Have you run out of TV shows to watch on Netflix? Fear not, because an all new show is premiering today – and it’s a Netflix exclusive.
Announced just a month ago, Lilyhammer is available to watch today. All eight episodes of the first season are being made available at once, meaning the impatient viewers among us can schedule a marathon session.
Lillyhammer sounds interesting enough. It stars Steven Van Zandt, who you might remember from his amazing role of Silvio from The Sopranos. You also might know him from his work with The Boss, as Van Zandt is the guitarist for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. Van Zandt stars as Frank Tagliano, a New York mobster that has to go into witness protection in Norway after testifying against a boss.
From the Netflix blog:
This show is different in many ways. First of all, this is surely the most ambitious original show to premiere online in history. The presence of an American star like Van Zandt and the production quality and the length of the episodes position “Lilyhammer” in the class of programing usually only found on premium pay television.
Van Zandt’s character understands Norwegian, but doesn’t speak it well, so the folks he encounters speak mostly in their native tongue with subtitles while Stevie speaks in English in the US and Canada. The episodes will be presented fully subtitled in local languages in Latin America. It is highly unusual for a single programmer to debut shows in multiple territories.
Apparently, the show is already a mega hit in Norway, as a whopping 1.2 million people watch every week (it’s been airing over there for 3 weeks). Since Norway only has about 5 million people, Lilyhammer is the most watched show in the country’s history. And even more important than that, it has The Boss’ approval. Springsteen went the the NY premiere and said he loved it.
Later this year, Netflix will roll out even more orignal content in the form of the Kevin Spacey & David Fincher project House of Cards.
Will you check it out? What do you think about Netflix’s strategy of making the entire first season available at once? Let us know in the comments.