Royal premieres
Three years after its launch, Scandinavian production company Nordic Drama Queens is unveiling its first three projects. Founders Josefine Tengblad, Sandra Harms and Line Winther Skyum Funch speak to DQ about their ambitions and upcoming series Cry Wolf, Blind Spot and The Scarab Flies at Dusk.
Over the last three years, the international television business has experienced a turbulent time as broadcasters and streamers reassessed their commissioning strategies against the backdrop of a difficult ad market, rising costs, the recovery from the Covid lockdowns and actor and writer strikes in the US.
Producers in Scandinavia have been particularly hit by decisions by Viaplay and Max (formerly HBO Max) to close or reduce their scripted output in the region, while Disney+ is in the midst of changing its own strategy.
Few people would say it has been the best time to launch a new production company. Yet that’s exactly what Josefine Tengblad, Sandra Harms and Line Winther Skyum Funch did in August 2021 when they unveiled their new collaboration, Nordic Drama Queens. The company is now set to roll out its first three projects, all of which are due to air in the coming months.
“It’s kind of interesting because we’ve been busy all the time. We’ve focused a lot on the development slate and we were trying to figure out what the need is in the market,” former Yellow Bird exec Funch tells DQ. “Of course, we were scared when HBO Max closed and then Viaplay and then Disney this summer. But I also think it makes other opportunities because the market was overheated.
“To be honest, maybe there were too many producers, but I think the good ones will survive. There are also new opportunities because there is a need for fiction. It might not be as much but there is still a need for great stories.”
“We love the creative part – we’re obsessed with creating stories – but we also love the finance part and putting that puzzle together to find new ways [to produce series],” Tengblad continues. “We’ve been through the darkest times and now there are new opportunities – and if you like coproductions, that’s really the future.”
“In Sweden, our industry grew like 400% in five years with all the new streamers and commissioners, and we couldn’t keep that up as an industry,” adds Harms. “It was impossible to get the crews and for people to work for normal fees and normal schedules. Something needed to happen and now maybe we are back to where we should be as a country, as an industry. The situation four years ago was just crazy. It wasn’t sustainable.”
Backed by US producer and distributor Fifth Season, Nordic Drama Queens has mapped out a talent-first approach to developing series from both established and uptapped voices, working from offices in Copenhagen (where Funch is based) and Stockholm (home to Tengblad and Harms).
In particular, they have announced a collaboration with The Bridge star Sofia Helin to develop original projects, while they are also using Fifth Season’s contacts books and those of agencies in Sweden and Denmark to partner with other kinds of creatives – from writers to directors and cinematographers – to create series in unconventional ways.
With Fifth Season as a partner, Nordic Drama Queens is also able to greenlight projects in-house at an earlier stage, while their backer takes on that early financial risk until a broadcaster or streamer comes on board.
“We think it’s interesting to start projects from different angles,” says Harms, the former MD of Miso Film Sweden (Lust). “For example, the actor perspective is obviously focused on characters, and that’s something that intrigues us a lot. We’re more into character-driven stories, and if we create projects that a really established actress or actor doesn’t see in the market, that’s most often something that is needed or that can fill some kind of void.”
The company is also working across film and television with both original material and existing IP, such as books, which can often help to fast-track a project through development and into production. In fact, each of its first three series are based on books: Cry Wolf, Blind Spot and The Scarab Flies at Dusk.
The first series, Cry Wolf (Vargasommar) is described as a fresh take on the Nordic noir genre, based on a book by Hans Rosenfeldt, the man who created one of that genre’s biggest titles, The Bridge. He partnered with Camilla Ahlgren on a first version of the series before Snabba Cash duo Oskar Söderlund and Jesper Ganslandt took over writing and directing duties respectively.
The story opens when a wolf is found with human remains in its stomach in tranquil Haparanda, in the northern part of Sweden. The remains are linked to a bloody drug deal across the border in Finland, but how did the victim end up in the woods outside Haparanda, and where have the drugs and money gone? Suddenly, the small border town finds itself at the centre of a chain of brutal events worse than anything police officer Hannah Wester (played by Eva Melander) and her colleagues could have imagined.
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“It’s a different series, a different tone. We really wanted to push Nordic noir a bit,” Tengblad says of the series, which will air on TV4 and CMore this year. “It’s a bit Fargo or No Country for Old Men, in that kind of landscape. There’s also a lot of black humour.
