‘Fenris’ Review: A Village Among Wolves

The campaign to reintroduce apex predators into their old hunting grounds has led to bared fangs on both sides of the issue: Conservationists want to reboot a food chain out of whack; farmers, reasonably, don’t want their sheep devoured. Each side has its points. But throw a child into the mix—as happens in the absorbing, six-part “Fenris”—and rationality goes into hibernation.

The wolves circulating unseen around the deeply forested village of Østbygda may not be so big and so bad, but whether they are innocent bystanders is the question plaguing Emma Salomonsen (Ida Elise Broch), a wolf scientist doing lab work in Oslo. Her father, Marius (Magnus Krepper), a controversial wildlife researcher back in their small hometown, has managed to establish a “wolf zone” that has agitated almost everyone of any importance. These include breeders of livestock, mothers of children, and the interests behind a proposed lodge that promises to bring tourist dollars to backwoods Norway—but not if there are human-eating wolves going unhunted. When the old man’s young acolyte, Daniel (Alfred Vatne), disappears, and a jacket is found bearing both Daniel’s blood and the hair of an alpha male wolf, Marius starts scrambling. Emma, summoned back home, is baffled: None of what seems obvious makes sense.

Ms. Broch is playing a rather ferocious character herself in “Fenris,” which is the name of the suspect male wolf and of the latest effort by Simen Alsvik, also a director on the popular “Lilyhammer,” which starred Steven Van Zandt and featured Ms. Broch. Østbygda is the kind of out-of-the-way place that exemplifies why so much fictional death takes place in so many rustic and unlikely settings: The characters may have to be introduced to us, but they don’t have to be introduced to each other. Everyone knows everyone else and there are very few human secrets, including, in this case, why Emma moved away from town as a little girl. She experiences recurring flashbacks of a traumatized childhood for which her father seems to be to blame, at least at first. While the complete facts of her life will be revealed little by little, one of the more emotionally satisfying aspects of “Fenris” is the relationship between Emma and her father—she has followed in his footsteps, after all—and between Marius and Emma’s son, Leo (Viljar Knutsen Bjaadal).

Leo is a typically diffident preteen who is addicted to his cellphone, but after Marius gives him a tutorial on wolves and their habitat, the kid suddenly has a real interest, and displays a real instinct for judging animal behavior that Marius acknowledges—to Leo’s delight, and ours: Maybe there is a cure for screens. Maybe it’s in Norway. It is easy to see how the slightly older Daniel became impassioned about wolves, and the fear that they also led to his demise haunts the action and all the waking moments of Daniel’s mom, the barely functioning Kathinka ( Julia Schacht, giving a very convincing portrayal of a mother falling apart). Her boyfriend, Knut Ove ( John Emil Jørgensrud ), seems more interested in hunting wolves than finding Daniel, but one of the intriguing things about the thoroughly engrossing “Fenris” is the multitude of possible motives among the villagers. And the varieties of their animal instinct.

—Mr. Anderson is the Journal’s TV critic.