Series · based on the novel
Season 1 · 47 episodes
A woman meets a Viking. She learns to say no — and it will take her forty-seven episodes, a burnout, a map of the Far North and a lot of humour to get there. A comedy: every episode stands on its own and moves the story on.
Where the book begins. She spots the Viking twice from afar in the same week, then finds out he has viewed her professional profile. Anger rises all at once — and with it, the revelation: she is going to write. Everything becomes something to laugh about. The chapter then jumps 3 years ahead, to the set of “Sunday Is Showtime!”, where she has come to present the book with the Viking by her side, in flesh and ink.
She signs up to a dating site and writes her ad. Next comes the self-portrait as a product sheet: rare model, limited edition, original bodywork, and a mocking inventory of everything that’s wrong. Then the non-negotiables — allergic to control and to unsolicited advice — and the conclusion: operation let’s meet.
The first meeting. She comes out of a massage with a man at the end of his life, rushes to her date late, hair all over the place, smelling of massage oil. He is waiting for her by the beach with a wicker basket, a checked tablecloth and champagne. Portrait of the Viking as a two-metre giant from a completely flat country, angel curls and crocodile boots. She falls for him in 10 minutes.
Together for 2 days, first trip. The camper van crawls down a narrow street; a car brushes the wing mirror. The other driver jumps out yelling that they’ve broken his. The Viking explodes in Dutch, then in English, makes Coraline get out and orders her to translate. She translates and softens it, to put out the fire. The man takes fright and runs off.
A week or two after they meet, he turns up with a racing catamaran in a kit. They assemble it by the slipway. Just as they push the boat, he shouts “HOLD ON!” at her — words she’s never heard before. She runs from one hull to the other while he bellows instructions; the front swings round when she holds the back, and vice versa. In the end she turns the manoeuvre into a tango.
The whole family lands on the TV set: the father, the mother, the sister, and the Viking. They talk about the daily phone call, the humour inherited from her parents, French people born in Algeria, and the parents’ wedding after their diamond anniversary. Then the father and the Viking clash, the sister sums up the relationship in one sentence — they got together hoping to change each other — and the mother sets everyone straight.
Her parents call her several times a day. When she doesn’t answer, they send her sister. She’s 56 and she still answers. Then she understands where their fear comes from: born in Algeria, they lost everything in one go. She keeps the bond. She lets go of the guilt.
Three weeks after they meet, they set off on a road trip to Soumerland, the catamaran on a trailer, all the way to his village of Haldorholm. She sees herself as an explorer from the turn of the century and watches for elves through the window while he comments on the scenery and tells her his life — the divorce, the relationship after that, the kitchen broken in the middle of winter and the hip shattered on a patch of black ice. They arrive at the foot of the dunes, in a reserve for migrating birds.
2 days after they arrive, they go sailing on Lake Submersheim, at the oldest sailing club in the country. While he rigs his catamaran down to the millimetre, she marvels at the classic mahogany-and-brass sailing boats that the Vikings look after like living ancestors. Then the sailing: the boat up on one hull, and him yelling “OVERSTAG!” every 3 minutes to go about. In the evening, the trailer’s winch handle snaps clean off.
That evening, after the day on the water, he tells her about his family — and she realises she has just landed in a war of succession. The father who decides everything and takes credit for every success, the mother he tried to help escape when he was 6, the ex-wife he thinks can’t make a decision, the daughter he did everything with who no longer speaks to him, the son he hasn’t said a word to since a row.
A portrait through his things. His white drak-car without a single sticker, which she nicknames “the Blizzard”. His clothes with no brand but top of the range, made to measure, non-iron. His crocodile boots. Then his three-hundred-square-metre warehouse, filled with batches of everything under the sun, no labels, two metre-high dogs guarding the stock — enough to withstand a year-long siege on his own.
He comes back from a trip and takes the train in France. He spots a red warning light and a jammed brake, tries to report it without speaking the language, and gets nothing but a shrug. The train leaves, stops in the middle of the line, with no announcement or explanation. Nobody around him reacts. His old first-aider reflexes kick in, he looks for a way out, and panics all on his own in the middle of an indifferent carriage.
Coraline is working the season at a ski resort. The Viking turns up after eight hours on the road expecting a royal welcome; he gets a receptionist in a hurry. He drinks, he grumbles, the police come to move his camper van on, and he throws Coraline out three times. At the New Year’s dinner given by her boss, he gives her an ultimatum in front of the guests: him or the boss. She follows him to avoid a scene. A week later, the boss fires her.
