Next in line

Generationer (Generations), the latest flagship drama from Danish broadcaster DR,  takes viewers into the mystery behind a shocking discovery that leads one family to reconsider the past. Creator Anna Emma Haudal dissects the themes behind the show and reveals her writing process. 

As the latest series from Danish public broadcaster DR, Generationer (Generations) comes from a distinguished and noble television lineage.

At home and more recently around the world, DR has become known for groundbreaking and acclaimed series covering topics from crime and politics to social issues and the invention of electric hair curlers. Notable titles include Forbrydelsen (The Killing), Bron/Broen (The Bridge), Borgen, Bedrag (Follow the Money), Arvingerne (The Legacy), Ulven Kommer (Cry Wolf), Når støvet har lagt sig (When the Dust Settles), Carmen Curlers and Huset (Prisoner).

Now, with Generations, DR presents a story about family secrets – but it’s one that even creator, head writer and lead director Anna Emma Haudal struggles to describe.

“It’s very much itself. It’s kind of unique and it’s difficult to put in a box,” she tells DQ ahead of the drama’s world premiere at Series Mania tomorrow. “It’s also a mix of genres. It is based on a crime and mystery plot, but it’s more a family drama because the ‘crime’ and the mystery is inside the family. It’s not about a police case.”

The opening episode also teases elements of horror, though that might just be one example of how Haudal wants to play with viewers and keep them engaged in the riddle at the heart of the story.

“It’s smart to play with what the audience thinks they will see, and then give them something else,” she says. “And I love surprises myself. I hate to figure it all out before the end of the show, so that’s why I’m interested in that kind of storytelling.”

Generations opens with a shocking discovery – the mummified body of an infant child found in the recesses of an apartment building in Frederiksburg. In this same block lives 87-year-old Martha, who surprises her family and those around her with the admission that she killed the child – an unexpected confession that turns their world upside down and leads them on the path to uncover long-buried secrets and a complex history spanning generations.

Produced by DR Drama and distributed by DR Sales, the show’s ensemble cast is led by Ulla Henningsen, Anette Støvelbæk, Rikke Eberhardt Isen, Alice Bier Zandén, Jan Linnebjerg, Simon Sears and Albert Arthur Amiryan.

One of the central themes behind the six-part series is how different generations of the same family can influence each other indirectly. It’s a subject that stems from Haudal’s interest in epigenetics – the study of how behaviours and environments affect the way genes work without affecting the DNA code itself – and the theory of ovarian intergenerational continuity – that a woman’s eggs were present in her mother’s womb, highlighting a profound link between generations of women.

“It was kind of mindblowing for me to realise that I have been in my grandmother, because my egg was in my mother, in my grandmother,” Haudal says. “So what our grandparents experienced has very big influence in the way we behave, but also our genetics and how we face life. We think we are so much in control all the time as humans, but we are not in control.

“That’s also a big theme in the story, because these women are all women who want to be in control, but they are not.” That the story takes place during the Covid pandemic heightens that feeling of loss of control and ownership over your own decisions. “So there are a lot of layers to this,” she adds.

Shame, especially female shame, is also a big theme in the show. It stems from Haudal’s relationship with her grandmother, who had to hide the fact she was pregnant with the writer’s mother as she was unmarried. Then when Haudal became pregnant with her first child, “I felt so much shame and I didn’t know where it came from. I didn’t want to share it with anyone and I didn’t want to talk about it.”

Her grandmother later died during the pandemic, “so everything in my own life suddenly went into the show. It’s thinking about how we are connected in generations, even though we are trying not to be, and also the fact that if we see something in our parents that we don’t like, we can be sure we have it as well.”

Shaping these themes into the story of a family of different generations, Haudal then drew on her unique creative process to write the scripts.

“I work very intuitively, so I don’t think these things through. When I create, I always imagine that the creation already exists, it’s out there, and my job is to figure out what it is, what it wants, how it looks and what’s inside it,” she explains. “I do a lot of meditation work when I write. I’m not really a plot maker and I hate thinking when I’m writing. Then I take some steps [backwards] and use the toolbox of dramaturgy when I see something’s wrong or if it doesn’t work.”

While Haudal has previously written on other people’s projects, Generations marks the first time she has partnered with another writer on one of her own shows, working alongside Rune Schjøtt-Wieth (Julefeber, The Rain) to pen the series.

