In many ways Scandinavian film and television is a global cultural brand, connected with and exporting some of the cultural and social values connected to a liberal and progressive welfare society. This course deals with the social, institutional and cultural background of film and television in Scandinavia and in a broader European and global context.
8.2: The birth of modern television drama, by Professor Ib Bondebjerg
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From the course by University of Copenhagen
Scandinavian Film and Television
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From the lesson
Documentary and Early TV Drama
Scandinavian cinema has a long history of strong documentary film making. The seventh lesson moves from the early documentary filmmakers to the contemporary – global and digital – scene for Scandinavian documentaries. Television drama is important for the Scandinavian public service broadcasters, but the notions of good television drama have changed remarkably from the early days of television up until today. In the eighth lesson we focus on the main tendencies in these developments from 1960 to 2000.
Meet the Instructors
Eva Novrup RedvallAssociate Professor
Department of Media, Cognition and Communication
[SOUND] In the second part of the lecture on television drama before 2000,
I will focus on the development of what you
could call the modern television drama.
This development had to do with the fact that during the 1960s
Scandinavian television became a more hot medium.
Both in the sense that it became the central mass medium,
the medium everybody talked about and related to.
And in the sense that creative talents started to see television
as an interesting medium.
Authors or film directors like Lief Panduro, Klaus Rifbjerg,
Palle Kjaeruiff-Schmidt, and later also Lars von Trier in Denmark,
Bo Widerberg, Lars Noren, Jan Troell, and Ingmar Bergmann in Sweden,
all created highly innovative television in the decades following 1960.
Most of it was created directly for television.
It was not adaptations of literature or theater.
In the 1960s, some of the productions representing the new modern
television drama were still somewhat dominated by stage drama aesthetics.
The visual style was not yet liberated from television studio production and
even though parts of the productions were shot on location and
had the same quality as the new-wave cinema in the same period,
other parts were more traditional television theater.
Another important development, however, was the inclusion of more popular genres,
like crime, in the television fiction.
A merging of high culture and popular culture was gradually taking place.
In Denmark, this merging was happening through
productions from two different departments of the art.
In the television theater department, the mission was to develop original
Danish single plays or mini series with a realistic and modernistic tradition.
In the entertainment department, on the other hand,
the task was to develop new and popular series and serials.
But, in fact, some programs crossed this line.
For instance, the already mentioned crime series by Leif Panduro who
also wrote two more crime series for the theater department.
The Smugglers, in six parts, from 1960 to 1961,
and The Body in the Water in 1968 in six parts.
The same department also in 1982 and
85 tried to make comedy series, although not with great success.
The most important contribution to Danish television drama in
this period however was Leif Panduro's single play series from 1968 to 1977.
Plays that were watched by more than a million Danes and
which gave a serious realistic and symbolic critique of contemporary society.
>> [FOREIGN]
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>> Plays like Goodbye Thomas from 1968,
Bella from 1970, or A Good Life from 1970 let Danes have
a look into the social and psychological life of ordinary people and
they gave an image of a society and a family structure under transformation.
It was plays that showed both the front and
back side of the modern Scandinavian welfare state.
Panduro's plays are at the forefront of modern television realism,
but others followed with realist series.
For instance, the film directors Hans Hantsen and
Hans Kristensen's series, John, Alice, Peter, Susanne and Little Verner,
from 1976 in four parts, a family drama.
Or Klaus Rifbjerg and Palle Kjærulff-Schmidt's melancholy portrait
of Denmark in the 1970s, Our Years, from 1980 in four parts.
An important experiment was the feminist story of the post-war generation
of women called Daughters of War, from 1981 in five parts and
written by some of the most prominent Danish female authors.
>> [FOREIGN]
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>> What we see here on Danish
television is repeated in the other Scandinavian countries.
The New Cinema generation of the 1960s and
70s in fact also renewed television drama.
They brought with them a new authenticity in themes and style and
developed in the new wave cinema of that period.
And they used a more filmic style.
While the television theater department developed strong, realist and
modernist forms of television drama, the entertainment department
developed the longer serial formats in both comedy, drama and crime fiction.
As a comedy series in no less than 84 episodes,
the House of Christianshawn from 1970 to 1977 represents
a Danish version of the British soap Coronation Street,
where we follow a group of people living in the same Copenhagen neighborhood.
The series was made by Nordisk Film and Erik Balling,
who also made Matador from 1978 to 1981 in 24 parts.
This series, which most Danes even today consider
the ultimate Danish historical series.
[NOISE]
>> [FOREIGN]
>> It is a story of Denmark between 1929
and 1947 seen through the people living in a fictional provincial town in Denmark.
This dramatic story of how Denmark changed from an agricultural society
to a modern industrial society is told with both humor and realism.
It has been shown seven times on Danish radio and
is still loved and seen when it's repeated by millions of Danes.
Panduro in Denmark managed with his plays to gather the nation
in front of the small screen, even though the stories he told were
rather depressing stories of families and individuals in crisis.
