Make Norway’s Occupied Your Next Binge Watch

To say that Netflix’s Occupied, a 10-episode political thriller, is more bingeworthy than a program about chopping wood might be setting the bar awfully low. But National Firewood Night, a 12-hour documentary that tackles whether to stack split logs with the bark facing up or down, got better ratings in Norway, where both shows were first broadcast. Fortunately for us, Occupied translates better over here.

Set in and around Oslo, Occupied takes place in a near future in which Norway has ceased drilling for oil and gas to prevent more loss of life and damage from climate change. There’s a passing reference to a catastrophic hurricane that precipitated this eco-commitment, but that backstory is mostly evoked in the opening credit montage. Civil wars in the Middle East have choked off oil supplies, and the European Union, thrust into a fuel crisis, backs a Russian plan to take over Norway’s former petroleum industry. Fifteen minutes into the pilot, Jesper Berg, the Norwegian prime minister, is taken hostage, and during a short helicopter ride he receives an offer from Moscow he can’t refuse: Let us restore North Sea oil production to previous levels, and we’ll let you resume your alternative-energy plans. Berg blinks.