Questioning life choices: Swedish comedy ‘Meaning of Life’

Creators Maria Nygren and Tove Eriksen Hillblom talk about their tale of two sisters navigating the glitch between who they are and who they want to be.

‘Meaning of Life’.

Never has “the grass is always greener on the other side” rung truer than in new Swedish comedy, Meaning of Life. What you think you want is perfect until you have it, and for middle-aged mother Ellen (Helena Af Sandeberg), Courtney Love’s blistering line from Violet sums up her current life with three kids: “You get what you want, and you never want it again.”

In the first episode, Ellen’s son arrives home with his school assignment, a family portrait replete with a sketch of everyone and a caption summarising them. Ellen, who is in the middle of making dinner while fending off requests (“Can I have a sandwich?”), glances at her son’s depiction of her. “Nice”, is how he has summed her up, adding, “Cooks food.”

“Nice!” she splutters to her husband Alex (Ulf Stenberg) that night. “He didn’t even write ‘delicious’ food. Just ‘cooks food’!”

Alex (Ulf Stenberg) with Ellen (Helena Af Sandeberg).

Her husband makes a half-hearted attempt to assuage her, but her son’s dismissal of both her perfunctory cooking skills and her entire identity (is there any descriptor more vicious than ‘nice’?) is the final straw. She determines to do some soul-searching and discover what makes her happy and what purpose she has beyond her domestic life.

Meanwhile, her beautiful and clever sister Alva (Celie Sparre) is navigating the treacherous waters of baby showers as a wannabe mother. “Just don’t think about it and it will happen!” chirps one woman as she bounces an infant on her lap. Alva, emboldened with a few vodka shots pre-party, finally snaps and sarcastically thanks the gang of new mothers for their ridiculous advice before seeking comfort in a couple of takeaway pizzas with her boyfriend Nico (Hannes Fohlin). The two have been trying to conceive without success, and we meet them as they are initiating IVF treatments.

Alva (Celie Sparre) and Nico (Hannes Fohlin). Credit: Jocke Lord

The series, featuring a strong roster of Swedish stars, is the brainchild of Maria Nygren (The Lawyer, now streaming at SBS On Demand) and Tove Eriksen Hillblom (Solsidan), who explore the many pitfalls and everyday triumphs of friendship, sisterhood, marriage, parenthood and the fractured nature of modern society, where loneliness reigns and talking about our struggles anywhere other than with a therapist is taboo.

Hillblom had been undergoing IVF treatments for four years by the time she and Nygren began writing Meaning of Life, so Alva’s journey very much parallels the true travails faced by Hillblom. She became pregnant during the writing phase in 2020 and now has a two-year-old, and a second series of the Swedish drama underway.

‘Meaning of Life’ creators Maria Nygren (left) and Tove Eriksen Hillblom. Credit: Viaplay.

Middle-aged men and women questioning their purpose and choices and having an existential crisis isn’t new to the small screen. This doesn’t daunt Nygren, who explains how they gave it a fresh twist.

“When it comes to universal themes like love and hate, it’s like any subject. We filtered these themes through our point of view to find something new and different. Themes of love, hate, envy and shame are themes we all deal with.”

A moment of contemplation (Jonatan Rodriguez and Helena Af Sandeberg). Credit: Jocke Lord

She adds, “We wanted to talk about shame because as women, especially, we have so much shame but through humour we can bring that to light. If you bring it up to the surface, it’s liberating. We wanted to take what was ugly, horrible and shameful about ourselves and talk about it. This is about our own shame.”

We wanted to talk about shame because as women, especially, we have so much shame but through humour we can bring that to light.

Maria Nygren

Nygren admits this has been her own experience, and Hillblom readily agrees.

“We’ve spoken a lot about wanting to operate in that glitch between who we are and who we want to be as people: there’s tragedy, shame and comedy in that, in all of our inadequacies.”

That early scene in which Alva is attempting to endure her friend’s baby shower is familiar territory for both women, but they identify with different perspectives.

Alva (Celie Sparre) and Nico (Hannes Fohlin) look for a baby shower gift. Credit: Jocke Lord

Hillblom confesses, “I had that a lot. I think all of the people asking me about having a child were coming from a good place, they were curious. It was really hurtful when you’re trying but it’s not working out. I was on internet forums for infertility, and it was something loads of women were going through all over the world, and at the same time there were all these people with unsolicited advice, like ‘just stop trying and it will happen’. I’m going to murder the next person who says that to me!”

Nygren concedes, “I realised I have probably been one of those people so many times with those couples that you know who have been together for so long.”

Sisters. Credit: Jocke Lord

Alva can see her sister Ellen’s life with three children, which doesn’t look appealing on the surface. Why does she still want to have children so dearly, or why hasn’t Ellen’s experience deterred her?

“We only meet Alva and Ellen when they’re having a crisis, so it hasn’t been this way forever,” Hillblom posits. “What Alva wants is life, chaos and to be a part of something bigger, and that extends way beyond fixing meals and picking kids up from school. When we wrote the series, we wanted Ellen’s space to be crowded and busy, where Alva has all this free time. It’s quiet, she can have a nice home, and that sense of freedom for Alva is her prison as well. She wants to have somebody who needs her.”

Nygren chips in, “Ellen’s problem is that she feels she’s needed too much where Alva really longs to be needed.”

Ellen (Helena Af Sandeberg).

It seems inevitable that anyone between 38 and 45, midway between birth and death, is both reflecting on what they’ve done to date and what the reality of the rest of their life will entail. How can something so potentially dark be the fodder for comedy?

“Comedy is the perfect way to address big, deep, intellectual subjects,” enthuses Nygren. “Those existential subjects can be too confronting to talk about any other way. And they are funny. We’re going to die. It’s so absurd that we exist and then we don’t exist, how can the brain comprehend that?”

Hillblom concludes, “When something shitty happens to us, we go ‘this is material!’. You’re crying in a parking lot, so you’ve got to be able to look at it from an outside perspective and laugh about it so that you don’t lie down and cry.”

“Sometimes I lie down and cry, though,” laughs Nygren.

Meaning of Life is now streaming at SBS On Demand.