Billionaire Island! The title promises so much. A daring new reality show, perhaps, where the world’s filthiest capitalists compete to see who can survive the longest on an uninhabited Alaska islet. Episode five: an increasingly feral Richard Branson reacts poorly to the Duke of Westminster’s attempt to levy a tax on raindrops. Episode 28: the contestants vote to eat Mark Zuckerberg, only to find his innards are silicon.
Calm down, it’s not that. Billionaire Island is the English translation of Milliardærøya, which is … a Norwegian dramedy about salmon farming. It is about wealthy people – the characters are the dominant entrepreneurs on an island that is a leading player in the global fishing industry – and the story combines a struggle for corporate power with family drama. In other words, Succession with salmon. But the series, created by Lilyhammer showrunners Anne Bjørnstad and Eilif Skodvin, feels very Norwegian in its outlook and humour. It is dry, wry and droll. Its rewards take time to earn.
The island’s tasty pink fish are slaughtered and sold by two companies: Marlax, run by the Lange family out of a swish office building, and Meyer Fjordbruk, managed by the Meyers from a dull, grey carbuncle. When a Meyer Fjordbruk shareholder dies, Marlax scents the opportunity to cannibalise its rival. The power struggle that develops includes tense boardroom votes, industrial espionage and unethical PR stunts, but the drama is driven by the dynamics within the two families, which are not as contrasting as they first seem.
In a show full of slyly noted minor absurdities, the title itself is a subtle gag at the characters’ expense. Even allowing for the extra zeros that come when your money is counted in kroner, the Meyers don’t look like millionaires, let alone billionaires. Their house is nice but dated and their patriarch, Gjert (Svein Roger Karlsen), is the old man of the fishing scene, with a moustache stiff enough to dislodge trawler barnacles, and interpersonal skills that have long since lost any finesse. Basic interactions with retail staff end with him boggling with Basil Fawlty-esque irritation; his overlooked daughter and pathetic son-in-law get none of his short supply of respect. Meanwhile, Gjert’s wife, who has presumably had a stroke, sits in her wheelchair, not speaking or moving. We guess that she can secretly do at least one of those – the tension of waiting to find out builds as the season goes on and the Meyers’ behaviour becomes more desperate.
On the other side are the ostensibly in-control Langes, led by Marlax CEO Julie (Trine Wiggen). She zips about in pantsuits and a Range Rover, and lives in an enviable fjord-front property that’s all glass and terraces. But her clan are people whose lives have been smothered by the success of the family figurehead. Julie’s husband is a directionless nincompoop and her children are, variously, a Marlax executive toiling in her mother’s shadow, a wannabe actor who forms a ridiculous duo with his pretentious agent, and a teenager who struggles to find (boy)friends without the Lange name and fortune getting in the way.
What starts as a deadpan comedy of delusion slowly becomes, as the Marlax v Meyer scrap hots up, a cool psychodrama of resentment and betrayal, with the families torn apart by infighting and ship-jumping. At first we are tittering at vanity and pomposity; later, we grimace as lifelong resentments boil over, and Billionaire Island borrows the Succession trick of using high-stakes commercial confrontations to drill down to a character’s inherent weakness. With large amounts of cash at stake and everyone’s actions under scrutiny, what really matters to each person cannot stay hidden. For those who have lived for money more than family, payback is coming.
This is shown, though, in such an understated way – character flaws are empathically observed, not cruelly highlighted – that, for better or worse, the intensity doesn’t translate to the viewing experience. The Netflix trigger warning tells us to brace for sex, injury detail and “sight of dead animals”, all of which do feature, but in restrained quantities. To enjoy Billionaire Island, you’ll need to delight in small comic moments such as birthday bunting that won’t stay up, a man who is bad at small talk opening a conversation with “How’s the meat curing going?” before realising he has got the wrong person, or Julie enduring an investor pitch for the new sport of “sea golf”.
Do you find the line of dialogue “I brought you some fish balls to keep your strength up” inherently amusing? If not, Billionaire Island might leave you cold, but there are riches here beneath the surface.
• Billionaire Island is on Netflix now
