The 40 most popular 1980s swedish TV shows, ranked. Click any show for ratings, reviews, trailers, and where to watch.


På spåret
1987 · SE
På spåret is a popular Swedish TV game show broadcast on SVT since September 5, 1987. The show, which is intended to be humorous yet educational, has remained one of the most popular TV shows in Sweden, attracting an average of 2,150,000 viewers during the 2007 season. The all-time record was set in March 1990, when 3.7 million people tuned in to see the show. This means that nearly every second Swede saw the game show. På spåret is an original format developed by Ingvar Oldsberg for SVT, and he hosted the show for many years. Author and tennis legend Björn Hellberg was promoted from contestant to permanent Oldsberg sidekick in 1995 after winning for four straight seasons. Famous gourmet, restaurant-owner, and former contestant Carl-Jan Grankvist sat in for Hellberg during the 2004 season. In 2009, after 21 years, Oldsberg left and Kristian Luuk took over as the host. Björn Hellberg too decided to leave and was replaced with Fredrik Lindström.


Bingolotto
1989 · SE
Bingolotto is a Swedish highly popular primetime television game show lottery that was first broadcast 1989 on local TV and since 1991 nationwide on the Swedish network TV4. The show is a collaboration work between Swedish TV channel TV4, the Swedish lottery game company Folkspel and the Swedish sports life. The show premiered on 16 January 1989 on the local TV channel Kållevisionen with the highly popular Leif "Loket" Olsson as show host. Since the beginning, the show has give 14.25 billion Swedish crowns to the Swedish sports life centre.


Jane Horney
1985 · DK
No overview available


Fanny and Alexander
1984 · SE
Through the eyes of ten-year-old Alexander, we witness the delights and conflicts of the Ekdahl family, a sprawling bourgeois clan in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Sweden.


Varuhuset
1987 · SE
No overview available


Lorry
1989 · SE
Lorry was a TV series that premiered on Swedish TV in 1989, broadcast from restaurant Lorry in Sundbyberg. In the ensemble were Peter Dalle, Johan Ulveson, Claes Månsson, Lena Endre, Gunnel Fred, Gunilla Röör, Suzanne Reuter, Ulla Skoog, Evamaria Björkström-Roos and Stefan Sauk. They have also done a show on the Tyrol in 1991 and the movie Yrrol in 1994. The series was said to turn to a "divorced and mature youth", which was also the explanation for having the same title as a dancehall in Sundbyberg. Peter Dalle was the central figure behind Lorry. He wrote the most part of the material and also directed the fourth and last season. Carsten Palmaer, Sven-Hugo Persson and Rolf Börjlind also contributed to the script. The Lorry gang became famous for their sharp, offensive and politically incorrect humor, which even led to pressed charges to the broadcasting commission. The TV series's opening credits song was Earth, Wind & Fire's hit "In the stone". The Lorry gang returned in a variety show at the Oscar Theater in Stockholm and it became a huge hit with the audience in 2001–2002. Parts of the show were sketches taken from the TV series.


The Guldbagge Awards
1981 · SE
The Guldbagge Awards is an official and annual Swedish film awards ceremony honoring achievements in the Swedish film industry. Winners are awarded a statuette depicting a rose chafer, better known by the name Guldbaggen. The awards, first presented in 1964 at the Grand Hôtel in Stockholm, are overseen by the Swedish Film Institute. It is described as the Swedish equivalent of the Academy Awards. The awards ceremony was first televised in 1981.


Fem myror är fler än fyra elefanter
1984 · SE
Fem myror är fler än fyra elefanter or Fem myror was a 1973–75 Swedish TV-series for children, hosted by Magnus Härenstam, Brasse Brännström and Eva Remaeus. The TV-series included songs and sketches with education about letters, numbers, positions, etc. Fem myror är fler än fyra elefanter was broadcast first on 19 November 1973 on TV2 by Sveriges Television and it was also broadcast as Julkalendern 27 November –24 December 1977. Fem myror is able to buy on VHS and DVD and there are also PC games.


Antikrundan
1989 · SE
Antikrundan is the Swedish version of the original BBC format Antiques Roadshow. The show visits different locations in Sweden and lets people bring their antiques to be valued by experts. It remains popular and often has more than 2 million viewers. The 19th season was shown in 2009. Most of the experts have been with the programme since the start. Jesper Aspegren was the original host. He left in 1999 and was succeeded by Anne Lundberg. Antikrundan started out as a coproduction between SVT Malmö and the BBC where the Antiques Roadshow would visit Scandinavia for two programmes. Antikrundan premiered in August 1989 on TV2 and has since been shown on SVT every year. Antiques Roadshow is shown on BBC Lifestyle and TV8 in Sweden.


Annika
1984 · UK
Pete, an eighteen year old Isle of Wight deck chair attendant, meets fifteen gear old Swedish exchange student Annika. After a holiday romance, he follows her back to Sweden.


