HBO’s Forgotten 12-Episode Sci-Fi Thriller Is One of Television’s Most Unsettling

Published Nov 13, 2026, 2:27 PM EST

Giovana Gelhoren is a High-Trending Topics Writer at Collider, covering the most-talked-about stars, movies, and TV shows. Before joining Collider, she was a Digital News Writer at People Magazine and served as Associate Editor at SheKnows, where she honed her expertise in celebrity coverage and entertainment journalism.

A proud Latina from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Giovana graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in Journalism and International Studies. She has interviewed countless celebrities, including Anne Hathaway, Halle Berry, Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Brenda Song, and is known for her encyclopedic knowledge of film, TV, and pop culture.

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When a show decides to add time travel to its storytelling, the project becomes all the more ambitious. After all, while there have been many successful time-travel shows over the years, including Doctor Who, Dark and 11.22.63, a series with time travel needs to account for parallel timeframes, time travel mechanisms and rules, historical costume design and production, and much more. Luckily, however, the tall order wasn't enough to stop HBO Nordic's first Norwegian original series, Beforeigners, from swinging for the fences.

Premiering on August 21, 2019, the two-season series Beforeigners approaches time travel in a way that feels fresh, interesting, and more relevant than ever. And, after scoring an impressive 100% on Rotten Tomatoes for Season 1, based on five critic reviews, the series proved that the concept was worth exploring, especially with the ever-evolving chemistry with its main characters.

What Is 'Beforeigners' About?

Set in the near future in Oslo, Norway, Beforeigners starts off with a new and unprecedented phenomenon in which powerful flashes of light occur in the ocean and people from the past mysteriously reappear. These people, who are nicknamed "beforeigners" and "timeigrants," come from three distinct time periods: the Stone Age, the Viking era and the late 19th century. As they seek refuge in present-day society, they struggle to adjust and assimilate to their new reality, while Oslo grapples with the social, political, and cultural tensions their arrival creates.

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Question 01 of 08INSTINCT

The world as you know it ends overnight. What is your first move? No wrong answer. There is a wrong hesitation.

AFind out what is really going on behind all of it BGrab a vehicle and as much fuel as you can carry CKeep your head down and show up to work anyway DLearn the rules of whoever is in charge now EFind other people and start organizing

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You can stockpile exactly one thing. What is it? Choose carefully. You are not getting a second run.

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Which kind of enemy scares you the most? Be honest about what keeps you up.

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How do you handle the people in charge? Every world has them. Even the ones that pretend otherwise.

AAssume they are lying and work around them BNobody is in charge where I am CFollow the orders, file the report, stay invisible DStudy them, get close to them, outlast them EJoin whoever is fighting them

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Pick the place you would rather wake up in: You will be there a while.

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Who do you want standing next to you? Pick one. You only get one.

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Which line would you cross to survive? Everybody crosses one.

ALying to the people closest to you BTaking what you need by force CLooking the other way DPlaying a long game that costs other people dearly EBlowing something very expensive up

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▦︎ The Matrix The Resistance, Zion You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

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• The Wachowskis' 1999 film won four Academy Awards, including Visual Effects and Film Editing.
• Bullet time was shot with a rig of roughly 120 still cameras firing in sequence around the actors.
• Keanu Reeves trained in martial arts for about four months before a frame was shot, recovering from neck surgery the whole time.
• It opened the same year as Fight Club and eXistenZ, in a run of films about not trusting the world in front of you.

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You would survive the Wasteland because you do not waste energy mourning the world that ended. You move, you improvise, and you are very good with whatever is bolted to the thing in front of you. Furiosa would let you drive. That is not a compliment anybody earns easily. From the Collider file

• Mad Max: Fury Road won six Academy Awards in 2016, more than any other film that year.
• George Miller storyboarded the entire film as roughly 3,500 panels before there was a script.
• The chase was shot almost entirely practical in the Namib Desert, with real vehicles and real stunt performers.
• Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth carried the prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, in 2024.

