But who will take them to the bouncy castle, make magic dough and lay pearl tiles?
TV CHRONICLE Soon the question will no longer be what the party leaders can do for us, but what we can do for them.
You sort of get the feeling that they need help, if only to say no.
I remember Stina Lundberg Dabrowski’s many interviews with people in power in the 90s and how Margaret Thatcher refused to jump on order.
Dalai Lama jumped. Muammar al-Gaddafi jumped. But Thatcher just said no.
But that was then, and that was her. And here we are now. With media frantically trying to pop to their political coverage in the hope of catching the young and volatile, and politicians who are both single-handedly dumbing down the political conversation on social media and lining up the so-and-so as circus animals, to be seen and heard at any cost.
Ask them to jump and the answer will probably not be no, but an anxious “How high?”.
Of course, it was expected that there would be some long ones months’ journey towards election day already in January, when the Minister of Justice Gunnar Strommer – in a farcical episode of “Skavlan and Sweden” which I hope SVT is still ashamed of – was forced to try to debate punishment for children who commit murder with creti and pleti who gaped straight into the air and propagated for warm hugs.
But still, I didn’t really see this spring coming.
It has been so unworthy. For all of us.
SVT has tried to engage young voters with cutting-edge bets, preferably with an exclamation point in the title, such as “Ask the party leader everything!” with Fouad Youcefi“Politics, politics, politics!” with Daniel Ingmo and Erik Nilsson and “Check the debate with Messiah & Kristoffer”, med Messiah Hallberg and Kristoffer Törnmalm. But of course has received the most attention for Emil Persson’s snarky “The Prejudice Show”, which has been a train wreck in eight episodes that has been hard to look away from. Regardless of whether the party leader in the hot seat has been allowed to talk about sperm and sex in the morning and in cars or just appeared to be generally uneducated.
And when Dagens Nyheter surprised by appointing Edvin Törnblom to party leader interviewers before the electionwas not really the big question whether Åkesson, Kristersson and Bush did right or wrong who refused to be questioned by a person who has previously expressed clear left-wing sympathies – but what on earth did Törnblom have to do with DN’s election journalism from the very beginning, and if the whole move didn’t feel a little desperate?
And just as I started to panic at what SVT thinking of coming up with it in the fall, when the election coverage will intensify and enter its final stage and they may also realize that they have to get some girly presenters in a corner as well, to at worst peek into the party leaders’ bathroom cabinets or do make-up tutorials or god knows what they can underestimate their viewers with next…
Yes, then it went TV4 out with that Mauri Hermundsson going out and practice driving through Sweden with the party leaders in the program series “Who can control Mauri?”, because he is something as original as “curious about the man himself behind the mask”.
And sure. It’s probably not such a stupid move by TV4, because people love Mauri.
But myself, at this point, I’m most curious about how the party leaders and their press managers are doing and are holding up, and whether there is anyone who, contrary to expectations, has had the confidence to turn down this latest play date.
And I’m also curious as to when, or rather if, this infantilization of politics can conceivably come to an end.
Soon we are down among bouncy castles, playdough and pearl plates.
FJELLBORG’S FAVORITES
Alice and Steve
The funny New Zealander Jemaine Clement and the perennial TV favorite Nicola Walker delivers big, awkward and very human humor in this edgy new British comedy on Disney Plus. About two best friends whose relationship is in crisis when one gets together with the other’s daughter.
The witness
Well made and sad true crime about the murder of Rachel Nickell in London in 1992, focusing on how life turned out for her partner and for the couple’s young son, who at the age of barely three became the only witness to the murder. Three parts on Netflix, which has also released a documentary about the events.
Daisy Jones & the Six
A book loosely inspired by Fleetwood Macs history is the basis for this pleasant musical drama with Riley Keough and Sam Claflinwhich chronicles the rise and fall of a 70s band in semi-documentary style. Available on Prime Video before and is now visiting SVT Play.