Jonsson's Wednesday
1983 · SE
About a Mr. Jonsson and who in the series functions as a somewhat unorthodox and incoherent program presenter of comedy, gags and music.


Svenska Hjärtan
1987 · SE
No overview available


Gösta Berlings saga
1986 · SE
No overview available


Alla vi barn i Bullerbyn
1989 · SE
No overview available


Ture Sventon, privatdetektiv
1989 · SE
Private eye Ture Sventon solves crimes in Lingonboda, the Arabian desert, London, and Stockholm. His secretary, Ms. Jansson, and good friend, Mr. Omar aids him in the constant battle against his arch-enemy, Vilhelm Vessla. Based on the books by Åke Holmberg.


Lösa förbindelser
1985 · SE
No overview available


Lycka till
1980 · SE
No overview available


Polisen i Strömstad
1982 · SE
No overview available


Zvampen
1984 · SE
No overview available


Dubbelstötarna
1980 · SE
A school principal and a doctor plan to rob a bank.


Tre kärlekar
1989 · SE
No overview available


Nöjesmassakern
1985 · SE
No overview available


Rädda Joppe - död eller levande
1985 · SE
No overview available


Profitörerna
1983 · SE
Two crime detectives are handled a tricky case to investigate. A prostitute has been brutally murdered in her studio. The landlord runs a brothel.


Nutcases & Normals
1988 · SE
A young girl cuts off her hair as a protest against her mother and is mistaken for a boy at her new school.


En himla många program
1989 · SE
No overview available


A Road to Gyllenbla!
1985 · SE
Ratio Rasch, the president of planet Gyllenblå, has banned laughter and emotions in order to create a society based on reason. Police are constantly patrolling the planet and anyone caught laughing is imprisoned and given anti-laughter serum. Only a few members of an underground guerrilla oppose the president. On Earth, the eccentric Dr. Krull listens to signals from outer space and realizes that something needs to be done so he sends the two children Cecilie and Fredrik to Gyllenblå. Epicykel, a guerrilla member, senses their presence and hopes to get to them first but fails. The children are put in school, where Fredrik has great difficulty controlling his laughter but Cecilie adapts well. The guerrilla knows that laughter is contagious and Fredrik gives them new hope of returning laughter to the people of Gyllenblå.


Xerxes
1988 · SE
No overview available
Mimmi
Mimmi
1988 · SE
No overview available


Dubbelsvindlarna
1982 · SE
Principal Bertilsson lives a peaceful small-town life in Kalmar. No one knows that he is hiding a million kronor in his basement. Money of a successful bank robbery.


Babels hus
1981 · SE
No overview available


Ronja Rövardotter
1986 · SE
No overview available


Åshöjdens BK
1985 · SE
When the legendary football player Bagarn Olsson moves to small town Åshöjden, the boys learn how to kick some balls, and to rock n' roll with The Nautilus.


Stjärnhuset
1981 · SE
Follow the storyteller Mytha and the boy Astro into the world of constellations and fairy tales. On a dark winter evening when it is snowing and windy, Mytha and Astro come climbing up the mountain. Together they set out into the world of astronomy and Astro learns the stories behind the constellations in the sky, Greek mythology.
August Strindberg: A Life
August Strindberg: A Life
1985 · SE
A mini-series about the life of Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter, August Strindberg. He is portrayed as a misogynous, selfish and racial. And he loses everything, for the sake of the art.


Sagan om Skrotnisse och hans vänner
1985 · SE
The story of "Skrotnisse" and his son "Kalle" who works at a junk yard, and the adventures they experience.


Macken
1986 · SE
Macken is a Swedish 6-part musical sit-com that ran on SVT in 1986. The local authority wants to close down Roy and Roger's gas station and instead build a motorway where it is positioned. Roy and Roger try to stop it, of course. Will they succeed? Will they find the mysteriously lost white Opel?


Guld!
1988 · SE
In little Bergforsen, everything would be peaceful if it weren't for two hitchhiking ladies from Stockholm and an ill-fated gold transport.


Julstrul med Staffan och Bengt
1984 · SE
In the sparsely populated region of Västerbotten lies "Oskars Koopra", a privately owned cooperative store run by Oskar himself. When he leaves for his first holiday abroad, Staffan Ling and Bengt Andersson take over as temporary replacements at the small shop.


Ringlek
1982 · SE
Scrutinizes the sexual morals and class ideology of its day through a series of encounters between pairs of characters, shown before or after a sexual encounter. A prostitute is cheated out of her money by a drug-dealer, in the next scene the dealer seduces a maid, who in turn is hit by the son of her employer, and so on, until an actress engages in a little hanky-panky with the count, who - and this is where the circle joins - in a final scene ends up at the prostitute's apartment.
1980s television saw the serialized primetime drama take hold and cable begin to fragment the audience that networks had held uncontested for thirty years.
Swedish television exported Nordic noir — bleak landscapes, procedural patience, institutional rot — and in doing so set the template a generation of European crime drama followed.