12/05/2014 - DR is shooting Follow the Money, NRK Occupied and SVT Blue Eyes – all prime-time TV drama

The three Nordic pubcasters – Denmark’s DR, Norway’s NRK and Sweden’s SVT – have all started production of new noir drama series, following up on their other internationally successful programmes, which have received €0.7 million worth of support from the Nordisk Film & TV Fond. 

Following The Killing, Borgen, The Legacy and The Bridge (with SVT), DR is shooting Follow the Money, two seasons (each consisting of ten 60-minute episodes) of a drama-thriller set in the world of finance. Award-winning Danish director Per Fly – who most recently won a Guldbagge for the Monica Zetterlund biopic Waltz for Monica [+see also:
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interview: Edda Magnason
interview: Per Fly
film profile] – will be the conceptual director of the series, which is mainly written by Jeppe Gjervig Gram (Borgen).

Danish actors Thomas Bo Larsen, Natalie Wolfsberg Madueño and Esben Smed play the leads in what is characterised not as a "whodunnit", but a "how did they do it". The actors play an investigator from the Fraud Squad, a young, ambitious lawyer, and a criminal trying to get back on the right track, respectively.

NRK has started principal photography for the 10x45-minute Occupied, from an original idea by Norwegian author Jo Nesbø, scripted by Norwegian screenwriter Harald Rosenløw Eeg (Hawaii, Oslo [+see also:
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film profile], Troubled Water [+see also:
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film profile]) and with Erik Skjoldbjærg (Pioneer [+see also:
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film profile]) as conceptual director. Swedish The Headhunters [+see also:
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film profile]' producer Marianne Gray will produce for Yellow Bird Norge, with France’s GTV Production and ARTE, and the series will star Ane Dahl Torp and Henrik Mestad in the leads.

The programme is set in the near future, after Russia has invaded Norway to control its oil resources – "a 'silk glove' occupation, where Russia is in power, but otherwise life goes on as usual, and people discuss whether it is really worth standing up and fighting". 

Produced by Strix Drama with Film i Väst, SVT’s Blue Eyes is filming in Gothenburg – as a stand-in setting for the interiors of Stockholm’s Rosenblad government building. Written by Alex Haridi, among others, and directed by Henrik Georgsson (The Bridge) and Fredrik Edfeldt, the conspiracy thriller revolves around the disappearance of a politician ten weeks before the general election – and during the campaign, a far right-wing terrorist cell, Veritas, carries out a violent attack.

Programmed for the autumn, Blue Eyes stars Louise Peterhoff as Elin Hammar, chief of staff at Sweden’s Ministry of Justice, who heads up the search for the missing person, with Sven Nordin as the Minister of Justice and Adam Lundgren.