The best thing about Katla is that it’s from Iceland.  Everything about it is a little different from other TV shows.  

Katla is a bit like Stranger Things, in that supernatural events start happening to regular people in a normal town.  Since it happens in Iceland, the events are related to an erupting volcano and legends about what happened the last time this volcano erupted hundreds of years ago.

Since it’s Iceland during a volcanic eruption, the town is mostly evacuated and blanketed with ash.  The town looks bleak and abandoned, but there is some great scenery.  Since it takes place in a rural town, we get to see how the Icelandic people live, and what they are like.

A person shows up at a remote geologic research station covered in ash.  The person is dazed and confused, and was in an area where nobody should have been.  The person turns out to be someone who left the town twenty years ago, and appears to be the age she was when she left.  It seems to be a resurrection or Bermuda Triangle scenario.  That happens a few more times.  The mysterious people don’t know where they came from or where they were, but they don’t seem quite right.

The locals are surprised, skeptical and grateful, but their level of emotion is muted compared to what an American would expect.  The geologist finds his young son, who has been dead for several years.  He doesn’t abandon his research to rush home, but calls his wife to drive up to collect the boy.  They are a serious and stoic bunch.

In a rural American town, when several people learned of the mysterious ash people, they would collaborate and investigate.   Icelandic people didn’t do that.  Each family handled the ash person their own way, welcoming them into the house.

I enjoyed Katla, and did not expect the story to play out the way it did.  It’s playing on Netflix, and is an 8/10.