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You would survive 2049 because you know how to be small in a very loud city. You keep your head down, you do the job, and you hold onto one private thing that belongs only to you. That quiet stubbornness is exactly what both Deckard and K run on, and it is what keeps either of them going when the case stops making sense. From the Collider file

• Blade Runner 2049 won Roger Deakins his first Oscar for cinematography, on his fourteenth nomination.
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• Villeneuve shot it on large-format film and kept the fog and rain practical on set wherever he could.
• Three short films by Luke Scott and Shinichiro Watanabe bridge the 30-year gap between the two movies.

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▲︎ Dune Arrakis Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

You would survive Arrakis because you think in decades while everyone around you thinks in weeks. You read the room, you learn the customs, you wait. The desert does not reward speed. It rewards people who understand that patience is a weapon, which is the one lesson the Fremen never had to be taught. From the Collider file

• Denis Villeneuve's Dune won six Academy Awards in 2022, including Cinematography and Original Score.
• Hans Zimmer turned down Christopher Nolan's Tenet so he could score Dune instead.
• Dune: Part Two arrived in 2024 and brought in Austin Butler, Florence Pugh and Christopher Walken.
• David Lynch's 1984 version and Alejandro Jodorowsky's unmade one are both their own legends by now.

Plays the long game Reads the room Patient

✦︎ Star Wars A Galaxy Far, Far Away Rebellions are built on hope.

You would survive the galaxy because you never try to survive it alone. You collect people. You end up in the middle of other folks' problems and you stay anyway. Every version of this story, from the Falcon's crew to the Ghost's, runs on somebody exactly like that holding the group together. From the Collider file

• The 1977 original won six Academy Awards plus a special achievement award for sound effects.
• John Williams' score was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra and became the best-selling symphonic film soundtrack ever.
• Andor took the galaxy somewhere colder and earned Emmy nominations for drama series in both seasons.
• The saga now runs across eleven feature films and a growing shelf of series on Disney+.

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Six years after the first arrivals, burned-out police detective Lars Haaland (Nicolai Cleve Broch) is partnered with Alfhildr (Krista Kosonen), a former Viking warrior who has just become the first beforeigner to join the police force. Together, they're assigned to investigate the murder of a young woman with Stone Age tattoos, aka a beforeigner herself, whose mysterious death appears anything but ordinary. As the case unfolds, the unlikely partners begin to unravel a larger conspiracy that suggests the mysterious arrivals may be connected to something far bigger than anyone imagined.

'Beforeigners' Is an Unsettling and Compelling Thriller

Image via HBO

From the synopsis alone, it's clear that Beforeigners has a lot of ground to cover. Not only does it build a near future Oslo, and later inject it with members of its past, but the series also follows a murder mystery that's connected to a much larger picture. "Somehow, this high-concept Norwegian TV series that blends time-travel science-fiction with buddy cop, murder mystery, and police procedural actually works," wrote one review of the series. And, like the 100% score for Season 1 suggests, the series blends these genres in a way that feels gripping, unexpected and nail-biting. Notably, by using the beforeigners as a metaphor for real-life immigration and xenophobia, the show also delivered hard-hitting social commentary that doesn't feel forced or jaded.

By Season 2, the series earns a bigger scope and setting, all while keeping the chemistry between main stars Broch and Kosonen, and their personal struggles as the heart of the show. "The show isn't as intimate in scale now as in its opening season, but Beforeigners does understand the power in a high-premise sci-fi concept," one review wrote. A brutal murder in Oslo raises the possibility that Jack the Ripper has traveled to the present, all while political tensions continue to rise between modern society and the growing beforeigner population. In addition to Broch and Kosonen, Beforeigners also stars Stig R. Amdam, Ragnhild Gudbrandsen, Ylva Bjørkaas Thedin, Nader Khademi, Lavrans Haga, and Kyrre Haugen Sydness, among others.

With that said, while Beforeigners came to an end after Season 2, the series is a treat for sci-fi and murder mystery lovers alike. By setting the murder in a not-so-distant future that's been plagued with mysterious time-travel, the series interestingly blends genres while focusing on two endearing yet troubled police officers in their search for truth. Their dynamic alone is enough to make the series worthwhile, and it's only the tip of the iceberg.

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  Nicolai Cleve Broch

  Lars Haaland

• Krista Kosonen

  Alfhildr Enginsdottir