Spain-Nordics strengthen co-pro ties as Barcelona’s Serielizados fete A Better Man

For the second consecutive year, Nordic series won the top prize at Barcelona’s Serielizados TV Festival. After SVT’s Pressure Point (Smärtpunkten) in 2024, on Saturday NRK’s drama A Better Man (Ølhunden Berit) received the Best Series Award, on top of the Popitas Audience Award, voted for by the festival audience across all series in the Spanish and international competitions.

The Norwegian drama, which scooped three awards at the last Canneseries, will launch in Spain via the streaming service Filmin.

As a proof of Serielizados’ taste for Nordic series, A Better Man was one of four Nordic series selected out of a six-title international competition. All four series were backed by Nordisk Film & TV Fond (NFTVF).

The Swedish/French war drama A Life’s Worth was introduced by director Ahmed Abdullahi, Icelandic/French dramedy The Danish Woman (Danska Konan) by star actress Trine Dyrholm and creator/director Benedikt Erlingsson, who delivered a masterclass, while actor/showrunner Oláfur Darri Ólafsson was on hand for Reykjavik Fusion. This crime drama will launch in Spain on December 10, through AMC+.

Other Nordic shows on display included the NFTVF-supported Vanguard (Stenbeck), commissioned by SVT; TV 2 Norway’s Nepobaby, whose showrunner Henriette Steenstrup wooed audiences at an onstage conversation; as well as the docu series The Black Swan (Den sorte svane, TV 2 Denmark) and The Agent: The Life and Lies of My Father(Agenten - Pappas liv og løgner, NRK).

“The Killing (Forbrydelsen) and Borgen are total references for our creatives and industry in terms of quality and storytelling. We always have series from the five Nordic countries,” said Serielizados co-founder Víctor Sala, who with his long-time friend Betu Molero transformed what was originally a university project into a diversified online magazine, a festival, a young talent lab, and a podcast platform.

Today, the festival’s audience is one of the largest in Spain, through cinema sneak-peeks of the hottest national and international shows, attended by nearly 10,000 visitors, on top of more than 200,000 online viewers via a collaboration with Filmin.

Originally founded with the mandate to raise the profile of series to the rank of high culture in Spain, Serielizados has gradually widened its scope thanks to its industry sidebar Serielizados Pro, set up to boost collaborations between the booming Spanish/Catalan audiovisual industry and European partners, including from the Nordics.

In fact, this year, Serielizados Pro’s first co-pro pitch session Mind the Gap was organised with the support of - among others - the Göteborg Film Festival, the Swedish Institute, and the Embassy of Sweden in Spain, which selected one Swedish series in development for the 10-title pitch event.

Oskar Söderlund new series

Produced by Ivy Prodco, the five-part true crime The Man Who Replied to a Nigerian Letter (Mannen som svarade på ett Nigeriabrev), created by seasoned writer Oskar Söderlund (Snabba Cash, The Breakthrough), is based on Sveriges Radio P3’s documentary Miljonbedrägeriet: Mannen som svarade på ett Nigeriabrev.

IT manager Magnus Gruvén, from the small town of Ekerö, suddenly sees his whole world collapse after answering an email about an inheritance. Drawn into a Nigerian letter scam, he becomes the victim of the largest swindle ever perpetrated against a Swedish individual in modern times. “It’s a gripping and spectacular true story that unfolds across several countries, which makes it organically suited for international co-production,” said producer Eleonor Sage, who co-founded Ivy Proco a year ago with former FLX CEO Pontus Edgren and seasoned writer Ulf Kvensler.

Speaking to Nordisk Film & TV Fond post-Serielizados, Sage said: “The Pro Industry sessions and the one-on-ones were inspiring, and it goes without saying that we’ll need to build more international partnerships to fully finance our projects. Spain has a very dynamic and forward-thinking market that, I believe, both resonates with Scandinavian storytelling and complements it beautifully. Spain is also a great place to shoot projects like ours, that takes place in different countries,” she added.

Two Spanish series with international potential were bestowed the Mind the Gap Pitch Awards: the thriller/sci-fi Fortune Cookie, produced by Newen Studios’ production banner Kubik, and the YA show Precarity Fair, produced by KaBoGa.

Spanish/Nordic Ties

Sitting on the Mind the Gap five-member jury were Nordic decisionmakers Jarmo Lampela (Head of Drama, Yle) and Sonja Hermele (Executive Producer, SVT), who also took part in the panel Pubcasters Collaborating and Making Series, with Alberto Fernández from the Spanish national broadcaster RTVE Play and Pío Vernis from the Catalan station 3Cat.

“It’s always great to connect with other commissioners and talk about the challenges we all face. Co-productions are key,” said Hermele. “Without them, we couldn’t offer audiences the kind of drama they expect today.”

Among other things, the TV executives discussed the 2023 hit This is Not Sweden (Aixó no és Suècia), produced by Spain’s Nanouk Films and Funicular Films in co-production with Anagram Sweden, RTVE Play, TV3 (now 3Cat), SVT, Yle, and NDR. The show became a massive audience and festival success, and scooped the Prix Europa-Best TV Fiction. A second season is soon to be greenlit.

Miira Paasilinna, Managing Director of Anagram Sweden, said she is looking into co-producing with Spain again, notably through Anagram’s parent company Studio TF1 and its Spanish banners. “Spain has a very lucrative tax incentive, one of the best ones in Europe. There are experienced crews here, and of course much more sunshine and light than we have in the North. It’s a vast country, with all types of locations and nature,” she noted.

Another high-profile production outfit, Iceland’s Act4, which was present at Serielizados with Reykjavik Fusion, intends to maximise Nordic content access to Spain’s competitive industry eco-system and further afield, via its first-look deal with Madrid-based heavyweight Secuoya Studios.

“Secuoya has multiple sound-stage facilities which we can use for our productions, which means that we can continue to bring our stories to the world and engage from multiple angles,” said Act4’s CEO and Executive Producer Jónas Margeir Ingólfsson. For him, the strong bond between Iceland and Spain goes way beyond film and TV drama. “We’ve been exporting fish to Spain for centuries, and it’s our most popular destination - especially Tenerife, to the point where it’s one of the few places in the world where restaurants have menus in Icelandic!”

At last year’s Serielizados Nordisk Film & TV Fond’s CEO Liselott Forsman gave a presentation on the Nordic drama series industry.