NRK’s series ZombieLars 2, Couples Therapy, DR’s kids crime Guilty, SVT’s reality format Blackout and arts show She Composes Like a Man are all competing

The 58th Rose d’Or awards ceremony is organised for the first time by C21 on behalf of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

A jury of 60 media professionals presided over by Swedish star Sofia Helin has selected 60 programmes across 10 competing categories, including five Scandinavian shows.

Reflecting Scandinavia’s strong tradition of quality content aimed at children & youth, two of the six top international programmes for the younger age group are from Norway and Denmark. 

  • ZombieLars created by Thomas Seeberg Torjussen and Gisle Halvorsen for Tordenfilm Norway, is nominated with its second season. The high concept show with zombies and witches, dealing with fitting in, has been a hit series on NRK Super across three seasons and also aired on DR, SVT and Yle. It picked up Best Children & Youth Series at this year’s Norwegian Gullruten TV awards. Season 1 was supported by Nordisk Film & TV Fond. Global Screen handles distribution.

  • Guilty (Skyldig) produced by DR, is one of the few crime shows created for children aged 7-12. The 24X12’ Danish series opens with a school fire and continues with a police interrogation in which the protagonists alternately have to reflect on the whodunit. It premiered on DR Ultra last May.

In the comedy section, Couples Therapy (Parterapi) from Norway is a strong contender running against Germany’s Kroymann, British shows Famalan, This Time with Alan Partridge, Canada’s Baroness von Sketch Show and Israel’s Shabas.
The short form comedy produced by Seefood TV has been a runaway hit for NRK and was recently acquired by DR for a Danish remake, produced by Nordisk Film TV. A Swedish version produced by Jarowskij premiered recently on Kanal5 Sweden. A fourth season is in development at NRK. Magnify Media handles format rights.

SVT is running in the Reality and Factual category with Blackout (Powerless). The ground-breaking format centres on a once-in-a-lifetime social experiment designed to see what happens to a group of strangers when all the electricity disappears from society. The programme had a 16.6% share and 450,000 unique viewers per episode on SVT.

The Swedish pubcaster’s other contender She Composes Like a Man produced by Peiling Film & TV is vying in the Arts category. The mini-series narrated by Norwegian conductor Cathrine Winnes focuses on strong female composers.