But owing to her creative method, the partnership “was a process we figured out together,” Haudal says. They would share scripts they had written with each other before Haudal took a final pass over everything.

“It was also a very intuitive collaboration because we always did what felt right in the moment,” she notes. “But he’s always also been my playmaker. He’s been the one I called when I was stuck, when I was scared, when things didn’t work out. He was the only one that had all the characters in his head and in his body and had been through all the conversations. So he has been a very important person in the whole development. Later on when we finished writing and I was in the editing room and I had questions, he was also the one to call, because he understood what we were doing.”

Through the writing process, a major consideration was exactly how to reveal the secrets of the central family. Haudal knew the story would have to go back in time at some point, but she didn’t want to just flash back to Martha’s past – a move that “felt wrong.” Instead, she uses “more cinematic” devices, such as archive home video footage to reveal some backstory.

“A flashback can be for the safety of the audience’s understanding, and I don’t like that,” she says. “I don’t want to give too much away, but I like to keep the audience in their chair and not going for coffee while they’re watching. There have been a lot of different ways it has been on paper, in the scripts. There were a lot of versions before we landed on the right one.”

The writing process was an ongoing one, as the scripts changed through production and again in the edit room, where scenes were cut and layers added. The sound mix further accentuates the drama on screen.

But two things were set in stone from the off: the opening scene, where the infant is discovered, and the series’ closing moments. “I always knew how the last episode should end, and the musicality of the last episode,” Haudal says. “Every episode also has its own kind of life. They are not different from each other like it’s a whole new story or a whole new universe, but they have their own little ingredients. That’s what I like about television; it’s so open, you have so much time to try different things out, and the audience is getting more and more open to watching in new ways.”

That Haudal was also the conceptual director on the series meant she was able to infuse the scripts with her visual ideas for the show. Because she has directing experience, she was also “much more focused” on writing scenes that could actually be achieved in production, and on creating characters that could attract a top cast.

In fact, the casting process began before the scripts were locked, as Haudal sought to use the actors to shape the characters they would play. She also likes to cast lesser-known actors in Denmark and give them a chance to go for bigger roles.

“We look at everyone,” she says. “Denmark is a small country so we don’t have so much to choose [from]. But the actors you see in this show are not very famous. They used to have to be when it comes from DR, because it’s the national broadcaster. Because of the money, people are always a bit scared of trying something new, but I insist.”

Haudal may well have experienced that same fear, with Generations marking her first series for the flagship DR1 network. She previously wrote and directed all 24 episodes of DR3’s Doggystyle, a shortform series about a young woman whose life appears perfect on social media but is under pressure to get a job is she wants to return to her life in Copenhagen, far away from the isolated family home to which she must return.

“I promise myself not to create with fear, both personal fear but also the fear of people not liking it, or the fear of someone thinking it was too weird – all these monsters that can be around creators all the time. But it felt very natural to me to make this kind of show,” she says of Generations. “I always knew it was a step I would take since I left film school. So in some ways, I’m not surprised. I was not scared, but of course you feel the pressure.”

Behind the camera, Haudal reunited with Doggstyle cinematographer Valdemar Winge Leisner, while she teamed up with production designer Helle Lygum Justesen when casting began to help integrate locations into the scripts.

Filming took place in and around Copenhagen – Fredriksburg is an independent municipality within the Danish capital – with Martha’s apartment the only set that was built from scratch to ensure it had the exact feeling Haudal wanted for one of the story’s main settings.

It’s a story Danish viewers won’t have long to see. Following its premiere at Series Mania in Lille, Generations will debut on April 11 on streaming platform DRTV ahead of its linear debut on DR1 on April 13.

When the show does launch, Haudal hopes viewers find themselves connected to the characters as much as the characters are connected to one another, and enjoy a mystery that will keep them guessing to the end.

“Of course, it is a challenge to make a story that has so many layers, so it took me a lot of rewrites to make it all connect so it felt like the same story,” she adds. “I don’t like one-line stories. I need more layers because I get bored writing. I would also get bored as a viewer if I could figure it all out from the beginning, so that was the biggest challenge for everyone in the team, to keep all these things under control all the time and remember how it all affects each other.”

tagged in: Anna Emma Haudal, DR, DR Drama, DR Sales, DRTV, Generationer, Generations