'Beforeigners' Trailer: What Happens When Vikings And Citizens From The Stone Age Suddenly Appear In Modern Day Society?

If you find yourself getting bored by the TV shows you're watching, here's one with a fascinating twist that seems worth checking out. It's called Beforeigners, and it's a show that imagines a scenario in which people from the Viking era, the Stone Age, and the late 1800s suddenly flash into existence in modern day Norway with no explanation. Watch the trailer below.

The six-part series hails from Eilif Skodvin and Anne Bjørnstad, the creators of Lillyhammer, which was one of the first shows that was available to U.S. audiences exclusively on Netflix in the days before House of Cards and Orange is the New Black became burgeoning hits. Now they're back with a Beforeigners, which has a science fiction premise baked into a police procedural format.

Skodvin and Bjørnstad were apparently inspired by things like District 9, True Love, The Leftovers, Brave New World, and 1984 when they were cooking this one up, and while it definitely seems to have some familiar elements to it, this is a great trailer that makes me very curious to see how the showrunners tackle this concept. Dressing up real-world commentary on refugees in a sci-fi or fantasy premise isn't anything particularly new: Fox did it in 1988 with Alien Nation, Netflix did it with Bright a couple of years ago, and Amazon did it with the fantasy series Carnival Row just last year. But still, it's all about the execution of the ideas at play, and I'm intrigued enough to want to check this out. How would a modern society respond to an event like this? What kinds of conflicts and problems would arise from incorporating people from different eras in the same city? It's a cool concept, and I'm into it.

The show, which is directed by Jens Lien and stars Nicolai Cleve Broch and Krista Kosonen as the pair of mismatched cops, premiered on HBO Europe last August, but is now streaming in the United States on HBO Now and HBO Go.

Here's the official synopsis:

Set in the near future, Beforeigners is a sci-fi crime drama where time traveling refugees from three past eras – The Stone Age, The Viking era, and the late 19th century – have settled in Oslo, Norway.