04/12/2013 - Exiled New York mobster Frank 'The Fixer' Tagliano is ready for new adventures in the Norwegian television series, which will shoot its third season early next year

While the second season of Norway’s so far most successful television series, Lilyhammer, starring US actor (and guitarist) Stevie Van Zandt, will be available to US, Canadian and Latin-American audiences on December 13 via Netflix, Norwegian production outfit Rubicon TV, Norwegian pubcaster NRK and the American streaming service are preparing to shoot eight new episodes for the series early next year.

According to Norway’s Aftenposten, the exiled New York mobster Frank 'The Fixer' Tagliano’s upcoming adventures will be produced on a €15 million budget - a record in Norway, and twice as big as Season 2. Rubicon programme director Anne Kolbjørnsen added that although the full script is still to be finished, and all contracts have not been signed, production is scheduled to start on January 6.

Scripted by Eilif Skodvin, Anne Bjørnstadand their writing team, Lilyhammer 3 still follows the former Mafia boss, once a feared gangster, who has been relocated to Lillehammer by the FBI as part of a witness protection programme. Now an unemployed immigrant in Oppland, after he testified against former associates, ‘The Fixer’ ends up in hospital after a skirmish with some murky guys at a hotel; now he and his associates will try to find them.

The Norwegian Film Institute has chipped in €0.4 million for the Anders Tangen and Jan Erik Gammleng production for Rubicon; the eight episodes will be directed by Simen Alsvik, Øystein Karlsen and Geir Henning Hopland. When Lilyhammer 1 aired in Norway, it registered up to 1.1 million viewers per episode; 922,000 watched the first part of Season 2, and the series has been labelled ‘the most successful Norwegian drama export so far.’