You’d be forgiven for never hearing about Pivot, a “disruptive” cable TV network that disrupted very little in its three-year lifespan. I only learned about it by way of channel-flipping in 2015, at which point I discovered a British TV series called Fortitude.

The Sky TV series is now two seasons deep in its home country, and Amazon Video recently picked it up to let the United States back into the show’s icy, Arctic weirdness. Having already seen both seasons, I cannot urge you enough to let its bloody, disturbing stories, er, disrupt your TV-watching regimen.

Ancient ice capades

Fortitude is set in a small, fictional Norway-governed Arctic research/fishing town of the same name, and its cast includes Stanley Tucci, Michael Gambon, Sofie Gråbøl (original The Killing), Richard Dormer (Game of Thrones), and many other fantastic actors. The first season’s plot begins moving when a shady resident of Fortitude discovers an ancient mammoth corpse. He thinks he’ll strike it rich by selling its remains, but the opportunist instead becomes a victim of a mysterious wave of deaths. Townspeople disagree about what’s going on. Newer residents wonder if a psychopath is responsible. Others accuse a little boy of having inhuman strength. Members of the town’s native population believe an ancient evil has been awoken.