RETURN OF THE ARCTIC WESTERN

Hollywood star Dennis Quaid joins The Killing’s Sofie Grabol in the second series of murder-mad chiller Fortitude – and says even he doesn’t know if he’ll be bumped off

The night is pitch black, the air is crisp and the stars seem to be dancing like fireflies in the sky. Then what sounds like a clap of thunder erupts underfoot, breaking the intense silence on the side of this Arctic mountain. An explosion has ripped through the rocks, obliterating a prehistoric graveyard filled with the thawing bodies of beasts from a time long forgotten. Men and women in protective suits arrive and set fire to anything left untouched by the blast, while Army trucks provide a ring of steel around the site.

Welcome to Fortitude – the fictional town based on Arctic Norway’s remote Svalbard islands that’s the backdrop to Sky Atlantic’s most successful original drama to date. It’s a town on its knees after the opening series two years ago, its inhabitants fighting for survival after an infestation of wasps escaped from the frozen carcass of a mammoth buried in the mountain. The wasps infected humans, turning them into bloodthirsty, zombie-style killers, but in this icy town it’s not just the wasps that can kill you. Love, revenge and greed are all motives for murder, which is not good when the locals outnumber the police force 200 to one.

The first series saw the bodies mount up as key cast members including Christopher Eccleston, Sir Michael Gambon and Stanley Tucci all met their makers. It ended with scientists working out that the wasps were infecting residents and forcing them to kill, so the destruction of a pit of frozen prehistoric animals in the opening episode of the new series is significant. The opening scenes make it clear that the second outing of the drama is less about wasps and more about humanity and its survival, or not, on this desolate island. But the bodies keep piling up, once again leaving the locals questioning who they can trust.

‘This is an Arctic western. Anyone can die and we’re all on thin ice,’ says Sienna Guillory, here on the set of the show in Reydarfjordur, a town on the east coast of Iceland, where she’s reprising her role as Natalie Yelburton, one of the scientists who linked the gruesome murders to the wasps. ‘There’s a feeling of chaos this series. There’s a brutalism to the script. You can come to it without seeing the first series or knowing who these characters are. This series holds you by the hand and won’t let you go, it’s more watchable in many ways than series one. Bombs are dropped and a lot of exciting things happen. It’s going to take you somewhere you never expected to go.’

Like Sienna, Game Of Thrones actor Richard Dormer, who plays Fortitude’s sheriff Dan Anderssen, was one of only a few of the original cast Dennis Quaid (left) as fisherman Michael Lennox left standing at the end of the first series. He was left devastated when he was forced to shoot the woman he loves, Elena, after realising she’d been infected and we last saw her in hospital on a ventilator. Now, convinced he’s killed her, Dan’s lost the plot and series two starts with him missing from town having headed into the mountains while having a breakdown. When he finally returns he’s a shell of his former self. ‘He thinks he’s killed his love,’ says Richard. ‘So obviously that shakes him up. He comes back totally wild, he’s a man who’s lost grasp on reality, he’s a lost soul, totally bonkers!’ Taking the show in a different direction this time are a host of new cast members including Hollywood star Dennis Quaid and Game Of Thrones actress Michelle Fairley, who play husband and wife Michael and Freya Lennox, as well as former ER star Parminder Nagra. Michael, a crab fisherman, is trying to hold his family together in the wake of the news that Freya is dying. ‘She has Lou Gehrig’s disease, a neuro-degenerative condition that causes paralysis and respiratory failure,’ reveals Michelle. ‘The thing is that no one is allowed to die on the island, you can’t be buried in the permafrost and they don’t have palliative care, so if you have a terminal ill- ness you have to go to the mainland. So it’s a case of keeping it a secret, they hide it within the family.’

For Dennis, joining the show was an easy decision. ‘When I was offered the part I binge-watched the first series with my wife. We watched it all in a day and a half, I wanted to do it in a day but had to go to sleep so we finished it off the next day. I felt I just had to do it, the story was so good. It’s more like making a movie than a TV show, it feels like there’s a lot of money on the screen.

‘Michael’s a man of the sea who met a wonderful woman and loves a simple life. Into this comes this tragedy, that Freya is dying. He’s trying to fight it, he’s fighting for his family. He wants a miracle to happen. I think the storylines are so much more personal this year which makes it more frightening, it’s about what people are prepared to do in order to save themselves.’

While the new series tackles the human fallout of death and disease, mother nature herself proved quite destructive during filming. Dennis says the rolling Arctic waves didn’t do the crew any favours while filming at sea. ‘I’ve always fished but never at sea like Michael. So many people on the crew were throwing up over the side, but I was steering the boat and they say that when you’re driving you know where you’re going so you never get sick.’

There was another panic when some of the cast, including Dennis, had to be pulled off the mountain having been caught by a snowstorm that rolled in within minutes. Blue skies turned dark and blizzards of snow made it impossible to see further than the end of your nose, forcing a dash to the safety of the snow Jeeps. ‘They’re the only vehicles capable of withstanding a whiteout,’ says Bjorn Haraldsson, who plays police officer Eric who’s been cheating on his wife, the town’s governor Hildur Odegard, played by The Ki l l ing’s Sofie Grabol.

Everyone on the set has been sworn to secrecy about whether their characters make it to the end of the series. Even Fortitude’s new leading man doesn’t know if he’ll survive. ‘I just assumed when I took the role that I’d be bumped off,’ laughs Dennis. ‘No one is safe in Fortitude.’ Fortitude, 26 January, Sky Atlantic.

‘Anyone can die. We’re all on thin ice. It’s chaos’

Sofie Grabol as Hildur Odegard