“I’m super excited for when it all comes out. I really think we’ve done something that feels unique. A lot of Nordic noir is plot-driven, but this is more character-driven. So we’re following Hannah and suddenly it turns out to be more about her personal story. It’s also a little bit about how police officers are the last ones to be on the spot [in isolated communities]. They’re coming to these places and they’re like, ‘What happened?’ It’s also human and very emotional.”
Based on the novel 1222 by Anne Holt, Blind Spot introduces the Norwegian author’s detective creation Hanne Wilhelmson (played by Ida Engvoll) as she investigates a series of murders at an isolated mountainside hotel. Confined to a wheelchair following an incident in an earlier book (1222 is the eighth featuring the investigator), Wilhelmson must work out who the murderer is among a group of suspects stranded during a snowstorm, in a locked-room mystery inspired by the work of Agatha Christie.
The four-part series, written by Sara Heldt and director Erik Skjoldbjærg, is due to air on Prime Video in the Nordics next year.
Harms previously attempted to bring Wilhelmson to television, but when the rights were already taken, she instead worked on an adaptation of another Holt novel, Modus. Then, when another opportunity to develop 1222 for the screen came up, “it was just a dream project because I love this character,” the producer says.
“She’s not the obvious, easy, likeable character. She’s very intelligent, she’s a bit grumpy. This is the first book with her sitting in this wheelchair and she has a problem with that. But it’s told with a bit of dark humour.”
Comparing Wilhelmson to Mare Sheehan, the protagonist in HBO’s Mare of Easttown, Harms says the series is also a celebration of Christie, with quirky characters, a mystery and a scenic location.
“I’ve also enjoyed working with the format. It’s four episodes and it’s very much contained, so it has the upside of both a feature film and TV series because you can binge it in one night, but the episodic cliffhangers are still there.
“I’ve also really enjoyed working with Erik. He’s a fantastic director, very visual and very good with the characters and the actors. But since Anne Holt is a very political writer, there is a political dimension in the book that we needed to change because the book is 10 years old, so we have rewritten the story quite a lot, especially the ending.”
Meanwhile, The Scarab Flies at Dusk is a family adventure series based on the novel by Maria Gripe and will air on Sweden’s SVT and SVT Play in 2025. Written by Ditta Bongenhielm (Bonus Family) and Lovisa Milles (Jordskott), and directed by Atle Knudsen (Afterglow), the story is set in the small Swedish town of Ringaryd in Småland during the summer of 1976.
Three children are drawn into a mystery involving a 3,000-year-old cursed Egyptian statue, which has been hidden at the old Selanderska estate for centuries, leading them on an unforgettable summer filled with love, adventure and a mystery larger than they could ever imagine.
The project is a particularly personal one for Tengblad, the former head of drama for Sweden’s TV2/CMore, who has loved the book since she was a child. But when she looked into picking up the rights, she found they were already held by Norwegian producer Monster.
“They were working on a Norwegian series, but then that didn’t work out and they wanted to do a Swedish series, so they reached out to us,” she says.
“But it was a really fun story because the casting director, who was casting it with Swedish children, said they were looking for a Swedish partner,” Harms explains. “She said, ‘I recommended you and another company,’ and I was like, ‘OK, we need to call Monster now.’ Then it happened that Line and Josefine were in Norway so they could just follow it up instantly. But it was really great – it was meant to be.”
Tengblad adds: “We were in Oslo, we had a meeting that was cancelled so I called them and I was like, ‘OK, I’m coming to your office now.’ It was like, ‘My God, who is this crazy lady?’ But then we realised we have the same love and vision for the project.”
Filming on the eight-part series took place in Alingsås in Västra Götaland, with a cast that includes Tomas von Brömssen (Albert & Herbert), Pernilla August (Blackwater), Dag Malmberg (The Bridge) and Lena Endre (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). “So all the grown-up actors are really big names and have such a love for the stories,” Tengblad adds. “Everybody was like, ‘I want to be a part of it’ because a lot of people are connected to the book from when they were smaller.”
With three shows in the can and another 10 projects in various stages of development, Nordic Drama Queens will be taking its first steps into feature films in 2025, while the company also has ambitions to grow internationally with the help of Fifth Season, which is distributing all three series.
“We’re absolutely looking at international collaborations and also coming closer to Fifth Season,” Tengblad says. “Now we’re getting series out, it’s phase two. We need to take it to another level.”
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