Swedish drama Cell 8 might not be a series you’d expect to cross over with a high-profile Hollywood blockbuster, but it does – though you might have to look closely to spot it.
“We filmed in Estonia, which is a very tiny country,” says series director Johan Brisinger from his home in Sweden. “But we got lucky; the production company had just finished working on Tenet, the Christopher Nolan film. There was a lot of stuff left over from that film, and we got to use it in our series.” So make sure to pay attention to the phones and police cars – they came fresh from one of the biggest Hollywood movies of recent times.
‘Cell 8’ director Johan Brisinger. Credit: Viaplay
Cell 8 is a Nordic Noir with a twist. Much of the story, both in the past and the present, takes place in the USA. “It’s a slightly different touch to it,” says Brisinger, “but it still comes down to the Nordic tradition of characters having flaws, they’re dysfunctional detectives who are good at their jobs but struggle with the problems outside of work.”
The six-part series begins on a ferry between Finland and Sweden when a singer named John Schwarz comes to the defence of a woman being harassed by a drunk. Though perhaps “defence” isn’t the right word – the drunk ends up in a coma, and Schwarz is arrested in Stockholm and charged with assault.
Leonard Terfelt as Detective Ewert Grens. Credit: Kalle Veesaar
But as the police team of Ewert Grens (Leonard Terfelt) and Mariana Hermansson (Mimosa Willamo) investigate, they discover Schwarz is a false identity. Who is he really, and what connection does he have to John Meyer Frey (Freddie Wise), a teenager on Ohio’s death row who died six years earlier before he could be executed?
Cell 8 is the second mini-series to feature Grens and Hermansson in a TV adaptation of popular crime novels by authors Anders Roslund and Borge Hellström; they also appear in Box 21 (now streaming ).
Mimosa Willamo as Detective Mariana Hermansson. Credit: Kalle Veesaar
For Brisinger, coming onto the series with the second instalment was a bit like becoming the coach of a sporting team.
“They hand you the team and then you try and figure out what they all bring to the project. Leonard and Mimosa, they were so sweet. I mean, there were no egos, no problems, it was a delightful experience. And I got a chance to have my say on a lot of the parts that weren’t previously cast. I was very, very happy that I got a chance to work with this British actor (Richard Lintern) that I got to choose. So I feel like I contributed a lot even though I was like the new man on board.”
Richard Lintern as Ohio Governor Edward Finnigan. Credit: Benjam Orre
As a Swedish series filmed in Estonia and partially set in the United States, finding accurate locations was a bit of a challenge. “It was difficult, we’ve seen so many shows that are shot in the United States, so people have a very good reference for what is believable as an American setting.”
Fortunately Brisinger had spent a number of years living and working in California, where filming commercials had given him plenty of experience when it came to creating a setting with very little. “I’m very familiar with the American culture. Sometimes you just have to be smart with shooting a specific angle and if you dress the set with enough cars, it looks real. The devil is in the details.”
A bigger challenge was finding a prison that could believably pass for an American institution. “I did tons of research trying to see if there was a common theme but no, the prisons from state to state look very different. It was still very difficult, trying to get inside a prison in a Baltic state is kind of suicidal, but we managed to get permission to shoot inside a brand new prison. Sometimes you get lucky.”
Freddie Wise as death row prisoner John Frey. Credit: Benjam Orre
“I do think that I brought attention to the emotion. I always say that I want the audience to feel something. If they don’t feel they don’t care, it doesn’t matter if the plot is fantastic. In this case, we did a lot of work on the script, because I was very keen to make it as personal and as poignant as possible. If you don’t care for the love story then you wouldn’t care about the main protagonist’s journey, so that was very important for me.”
Focusing on the characters as people also helps the series put the brutality of America’s system of capital punishment into sharp relief.
“In the limited time I had before pre-production I researched the American prison system and especially death row, and I was shocked,” says Brisinger. “I was completely shocked about the rules and tradition of capital punishment, just the procedures around capital punishment and death row.”
John Frey (Freddie Wise). Credit: Kalle Veesaar
While the original novel had been heavily researched, Brisinger was still able to add something new to the story.
“I added an element to the script that wasn’t there. It’s called the Death House which is where they put the prisoners in the final 24 hours before they’re executed because they’re worried they might try to kill themselves. I found that insane, they put this person under surveillance, they have the lights on in the cell, they have guards making sure that the execution doesn’t falter because of the prisoner committing suicide, which is a paradox of gigantic proportions.”
This isn’t Brisinger’s first time working on a crime series but it is the first time he’s worked on a Swedish-set Nordic Noir. He takes some justifiable national pride in the way the genre has become a success around the globe.
“It’s evolved a lot since the beginning and it’s now applied to a lot of different shows and films. But as a Swede, I am so happy that we’re getting the recognition for this genre.”
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Cell 8 - season 1 episode 1
