History Series / Beforeigners

* BuddyCopShow: He's a single dad with a secret drug problem. She's a Norse shieldmaiden. Together, TheyFightCrime

* TheyFightCrime: He's a contemporary detective with a variety of reasons to dislike the beforeigners, and she's a Viking shield-maiden joining him on the force.

* KavorkaMan: Jack the Ripper of all people, despite how creepy and rather unappealing he is.
* KickedUpstairs: Alfhildr is admitted to the police force and instantly assigned to a homicide unit, simply because the police badly needs a good PR after recent blowback from what appears to be a hate-fueled timeigrant murder. She turns out to be suprisingly good at her job.

* PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad: One of the main sources of humour is the problem Norway is facing when trying to accommodate people from the past and how exactly integrate them into the modern society with its values. This also means doing a lot of PR moves that aren't the smartest, but are intended solely for "feel good" value - including getting Alfhildr to a homicide unit, out of all places they could put the "Viking mascot" into the police force.

%%* Action Girl: Alfhildr, Urd, and [[spoiler:Ada]].

* ActionGirl: Alfhildr, Urd, and [[spoiler:Ada]].
* AdultFear: [[spoiler:Urd is suffering from cancer, and her agony over the debilitating effects of any treatments for cancer lead her to delay seeking treatment and participate in increasingly reckless behavior.]]

* BrickJoke: It has a rather fast pay-off in just two scenes and for quide a morbid joke, but still. One of Sturla's friends end up stuck in seatbelts, since he never used them prior. As result he stays in car and the other two Norse fellows end up [[spoiler: taking Gregers for Lars and pick a fight with him]] - all while the only person capable of identifying Lars is struggling to get out of the car.

''Beforeigners'' is a Norwegian series that explores the ramifications of time holes that periodically deposit people from the past into the present day. Created by Anne Bjørnstad and Eilif Skodvin and premiering on {{Creator/HBO}} Nordic on 2019 August 21, the first season ran six episodes, and in 2020 it was confirmed to be renewed for a second season. It is currently available in international markets on HBO Max with English subtitles.

* BiTheWay: Alfhildr has flings with men, but seems to have no problem sleeping with the Völva in the second season.

* OmnicidialManiac: [[spoiler: Jack the Ripper’s]] ultimate goal turns out to be to negate the existence of the human race via time travel, thus eliminating all human suffering.

* DrugsAreBad: Well, ''modern'' drugs are bad. While vikings getting high on shrooms is mostly played for laughs and they do it purely recreationally, Lars addiction to temproxate is shown for all its destructive effect. And it's not the drug itself (since it's a medical-purpose sedative), but how it destroys Lars' relationships, put his friends and family in danger and slowly drives him to do more and more reckless things just to get another fix. He also quickly slips down the slippery slope once [[spoiler: resigning from police and having no more distractions from doing more drugs]]. This is all done with surprising amount of tact, but the message is still clearly there.

** [[spoiler:Is Kalv just a figment of Lars's mental illness, or is he actually an avatar of Odin? Season two seems to suggest he - and Odin, too - are just drug-induced hallucinations]].

* NiceGuy: Gregers, with all his old-timey gentleman sensibilities, is also a genuinely nice, responsible and respectful man. It's further contrasted by showing variety of timeigrants to be ultimately bigoted and judgemental, even if on surface level displaying various pleasantries. He's so damn nice, he even has a great stepdad-stepchild relationship with Ingrid and befriends Lars, ex-husband of Marie.

* PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad: One of the main sources of humour is the problem Norway is facing when trying to accomodate people from the past and how exactly integrate them into the modern society with its values. This also means doing a lot of PR moves that aren't the smartest, but are intended solely for "feel good" value - including getting Alfhildr to a homicide unit, out of all places they could put the "Viking mascot" into the police force.

* RapeAndRevenge: Before even admitted into police, Alfhildr tracked on her own a guy from her times who happend to rape her when she was 12. She finally finds a chance to confront him soon after joining the force, beating the guy in a bar's restroom into a bloody pulp before Lars intervines. The only reason she gets away with PoliceBrutality charges is because she blackmails Lars on his temproxate addiction and the "victim" is a criminal in modern times, too, so he would endanger himself by pressing charges.

* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: Played for laughs - Lars is afraid of planes and flying, but tries to pretend he's not. Alfhildr, a timeigrant from 11th century who never was flying before, eventually asks if holding his hand will make it easier for him.

* TalkAboutTheWeather: Since Alfhildr has only the most basic grasp of English, when Lars leaves her alone with two Scotland Yard agents, she awkwardly mentions it is raining outside - a phase she just mastered on their flight to London.

* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: [[spoiler: Lars' only realises he's having hallucinations, rather than Kalv being real, by the end of the first season, but he remains unsure if this is just his drug addiction, going insane or an actual [[TheOldGods old gods]] intervention. In season two, his hallucinations are pretty unreliable, bordering on MaybeMagicMaybeMundane. He himself dismiss them just as a result of his brain being either on or depraved of a "fix" of temproxate and acts accordingly - which means ignoring them. However, when we finally got to see the situation from Alfhildr perspective when Lars actually ''has to'' get high, it is revealed Lars is in fact OffTheWagon and was probably high most of the time, and the {{Helpful Hallucination}}s he's having are mundane and exist only in his mind, while he's the real actor behind them. This includes having a god-damn hacker server build in the basement of his apartment building, ''without'' having any recollections of it when sober]].
* ToxicFriendInfluence: Heavily downplayed, but still present. Alfhildr is trying her very best to both fit in and be a good police officer. Her friendship with Urd, and thus by extend other rowdy vikings, is having bad effect on her professional performance. And general ability to stay sober. However, this is predominately used for comedic purposes and this friendship oftentimes pays off in positive way.

* WhatDoesSheSeeInHim: Almost said verbatim by Gregers after [[spoiler: he and Marie googled Ingrid's one-night stand, only to find he's not only a viking, but also a dumb meathead working as MrFanservice weatherman]]. As far as she's concerned herself, it was nothing more than a random one-night stand, so she doesn't actually see anything in him.
* WomanScorned: While crying herself after being dumped, Madde's friends comfort her and eventually ask her to simply go for blood after the jerk. One of them asks if she simply has some dirt on [[spoiler: Olaf]] - and she goes through with it, revealing his drugs problems, sending cops to his place. This undermines pretty much all of his plans as a result, since he instantly becomes a PersonaNonGrata.

* YoureInsane: After hearding his MotiveRant and being asked for help with his omnicidal plan, Alfhildr is left completely unphased and simply calls [[spoiler: John Roberts]] "one crazy fuck".

* PopulationXAndCounting: There is a tally post in London, keeping track of timeigrant arrivals, both daily and total, within the Great Britain jurisdiction. The current total stands at 5383148 people - and that's the ''recorded'' number, while there are also unregistered arrivals.

SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: Played for laughs - Lars is afraid of planes and flying, but tries to pretend he's not. Alfhildr, a timeigrant from 11th century who never was flying before, eventually asks if holding his hand will make it easier for him.

* ShooOutTheClowns: The PluckyComicRelief trio that was hanging with Urd and Alfhildr in season one is nowhere to be seen later on and not evem mentioned again.

* SexMagic: The Völva claims she will be able to see into Alfhild's past by having sex with her. Alhildr asks if this is true, or the Völva is just a "horny lesbian". The völva incredulously asks how one excludes the other.
* ShooOutTheClowns: The PluckyComicRelief trio that was hanging with Urd and Alhildr in season one is nowhere to be seen later on and not evem mentioned again.

* ArcVillain: Jack the Ripper/[[spoiler: John Roberts]] is the lead villain

* {{Conlang}}: The Mesolithic language is a full-blown conlang created by the show's writers.

* DrugsAreBad: Well, ''modern'' drugs are bad. While vikings getting high on shrooms is mostly played for laughs and they do it purely recreationally, Lars addiction to temproxate is shown for all its destructive effect. And it's not the drug itself (since it's a medical-purpose sedative), but how it destroys Lars' relationships, put his friends and family in danger and slowly drives him to do more and more reckless things just to get another fix. He also quickly slips down the slippery slope once [[spoiler: resigning from police and having no more distractions from doing more drugs]]. This is all done with suprising amound of tact, but the message is still clearly there.

* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Tore Hund and [[spoiler:Olaf the Stout]].

* IntrepidReporter: Deconstructed. The Victorian-era reporter, while doing her job in the perfectly appropriate fashion for her times, from modern perspective practices [[OldMediaAreEvil blatant yellow journalism]] and her sensation chasing does nothing good to anyone.
* {{Irony}}: In a bar, a bunch of neonazis are listening to a German song they don't understand, but that mentions "Deutschland" a lot. Said song is "Keine Überdosis Deutschland" (no overdose of Germany) and has decidedly left-wing lyrics.

* KavorkaMan: Jack the Ripper of all people, despite how creepy he is.

* LaserGuidedAmnesia: Timeigration takes a toll on people's memories.

* LikeADuckTakesToWater: While they are relatively rare cases, some of the timeimgrants adopt very easily to modern times and mores. There are three outstanding examples:

** A journalist from 1870s simply continues her job as if nothing really changed. Unlike pretty much everyone from her time period, she nearly completely switched to modern fashion and short from her dated word-choices, nobody would know better she isn't just an eccentric reporter.

** [[spoiler:Is Kalv just a figment of Lars's mental illness, or is he actually an avatar of Odin?]]

** [[spoiler:Olaf the Stout]] would be an archetypical example, to the point of being declared a saint.

* RedHerring: [[spoiler: Trine "Ada" Syversen and her entire subplot is nothing what it appears to be. More, she is being framed by the actual perpetrators as a very handy scrapegoat]].

* SexMagic: The Völva claims she will be able to see into Alfhild's past by having sex with her. Alhildr asks if this is true, or the Völva is just a "horny lesbian".

* WhamEpisode: The first season finale. We find out that [[spoiler:it's possible to go ''back'' in time using the time holes, Alfhildr was born in modern times, Madde spent a considerable amount of time in the past, Olaf the Stout is alive in the present day, he's friends with Madde, Kalv is more than just a temproxate-induced hallucination, and Urd dies to save Tore Hund]].