Winter in the mountains. The police come to move the drak-car parked on private land, its electric cable blocking access for a digger. He takes it as an eviction from his kingdom. She comes home from work exhausted, in the snow, and is greeted with a debriefing. Since the police visit, he has recorded the policewoman, photographed her number plate, and looked up how to get her suspended. The intimidation tactics from ch. 4 are back.
3 days later. She comes home from work trying not to slip on the icy road, looks up, and finds him perched on the roof of the drak-car, welding — half MacGyver, half 8-year-old kid in a giant’s body. He is building an antenna. The whole chapter is a dialogue looking up at him.
New Year’s Eve in the mountains. He chooses the restaurant while making her believe she chose it, puts their table right in the gangway, and his dog blocks the aisle. That’s where she writes her five rules, and learns to take back her space in 2 minutes.
A stopover on the Presqu’île du Sel. He wants to live in a refrigerated lorry in the middle of a forest in the North. Just the idea makes her suffocate, and the war of attrition begins.
The chapter of the NO. She refuses to join him in Lower Valhalla, and that one tiny two-letter word sets off months of siege: three-and-a-half-hour voice monologues every day, pleading, guilt-tripping, rages, then silences. It takes up the whole winter.
Six months of winter on the phone. The Viking talks. He talks at the table, in bed, in the shower, and he loves the sound of his own voice. Coraline puts the phone down, makes dinner, eats, does the washing-up: he’s still talking. When she finally opens her mouth, he’s snoring. The next day he remembers nothing. She ends up understanding that the monologue is how he avoids going to bed sober — and that her own patience is how she avoids letting him go.
He suggests a holiday: 4x4, home-made trailer, the northern lights, and on the way back a log cabin in the forest. She starts by describing her South — the peninsula, the Îles d’Or, the salt marshes, the dolce vita — then she maps out the whole trip in advance, stage by stage, haggling over every kilometre.
The chapter of childhood dreams. She asks him what he dreamt of as a kid — a treehouse; as a teenager — a boat; as an adult — a thirty-eight-tonne refrigerated lorry. Then comes everything he plans to do with it, while she dreams of a Mr Freeze with her feet in turquoise water. Two dreams side by side, with nothing in common.
He says he’s affectionate and faithful. She looks at where his faithfulness really goes: to beer. She sets her limits, and she leaves.
He drinks alone in a speakeasy. The jazz says what he keeps quiet: a tyrannical father, the war, the fear of going over the edge. She writes him a letter she will never post.
Coraline punches holes in ready-made ideas to let the light through. She tells of the official letters asking her for 2 years of proof every three months, the two-hour waits on the phone, the counter that promises to get back to her and never does. She ends up realising she’s talking to a bug. And she sees the same script elsewhere: she listens to the Viking’s monologue with the same polite goodwill, stifling her yawns.
On Monday he says white. On Tuesday he has always thought black. She starts writing everything down, with dates. The trial happens anyway: guilty of being herself. She pleads guilty and she leaves.
The job interview sketch. The recruiter asks her for her greatest strengths, the phone rings, it’s her mother. The recruiter tells her to pick up. Her mother takes over and sings the praises of the daughter she brought up. She gets the job anyway.
Arriving at the campsite, the drak-car has to be parked. Him at the wheel, her outside to guide. He switches to emergency mode and barks orders — cut down the tree, knock down the wall, trim the fence — and she obeys, standing to attention. Meanwhile, several voices are commenting in her head: the signs of her birth chart, Bourvil and de Funès, a general from ’Allo ’Allo!, Sid from Ice Age. The lorry gets through. She gives a thumbs up, very proud, wedged between the wall and the bumper.
She has let her flat to spend the summer with him. He turns up with a twelve-metre camper van. In one week he changes his mind four times: a caravan, a sailing boat, an amphibious camper van. By the end of the week, nothing has moved on his side. Everything on hers.
First, the setting of the new job: a president who has clung to power 10 years past retirement, a platform to build alone in two summer months with no budget, nobody to talk to and software that crashes, while everyone is on holiday. Then the scene: invited to the leaving drinks of the woman she is replacing, surrounded by colleagues who officially represent public health, she sees the Viking arrive, cigarette in his mouth and a beer in…
Coraline has let her flat to holidaymakers and lives in the Viking’s camper van, on a campsite, during her first season as an employee. Campers’ karaoke until two in the morning, up at five, forbidden to use the camper van’s shower and toilet to save water.
Portrait of the boss, nicknamed “It”. She presides, she speaks in the name of the great “We” and never in her own, she sorts the world into the submissive and the rebels. Her underlings work in the basement while she does the rounds of the cocktail parties. Coraline arrives: self-employed for 25 years, she keeps her business going alongside her job. For “It”, that’s high treason. Snow White is condemned before she’s set foot in the arena.
