HBO Max has ordered a daring Swedish comedy series entitled “Lust” from Fremantle-owned banner Miso Film, ahead of its launch in Sweden.
The new Max Original half-hour series will be headlined by Sofia Helin (“The Bridge”), Anja Lundqvist, Julia Dufvenius and Elin Klinga as four middle-aged women in Stockholm who have been friends since school and are struggling to keep their libidos alive.
The series starts with one of them, Anette, getting commissioned to conduct a government survey dubiously dubbed ‘Make Sweden Sexy Again.’ She starts looking into the sex lives of Swedish women over 40 who have to juggle their careers, kids, marriages, divorces and physical shape.
Directed by Ella Lemhagen (“The Crown Jewels”), the series is written by Frans Milisic Wiklund, in close collaboration with Åsa Kalmér, Dufvenius, Helin and Lundqvist.
The show is produced by Sandra Harms and Karl Fredrik Ulfung at Miso Film, and executive produced by Christian Wikander and Camilla Curtis for HBO Max.
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Wikander said “’Lust’ represents (HBO Max’s) ambition with HBO Max to bring together brilliant creators and talent, on and off screen, to craft truly special series that offer our audiences something different.”
“Firmly rooted in Sweden but centred around universal themes like sex, relationships and getting older, there is great potential for it to resonate globally too,” added Wikander.
Helin, who is passionate about the show, said she remembered a book in her childhood home that had been “completely torn apart by all the girls and women of the family” — it was a sex survey titled “The Hite Report,” a 1976 bestseller by American feminist Shere Hite.
Helin said “getting an insight into the adults’ most intimate rooms and understanding how different everyone is when it comes to sex was astounding.”
“When me and my friends as adults mentioned that we actually talk to each other about everything but our sex lives, we recalled Shere Hite’s groundbreaking sex survey. It turned into long conversations with a lot of laughter,” said Helin. The actor said it was “vulnerable subject and therefore so liberating to be able to laugh together.”
Harms, meanwhile, described “Lust” as “a series about female sexuality that makes you laugh, touches you, entertains you but also shines a light on the times we live in.” The executive said the project has been “completely obvious to do” from the day the idea was presented to them.