the carcass.
There’s a brief cameo of Lorcan Cranitch talking to Morton via Skype about the reasoning behind “Max 2.5”. Well, Max is Max Cordero (Michael Obiora), and he works in room 2.5. As for who took the scan and killed Pettigrew, Max refers Morton to look up Yuri Lubimov, head of security at the mining town of Vukobejina
Henry goes to Tavrani, a friend of his who believes he’s a shaman, to ask him to protect Liam. To complete the ritual of a Tupilaq, a creature must be baptised in the blood of a murderer… so, basically, there’s some mumbo jumbo shaman nonsense which has caused Liam to go mental and murder Charlie. Have the writers taken complete leave of all their bloody senses??
Meanwhile, Elena goes to Liam in his chamber and tries to talk to him as if she’s some sort of higher power. Probably because she feels guilty for the lad ending up in there, since he was looking for his Dad. Elsewhere, Jason finds the carcass Ronnie left in the shed, while its remains trickle into the water system.
Dan and Morton have one of their tedious love/hate chats. When are they going to just fuck and get it over with?
Morton tastes the lutefisk, finally, finding out, as Dan says, that the truth about the lutefisk is… that you should never *eat* the lutefisk, as he spits it out. Seems rather a waste. We also learn that Morton was on the job in Lockerbie, when the plane was brought down in 1989, and they had to pick up body parts, taking pictures of what they had, until they had fill them all… and they couldn’t piece together a whole person out of them all. I’m not really sure where he’s going with that. It’s another of these conversations that just have nowhere to go, as Dan sits their silently in reply… at first, until he realises that Morton is trying to tease information out from him about Pettigrew. At that point, Morton plays the tape from Henry’s voicemail message which alleges that Dan killed for Pettigrew and Charlie…
Dan goes back to the start of the first episode, recounting everything that happened… changing the truth to say that he shot Pettigrew through his bonce and leaves cancer-stricken Henry out of it. Morton isn’t buying it, however, and Dan has a face on him like he’s just pissed his pants. When our intrepid DCI returns to his room, puking his guts up after eating that fish, he twigs there’s something hidden under the floorboards… which have been replaced. Morton believes it’s all down to Pettigrew’s blood causing a stain there. Elena’s sees him and completely freezes… and end.
For the initial double episode, I gave them 5/10 overall, then with no progression to speak of, I dropped it a point to 4/10 for ep.2, and like a crap kidnapper, I’m going to ransom this show one point each week, until either it drops to zero or it seriously ups its game! So, now, down to 1, we go. Can next week’s score zero?
Fortitude is available to pre-order on Blu-ray and DVD ahead of its release date of June 1st, and the next episode is on Sky Atlantic on Thursday at 9pm.
Overall Score: 1/10
Director: Hettie Macdonald
Producer: Trevor Hopkins
Screenplay: Simon Donald
Music: Ben Frost
Cast:
Dan Anderssen: Richard Dormer
DCI Morton: Stanley Tucci
Henry Tyson: Michael Gambon
Governor Hildur Odegard: Sofie Gråbøl
Frank Sutter: Nicholas Pinnock
Jules Sutter: Jessica Raine
Elena Ledesma: Verónica Echegui
Jason Donnelly: Aaron McCusker
Ronnie Morgan: Johnny Harris
Natalie Yelburton: Sienna Guillory
Vincent Rattrey: Luke Treadaway
Markus Huseklepp: Darren Boyd
Shirley Allerdyce: Jessica Gunning
Eric Odegard: Björn Hlynur Haraldsson
Liam Sutter: Darwin Brokenbro
PC Ingrid: Mia Jexen
Trish Stoddart: Chipo Chung
Petra: Alexandra Moen
Max Cordero: Michael Obiora
Ciaran Donnelly: Jonjo O’Neill
Carrie Morgan: Elizabeth Dormer-Phillips
Hanna Donnelly: Lara Decaro
Doctor Allerdyce: Phoebe Nicholls
Yuri Lubimov: Emil Hostina
Medic: Charlotte Pyke
Tavrani: Ramon Tikaram
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.