Grief is always an interesting topic to explore, especially in comedy. Yes, comedy. People deal with the deaths of loved ones in all sorts of ways, and some don’t deal with them at all. The effects of that denial can be darkly funny as well as emotional and dramatic. A new series from Sweden examines how one man deals with grief by doing whatever he can to not deal with it.
Opening Shot: A man stares in disbelief as he hears his father tell him that he loves him, but it’s time he leaves the house.
The Gist: Tore (William Spetz) is turning 27, and his father Bosse (Peter Haber) thinks it’s time his son leave the nest and experience other things in life. He uses Tore’s best friend, Linn (Sanna Sundqvist) as an example of someone who left her home at 17 and has various experiences. Tore, on the other hand, has no desire to move away from his father’s house, for practical and emotional reasons.
The two of them don’t just live together, but they Tore works for his father as a funeral director, as well. On a run to the nursing home where Linn works, Tore hears his father humming along to the hearse’s radio, and he senses that there’s someone new in Bosse’s life. As Bosse is talking on the phone with someone who seems to make him smile, Linn tries to get Tore to contact a man she found for him on a dating app, but he seems to think that’s a bad way to meet people. She thinks he should also start drinking, to loosen him up in order to meet people at places like bars and clubs.
Suddenly, Bosse, as he’s talking on the phone, gets hit by a garbage truck and is gravely injured. In shock, Tore walks into the nursing home and starts talking to the family of the person who was being picked up, while people are running out to help Bosse and an ambulance siren wails.
A few days later, Tore is still in denial that the person who is most important to him is gone. He gets upset at their dog, MJ, as she tries to find Bosse and whimpers when she can’t. He attempts to rehome the dog, but makes an inappropriate joke to the prospective new owners. He goes back to work at the family funeral home, where he encounters Erik (Hannes Fohlin), a new florist for the shop they regularly use. He’s so taken with Erik that he can’t even think of the flower he wants to use for Bosse’s funeral (it was sunflowers).
Tired of MJ’s whimpering, Tore goes to a local gay bar and starts drinking, even though he was supposed to come over and have dinner with Linn and her kids. He’s attracted to a drag queen who comes in and does shots, and leaves with someone else, who wants to have some very out-in-public sex with him. But Tore, who still seems to be not ready, ends up needing to push himself away to avoid being assaulted by the other man, who doesn’t seem to take no for an answer.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? This might be a strange comparison, but the idea of someone’s life being upended by a sudden death was also explored in the recent Argentinian dramedy Nada, even if the person whose life was getting upended is completely different than the one in Tore. There are also lots of similarities between this show and Somebody Somewhere.
Our Take: William Spetz creates, writes and stars in Tore, and he does a good job of not only playing a guy who seems a bit sheltered and is OK with that, but of someone who tries his best to tamp down his grief over his father by being as reckless as he can be.
Spetz quickly builds Tore’s world in only a few scenes, with interactions that point out both how much he loves living with his father and how close he and Linn are. It’s certainly a shock when Bosse is hit by that truck, and that’s a testament to what Spetz was able to accomplish in those few minutes. We were able to buy into the level of shock that Tore was suffering through in that moment, to the point where he continued what he was doing as if nothing happened.
From here, of course, we’re looking forward to seeing more exploration of Tore’s life, both before and after Bosse’s death. He has likely suffered loss before, as his mother is no longer in the picture, and we’d love to see scenes of just how close Tore was to his father to continue to establish just why Tore is doing so much to push away the grief he absolutely needs to feel.
As the season goes along and Tore engages in riskier behavior, he’ll also connect with Erik. How all of this changes his relationship with Linn is yet to be seen. But we’d imagine there’s going to be tension in that area.
Even with what seems like a bleak topic, though, Spetz seems to keep the comedic heart of the series intact. Yes, the humor obviously becomes much darker after Bosse’s death. But the idea behind the show’s humor is that the way Tore’s denial crops up will likely put him in situations that will be at times darkly funny. But the chance is always there, like it is at the end of the first episode, that the risk he’s taking is real and decidedly unfunny, and Spetz seems to be able to achieve that balance, even in the first episode.
Sex and Skin: In a very public place, the man Tore leaves the club with takes down Tore’s pants, which is when he realizes that a drunken hookup isn’t what he wants.
Parting Shot: After he pushes the other man down, Tore pulls up his pants, starts walking away, then starts running.
Sleeper Star: Sanna Sundqvist is fun as Linn, who just wants her friend Tore to live his life and not be so cautious. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to their relationship as he swings in the completely opposite direction.
Most Pilot-y Line: Tore tells the couple who might adopt MJ that they named the dog for Michael Jackson, but “before he became a pedophile.” Then he makes a joke that they could rename the dog “Fritzi,” which somehow offends them. Must be a Swedish thing.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Tore is a darkly funny story about a guy who will do anything to not grieve a massive loss.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.