High Profile Scandi Dramas Selected For Séries Mania Coprod Forum

These brand new Nordic premium dramas in development have been selected with 12 other projects out of 200 international submissions from 33 countries. Laurence Herszberg, founder of Series Mania said: “Our selection was very difficult due to the extremely high quality of the projects submitted. We are very pleased to present co-production projects among the most promising in Europe.”

The projects will be pitched to an audience of 300 international industry people from major companies including Netflix, Amazon, BBC World, Gaumont International, ITV Studios, Red Arrow International, Sony Pictures, Red Arrow International, Zodiak, SVT, TV4 among others.

The Nordic projects are the following:

-The Specialists (8x44’), Denmark
Produced by   Ronnie Fridthjof and Mille Bjørke for Fridthjof Film
Broadcaster    Discovery Networks Denmark/Kanal5
Jesper Fink and Lasse Kyed Rasmussen are main writers for the show based on an original idea by Ronnie Fridthjof.  The Specialists is a US-inspired crime procedural with a traditional Scandi character-driven plot. The main character returns from 7 years with the FBI to head a task force dealing with the most advanced murders. On his first day at work he fires all the assigned cops. He wants to hire the best specialist he can find outside the police even if they are far from your average cops. But the real reason for his return to Demark is soon to be uncovered.

- Warrior (6x45’), Denmark
Produced by Jonas Allen, Peter Bose, Miso Film
Broadcaster TV2 Denmark
Director/writer Christoffer Boe (pictured- Reconstruction, Allegro) is creator of the show, written with Simon Pasternak (Sex, Drugs and Taxation).
The story focuses on a former Danish soldier who served in Afghanistan and tries to get his life back together at home. When he learns that a former soldier and friend has supposedly committed suicide, he decides to find out for himself what really happened and infiltrates a gang. Producer and Miso Film co-founder Peter Bose says Warrior is a thriller with underlying societal and political issues.

- Stella Blomkvist (3x90’) Iceland
Produced by Kjartan Thor Thordarson for Sagafilm
Broadcaster Skjárinn
Jóhann Ævar Grímsson (Trapped, The Shift series) is head writer and Oskar Thor Axelsson (Black’s Game) is directing. The show is based on the Stella Blomkvist book series featuring the hard-nosed lawyer of the same name who takes on mysterious and often dangerous murder cases. Sagafilm Nordic’s CEO Kjartan Thor Thordarson told nordicfilmandtvnews.com that the series ‘will be more LA noir than Scandi noir in its feel and with an enigmatic femme fatale as central character’. Delivery is expected for 2017. Red Arrow International handles world distribution.

- Hidden (8x45), Sweden
Produced by Berna Levin, Marianne Gray for Yellow Bird,
Broadcaster Viaplay, TV3 Sweden/Denmark/Norway
The thriller series is based on ‘Firstborn’, the first novel written by Swedish actor Philip Alexanderson from the prestigious Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. His novel published last year was sold notably to Germany, Finland and the Czech Republic. 

Alexanderson has written the script together with Anoo Bhagavan and both are executive producers. No director has yet been named. Hidden is a dark urban thriller with supernatural elements. It tells the story of the ‘Hidden’, a human sub-species with extraordinary powers. The main character Jonas (28), one of the ‘Hidden’, discovers he is more than human. In the pursuit of his origins, he is thrown into a power struggle going on for hundreds of years. But he is not the only Hidden creature in Stockholm, and that knowledge forces him to flee for his life.