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Fortitude Episode 7 takes us past the halfway point and I was promised this episode would FINALLY be good! That would make the first one, so far, then.
It’s Chrrrrrrrrriiiisssttmaaaaaaassss! As Noddy Holder might say. And the bearded nutter who was holding a rifle, earlier in the series, is drinking aplenty. And he’s drinking with Billy Pettigrew, so that indicates this is a flashback sequence. Once he’s out of the bar, rifle man isn’t feeling well – as Eric and Billy have a to-do – and our gun-toting-to-be man slips and falls and knocks himself out as everyone ignores him and he wakes to find they’ve all disappeared. Charming! Especially since he smacked his head on the ground and blood came out.
Back to the present day and Morton suits up and sets off for a day in his rather pointless and seemingly never-ending job, trying to work out who committed the first crime in Fortitude. Elsewhere, Hildur is checking out the work on her new hotel while Dan finds out from Elena about Morton ripping up the carpet in his room, causing our hopeless cop to hope he doesn’t stumble across anything dodgy, and maintains that he can’t prove anything.
Henry is back with his Shaman friend, Tavrani, and having blood drained out of his system, thinking the man is going to drink it, yet it’s some sort of tool which will interact with the blood and that it has to be in Liam’s room as he sleeps in order for it to work.
Trish is about to be leaving on a jet plane, but doesn’t relish one last chat with Hildur before she goes, and while the latter tries to tell the grieving widow how they’ll all miss Charlie, the reply comes, “Eric and I last fucked two weeks ago“, much to the governor’s annoyance.
Elsewhere, Shirley is still looking queasy and lying in bed, while Markus has a constant look of a serial killer about him; despite their location, Ronnie and his daughter are waiting for a man with a boat, yet the lettering on all the nearby billboards is in Russian. Did they skip town elsewhere? Anyhoo, it doesn’t really matter, since Carrie is trying to call the police but another potential change in the plot is discarded as Ronnie makes her hang up and they head off. Doctor Allerdyce is is fussing about Hildur’s lack of action over Dan beating up Frank, and Henry develops a photo which shows a man’s severed arm strung up from a pylon.
Morton catches up with rifle man, who took the scan from his room – something that happened a long time ago, or so it feels, since this is such a slow-moving pile of tosh. Rifle man is quizzed over the incident we saw at the start and gives Morton the bullet he found, which puts Eric in the frame for the murders. Filler continues as Dan goes to Henry to berate him for his phone call back in episode 2, putting him in the frame for murder (another age-old storyline) and Ronnie’s boat is going to set sail without him, as the skipper pulls a gun on him and his daughter, forcing them to get off, whilst leaving behind the tusks he cut off the carcass.
There’s an excuse to get everyone in the series together when a party is held to say farewell to Mine 7 and the men who worked in there. Yes, Mine 7… remember them? No, me neither. It reaffirms my belief that someone is making up this series by rolling a dice. It’s also a party where no-one has the ability to dance. In fact, PC Ingrid looks like she’s having spasms!
After spending half the series in his hyperbaric chamber, Liam wakes up to see his Dad bring him a crappy model of a helicopter. That would put anyone to sleep, but as soon as Frank learns tha Elena was there to visit the lad last night (ie. the previous episode), he scowls at the nurse and then darts off to confront her at the party, which results in a punch-up between him and Dan… well, Frank gets a shot in but Dan doesn’t retort.
Tediousness continues as Hildur and Eric have a conversation about his daliance with Trish where he practically blames her for being busy. Good God! This is so like a bad soap opera. Was it written by a five-year-old who’d watched every old episode of Eastenders?
As the episode draws to a close, Dan and Elena chat in stilted English, with her asking what happened to Billy Pettigrew. She believes he killed the man, while Dan continues to protest his innocence (which is true because, as we know, Henry shot him). Worryingly, Morton seems perfectly able to walk into an empty police station and simply open the firearms cabinet, where there are handguns and rifles aplenty. He puts the former back whilst taking one of the latter. Then pauses and looks glum… as usual.
Doctor Allerdyce is tapping away on her laptop while Shirley has somehow got out of bed and is standing, whilst looking ready to barf. The doc sits her daughter down and goes to get her some water, but – before you can say “Attack of the 50 Stone Woman” – she’s quickly ended up behind her Mum in the kitchen, smacked the glass out of her hand, and knocked her out with that Shaman toy, before ripping the doc’s top off, grabbing a fork and then repeatedly stabbing the woman’s stomach with it. And the unconscious lady doesn’t wake up?? Not even when her stomach is carved open?? And then when her daughter vomits into it??
What in the name of bloody fuck??
Okay, so THAT never happened in Eastenders, but it feels like this show has finally jumped the shark AND the cow which jumped over the moon!
We waited SEVEN episodes for THAT???
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! Well, I was going to go to zero by this episode, but the sheer laugh the final moments gave me just stopped it short of that…
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: Tom Butterworth and Chris Hurford
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
Elena Ledesma: Verónica Echegui
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
Carrie Morgan: Elizabeth Dormer-Phillips
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.