Before Dahmer, before Stranger Things, before House of Cards (three shows either about monsters or starring actual monsters), there was Lilyhammer. The Norwegian series, starring “Little” Steven Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band and The Sopranos fame, was a co-production between Norway’s NRK and Netflix, and promoted as the eventual-streaming giant’s first original series. There were rumblings that Lilyhammer would be leaving Netflix before the end of the year, but “Netflix has closed a last minute deal to continue streaming the show,” according to IndieWire. “All 24 episodes of Netflix’s first original series will continue to be available to subscribers.”
“Netflix completely shook up the world,” Van Zandt told Rolling Stone back in 2013. “They’ve been willing to invest and it’s opening a whole new golden era of TV that I predicted back with The Sopranos. Now it’s gone to another level with digital distribution. This is just the beginning. There’s going to be Google TV and Amazon TV. People are going to start their own networks and it’s going to be wonderful to have that much money coming into the creation of content. It’s going to be very, very healthy for everybody.”
Lilyhammer isn’t as good as The Sopranos, obviously, but it is historically signifiant and belongs on Netflix. If a licensing agreement hadn’t been reached, that would be like if “Poor Little Fool” by Ricky Nelson, the first song to ever top the Billboard Hot 100, was erased from the internet. That’s more of an HBO Max thing (for now).
Anyway! Lilyhammer fever! Catch it!
(Via IndieWire)