A summer dinner. Coraline finds herself translating between two Vikings talking in stereo and a Mediterranean friend who never stops. The Viking keeps cutting her off, demands she translate faster, then disappears in his car without a word. She catches up with him: he accuses her of hiding things from him. She explodes, and he drives along the sea for an hour waiting for it to blow over.
Behind closed doors with three managers: the Chieflet, the Deputy Chieflet and the Deputy Deputy Chieflet. They decide to sacrifice an employee to protect their jobs, by pinning on her mistakes that aren’t hers. The Chieflet goes off to the mayor’s cocktail party; the other two organise the execution and enjoy it. The reader witnesses the plot before the victim does.
Friday, the forecast announces disaster and the sky is blue. Coraline receives a sealed letter during her break; the storm breaks just as she recognises the seal. Monday, the disciplinary hearing: the three who summoned her are also her judges, she is searched before going in, she hasn’t slept for 3 days. She goes in without knowing the rules and plays the scapegoat to the bitter end.
He gets her sacked from her job, then comes down to settle in Hyères. A row in the car park as soon as he arrives. He goes off to sulk all winter in a sand-covered car park on the peninsula, then goes back to Holland and calls her for hours to get her to join him. She refuses and looks for work.
A new job, a mission impossible to manage alone over the summer, a president who reigns and twelve who come and go. She holds on for six months, reports the problems, ends up at a disciplinary hearing as the scapegoat. The doctor signs her off on the spot; in front of him, she can’t remember her own address. The therapist names it: burnout.
The first session with the therapist, just after the burnout. She comes because the doctor next door sent her, without knowing herself how she ended up there. The therapist welcomes her ever so gently, and the dialogue begins.
The bad week: a warning at work, and the Viking casting off and leaving the country. She goes out to cry in the rain because it’s more discreet for singing out of tune, calls her sister to ask for her own address, and gets into the shower fully dressed. The water runs for a long time. After a while, clarity breaks through: they all hit the same person because it was easier.
Second session, forty-eight hours later. She arrives drained — words escape her, she can’t remember her address — but with one certainty: she won’t let them win. Her family closes ranks around her, each with their own line, her mother with her kick off the bottom of the pool, her father with his curtain to draw.
He is a sun. Magnificent on the outside, molten lava on the inside. She wants to save him, she gets burnt. A sun never questions itself: it’s the only one of its kind. She ends up on a deckchair, at a distance, with sunglasses.
Coraline is lying on the sand at sunset, drained, nothing left in reserve. The earth soaks up what weighs too much. The phone rings, she answers out of habit. He talks fast, pours it all out, demands, accuses. The words slide off her like distant rain. She hears everything, she understands everything, and none of it gets through any more. A silent no settles in on its own, without anger and without guilt.
A portrait of her parents as comic heroes. Her mother who’s afraid of nothing, negotiates with the police and finds a brace lost on a ski slope. Her father who arrives at the office in a suit, his face grazed, because he played The Man from Atlantis for his daughters. Naps interrupted by a house completely rearranged. A childhood where they laughed every day and the house was a theatre.
She decides to turn her fears into a sketch rather than a nightmare, and plays them out one by one, all the way. Her wedding at sixty, her parents calling just as she says yes. The plane taking off, the ringtone she can’t switch off. Hospital. And even her own funeral, where the phone rings in the coffin.
She has gone back to her business and launches a podcast on the meaning of life. Live on air, her mother calls to tell her that her father has bought plastic shoes online without trying them on. She hangs up, apologises to the participants, and answers the question of the day: yes, life has a meaning — a sense of humour. We adapt to survive; it’s called evolution. Then comes an interview on why laughing is vital.
The dilemma, out loud. If she publishes, she’s afraid of what it will do to the Viking: a public revelation could weaken a man who hides what he carries, and give ammunition to anyone who wants to discredit him. She refuses to keep quiet one more time, but she also refuses to cause a disaster. So she finds the solution: change all the names, all the places, and take a pen name. Everyone keeps their free will.
A dialogue with the Viking about why she wants to change. She explains that, the more she wrote, the more setting her limits spilled over into her life — right up to the firm “no” she gave her baker. Then she names the two traps: the illusion of controlling everything, which locks writing in and makes it less alive, and framed spontaneity, which works. Know your text, your needs and your limits, and make up the rest on the spot.
The final scene. A jazz-rock concert on a floating pontoon. She dances with a calm man, and the Viking turns up on his boat. There is no reconciliation: she has taken back the narration, and the ending belongs to her.
Synopses taken from the novel The Hammock and the Hummingbirds, by Karine Baridon.
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