Danes and the deadly rain

Dystopian new series from Scandinavia told through eyes of teen protagonists

Post-apocalyptic productions have proliferated in recent years just like the clichés around them.

A human-made disaster occurs, survivors turn on each other and audiences go on dark journeys with little hope.

The Rain, a new, original young adult series now on Netflix, certainly adopts some of these motifs but it tells the story of an environmental catastrophe through the eyes of Danish teens and other young people in Scandinavia where, unlike the U.S., high-powered weapons are a rarity.

The expanding threat to humanity involves other countries, making the fear a worldwide scare.

The series follows a Danish sister and her younger brother who are ushered into a bunker by their father and mother as they prepare for a coming storm that brought rains that mysteriously cause people to suffer violent deaths.

The father is a scientist who knows why the rains are deadly and leaves to find a cure.

The children remain in the bunker for six years until food runs out and they seek to find their father.

The sister has become a young woman and the boy morphs into an edgy teen. The water remains contaminated and the rains still are deadly. And there are few survivors.

Co-creators Christian Potalivo and Jannik Tai Mosholt said it was important to set this story in Scandinavia to explore the region’s self-perception that the system is always there to pick up those facing hard times.

Using the most extreme situation, the series allowed them to peel away “everything we as Scandinavians find as being specifically Scandinavian.”

But Mosholt said the post-apocalyptic drama through the eyes of young people should have appeal to audiences around the world.

“We believe that the core themes and basic questions we’re trying to ask are universal,” he said. “What is it being human and who are we really? We find these questions to be important in this day and age.”