Some reasons to watch Nobel and how it can improve

The Norwegian series Nobel does some things exceptionally well, in particular the action scenes - the attack in the parking garage in Oslo, the military operations in Afghanistan, and, in the final episode, the tense, secret negotiations in Afghanistan among Norwegian, Afghan, and Taliban officials - negotiations that, no surprise here, come to a dreadful end (and leave a Season 2 as a strong possibility). What keeps this series from being great, however, is its extremely complex network of competing forces and interests that are hard, especially for English-language viewers working with subtitles, to keep straight not only from one episode to the next but even within episodes. The personal story, which involves marital strife in the Riiser family, with the husband, Erling, a special forces operative who gets duped into an unauthorized killing, and wife a top official in the Norwegian state dept (it's a small country), never really develops: We don't see or know enough about the personal lives of most of the characters - again, because the series is so plot-heavy that we are overwhelmed with characters and plot strands. Worse, a key element driving the plot, the forces competing for the Nobel Peace Prize, never really gels and feels just tacked on in the final episode. Those are my quibbles, yet there was enough going on here to hold our interest through the whole 8-episode series - a lot of action, smart writing, tense pacing, overall a highly professional show that I hope will continue and will improve, through great plot focus, in future seasons.