the man who died = mies joka kuoli

Mies joka kuoli aka The Man Who Died is a comedy-drama starring Jussi Vatanen who is also in Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet lehdet) which I saw a couple of weeks ago. I didn't recognise him until I looked him up on IMDB so I guess he's good at acting. 

Before I say anything about the show itself I want to say that watching things on SBS catchup or whatever it's called is not easy. Sometimes they just don't load, sometimes you get the episode you want to watch and the audio of another episode. Sometimes while it's playing it gives you the little yellow circle that tells you it's trying to load. 

After a while you come to appreciate it's more trouble than it's worth to do anything but just keep watching it (or stop watching it altogether) because you can't pause it or stop it or anything really. 

So the deal here is that the protagonist, Jaakko, is the owner of a mushroom company who has been told by his doctor that he has a few weeks to live, as he has somehow had a large amount of toxin introduced to his system that has contributed to extensive organ damage. There is a bunch of comedy hoods running a rival company in a surreal kind of way and Jaakko keeps comedy-killing them. I am about half way through. Laura watched the first episode with me and was not adequately engaged, which I completely understand, but I think it has gotten better. That said...

The fantasy sequences kind of get on my wick - Japanese stereotypes, obvious dream sequences etc. 

The town where the show is set, Hanima, looks really cool in the show and it really does have this wild spiderweb at the centre. 

I'll be annoyed if at the ending it turns out the doctor was part of a conspiracy to make him think that he was dying when he actually wasn't dying.

Spoilers below the next picture:

A few hours later: Well, he did actually die, to my surprise. I guess the doctor was in some sense a furphy, because Sixth Sense-like he was always acting alone and even in one case in a rather strange, undoctorlike place, so it was quite plausible that he might be a fake of some sort. But ultimately apparently that was not the situation. The actual 'murder' was a peculiar situation that was semi-flagged early on and might have been obvious - if only because we never really saw the person in question again, until right at the end. 

The whole weird Finland thing for the forest was just a given. I think in the final analysis it was a satisfying show.