“Trio” seduces with a fancy production and a timeless feeling
Updated 12.10 | Published 12.02
TV REVIEW Johanna Hedman’s “Trion” has become a well-made and languishing TV series about young love, anguish and consequences.
With fine performances by both established actors and new finds.
The trio
Sky show time
Six parts
By Veronica Zacco, with August Wittgenstein, Felix SandmanSeth Manteus, Rebecka Harper, Nina Zanjani, Adam Pålsson, Alfonsina Bejarano.
DRAMA. The first, tentative but formative years of adulthood are portrayed with fine feeling and a seductive nostalgic setting in Skyshowtime’s latest, and so far best, Swedish series “Trion”, which is based on Johanna Hedmans book from 2021.
It’s about two guys and a girl who, during a period in their 20s, form a dynamic trio, where the boundaries between friendship, love and sex are fluid and will create ripples that affect them even as they grow older. And so the story is told in two different timelines.
One in the past, when the Scanian literature student Hugo (Seth Manteus) moves up to Stockholm and into the affluent Stiller family’s stately apartment in Östermalm, and meets daughter Thora (Rebecca Harper), who studies law, and her best friend and occasional lover August (Felix Sandman). An artist’s soul and party junkie who is sometimes up and sometimes down, and sleeps with both women and men.
And one in the present, when a middle-aged Hugo (August Wittgenstein) is approached by Thora and August’s daughter (Alfonsina Bejarano). Her father died young and her mother (Nina Zanjani) never seems to have gotten over Hugo, and now she wonders what really happened between the three of them.
The answer is complicated, and included in the picture are both attachment problems, mental illness and a clear class aspect.
Veronica Zacco has written scripts and Anders Hazelius has directed, and together they have made a series that doesn’t skimp on anything, apart from possibly a few lines of dialogue here and there.
It’s beautiful, wistful and well-played and atmospherically scored, with an impressive harmony between the youthful perspective and the older, and an overall sense of tech-free timelessness that’s both pleasing and refreshing.
Everything is characterized by a longing to return, but whether it is to the youth or to another, simpler time, is unclear, and does not matter either.
Here there are parallels to be drawn to slightly sharper series such as “Normala männer” and Lisa Linnertorps young adult triumph “Threesome”. But perhaps the closest comparison is rather Tomas Alfredsons interpretation of Ingmar Bergman’s “Trolösa” in SVT last yearwhich was also a triangle drama with Wittgenstein in one of the main roles, and also had a very similar plot.
And there “Trio” wins, on emotionally convincing and more seamless transitions between then and now.
“Trion” premieres on Skyshowtime on June 1.