But in Sweden Ingmar Bergman did the same, although with an even sharper and
more uncompromising analysis of modern life and family life.
Bergman already produced films for SPC from the late 1950s,
both adaptations and original films, for instance The Rite from 1969.
Bergman, or course, took his film style and film themes with him to television.
This is no more visible than in his two masterpieces for television,
Scenes from a Marriage from 1963 in six parts, and Fanny & Alexander from 1982.
Fanny & Alexander was originally conceived as a four-part TV series,
but it was actually first released as a film, for which Bergman won an Oscar.
In Fanny & Alexander, Bergman tells the story of his own family, but
in such a way that it becomes a universal story of opposing forces,
values, and ways of living.
Scenes from a Marriage is the story of the dramatic decay
of Marianne and Johan's marriage with Liv Ullmann and
Erland Josephson as the two main characters.
>> [FOREIGN]
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>> The series is shot in the style of
Bergman's films with an intense, almost unbearable realism with use of medium and
extreme close-ups during the many quarrels and discussions among the two.
They had been married for ten years as the series start.
But in the series we follow them over the next ten years as they split up and
reunite.
We witness scenes of psychological humiliation.
The series showed the Swedish audience the private sides of family life in
a way never seen before on television, and the reaction and debate was strong.
But the series also won several national and international prizes.
In 1996, Bergman's autobiography once again became the foundation for
a film and television series.
This time the Danish director Bille August shot the Scandinavian co-production
Best Intentions both as a film and as a four part television series.
It's a beautifully filmed television drama
taking us back to Sweden in the early 1900s.
And about the unhappy marriage between Bergman's religious
father from a poor family and his rich mother from Uppsala.
The series and
film takes us back to the contrast also portrayed in Fanny & Alexander.
Moving between the city and the grand but cold northern Sweden,
this series is also a story of Sweden and social and
cultural class conflicts around the turn of the century.
The film version won the Palme d'Or in Cannes.
Bergman was not the only director trying to develop a more modern and
realistic television drama in Sweden.
Bo Widerberg made several single drama productions, some of the most interesting
based on plays by writer Lars Norén, who also directed a couple of plays himself.
Bo Widerberg's direction of Hebriana from 1988
is based on Norén's play and is a very strong drama about a family past
suddenly surfacing and creating crisis and trauma.
Bjorn Melander directed a TV version of Noren's already modern
classic The Night is Mother of the Day.
Again, a very harsh, realistic story partly based on
Noren's own childhood experience in Genarp, in Skåne.
He also same year made Chaos is Neighbor to God,
another strong drama about life from the 1960s Sweden.
Like it was the case in Denmark, the new Scandinavian directors and
writers of television drama after 1970 completely changed the landscape and
language of television.
Television became a filmic medium with a special
ability to tell both intimate drama stories and longer epic stories.
Film directors, authors, and playwrights discovered television as an important,
contemporary medium for creative artwork.
The period of the modern television drama in Scandinavia was a period of realism and
modern experiments.
But it was also a period where series formats and
new popular genres began to develop.
The traditional divide between high and
low culture, between avant garde and the popular changed.
For some directors and writers, the play with genres and
conventions on television drama became a place for creative experiments.
But the many forms of television drama developed up til 1990 were
also part of the global influence from English and
American formats that had long been very popular, also on Scandinavian television.
Scandinavian public service channels began developing popular formats that were
clearly inspired by the British/American tradition for long running series.
Public service television was under increased competition with
the introduction of commercial channels, and this was one response.
[MUSIC]
In Sweden, for instance, they had a spectacular success with [FOREIGN],
The Shipping Company, in 318 episodes shown between 1992 and 2002.
In Denmark one of the first examples was Ugeavisen,
The Weekly, in 52 episodes shown in 1990.
But a much more professional and popular version of this serial format was
Taxa in 56 episodes between 1997 and 1999.
Norwegian television made similar series and in 2008 got
a hit with the very popular Himmelblo, Blue Skies, from 2008.
The strength of such long narratives is that you can
establish a broad set of characters and multiple story
lines which can create very flexible thematic stories.
The aesthetic and narrative forms of television in Scandinavia in the 90s began
a travel towards the international breakthrough which followed after 2000,
with Denmark in the lead, followed by Sweden.
It was the crime format and contemporary drama that won international acclaim.
But one of the reasons for
this new development was also a much more filmic language on television.
Lars von Trier showed his ability to play with all the popular formats
in a highly reflexive and provocative way in The Kingdom from 1994 and the sequel.
This highly avant-garde oriented director suddenly found
a big audience with his satanic and absurd ghost comedy.
Another Danish director, Ole Bornedal, also showed the way with his
spectacular thriller comedy Charlot & Charlotte from 1996.
[MUSIC]
>> [FOREIGN]
[MUSIC]
>> Yeah?
>> Pizza.
[MUSIC]
>> In the Scandinavian television drama of the 1990s,
we are far away from the early television theater.
We have arrived in an era of television drama with one foot
in a national context and one in a more global television culture.
And this will be dealt with in the following part of the lecture.
[MUSIC]
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