Everyone’s favourite Arctic comedy is back. Season 2 of North of North picks up with Siaja (Anna Lambe) in a familiar bind: on the outs with Ting and her family, winter closing in, tourist season winding down, and her job as tour guide going with it. A lot on her mind, in other words.
This North of North Season 2 review finds the show exactly where it should be, sharper, funnier, and more confident in its own particular rhythm.
Her numbers were low this year, so Siaja decides to stage a final hurrah: a Greenland Mask Dance to send the remaining tourists off with something to talk about. An embarrassing, gloriously IRL moment unfolds mid-dance. The tourists love it. Of course they do.
The small moments are where the series earns its keep. An elderly lifelong Inuit man going full colonial, telling Siaja to stop dealing with spirits in her dance because God doesn’t approve, is exactly the kind of quietly devastating observation the show does better than almost anyone. Funny, uncomfortable, and completely true.
North of North Season 2 Review: What Else Is Going On
Running underneath all of it is the disappearance of Siaja’s sister. Her family refuses to provide DNA samples to help investigators. Siaja, being Siaja, waits until her mother falls asleep and takes one herself.
Episode two puts her at the centre of a community emergency she may have caused. The water purifying equipment breaks down. She chops ice and delivers it to the elders herself, quietly, without fanfare. The elders promptly fall ill. And then she decides to throw a formal Ball.
Moments of lifelike reality, good and bad, are handled with an unsentimental evenness and a dry wit that never tips into anything easy or cheap. North of North is unconventional, specific, and genuinely terrific.
Season 2 premieres Tuesday September 1 on APTN and CBC Gem, with the broadcast premiere on CBC TV and APTN TV on Tuesday September 8, before its global launch on Netflix this fall.
