Lately, I've been very into the 1990s Swedish TV-series "Tre Kronor" and I can't stop watching. It's more addictive than "90210" "King of the Hill" and I have. to. have. more. And more!

It's drama about a bunch of families who live in houses in a Stockholm suburb. They consist of youths, middle-aged and old people who work up a sweat doing everything from dating to killing.

The Oscar for best costume design ever is due to this series, I tell you what:

Every character in the series is pretty straightforward. They're all quite stereotypical and lukewarm (which is the ultimate Swedish characteristic) on the outside, but the writers of this series really put things on their head by sheer imagination. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in the writers' room.

In order to make you see why this series was so great, I'll dive into it. Be spoiler-forewarned! I'm talking Season 1-spoilers at the moment.

For instance, let's try and digest the character Hans Wästberg, introduced as a professionally and personally successful middle-aged salesperson, an everyday family-man whose slightly neurotic wife works at the post office wearing a constant smile; their two children, boy and girl, are perky, pink-fleshed and happy. All's quite well in suburbia.

Now, let the gods of Tre Kronor make their magic happen.

Hans loses his job to somebody else and gets really humiliated in the process. He's too scared to reveal any of this to his wife, so he pretends to still have his job: he wakes up, showers, packs his briefcase, goes from home to...nothing. He tries to get his old job back, but to no avail. Further scoffs from his former boss. As the head of a local municipal board of trustees he starts to embezzle money to pay for his family's house as his bank loan on the house is about to go up in flames. His wife wants to refurbish the house and get a country house as well. The bank wants money fast. Hans starts drinking like there's no tomorrow, loafs around everywhere in his 1990s slacks and tries to stop the downward spiral to no avail. He's damned, and we're having a grand old time watching it.

This is a completely wonderful/surreal/scary bit of video from when Hans visits the local job center and attends a "job training course":

All's not Hell for Hans, as he at one point goes hunting with the boys before which he produces a fabulously unfunny joke:

The man is in pain!

However, all of this fades in the light of what happens at the end of season one. Hans is desperate, at the end of his rope! There's just no way out, and people are now slowly catching on to where the board's money went. He's gonna lose his home! His wife! His kids! Everybody's gonna laugh at him! So what goes down, I hear you think?

BLIZZOW!

The man tries to rob the post office where his wife works while wearing a clown mask and manages to shoot - and permanently cripple - his own son.

If I couldn't restrain myself, the above sentence would be riddled with italics, bolds, curse-words and flash animations of me doing an MC Hammer dance while screaming.

The above is only a quick recap of one of the characters in the family. Like I wrote, there are three more - slightly less - deranged persons in that family. Now, there are a a few more families to go...

Of course some episodes are better than others, but on the whole it's just...great.

A little quote from the absolutely brilliant Tre Kronor-centric blog aptly titled "Tre Kronor" might unleash what Yngwie Malmsteen would refer to as "the fuckin' fjury" regarding one of the episodes in season 1:

Kent Gustavsson super igen och försöker bjuda sin son Jimmy på öl vilket leder till att han blir utkastad av Mimmi. Polisen Torsten misshandlar sen Kent så han börjar blöda. Torstens kollega Leif Sjökvist tycker inte om misshandeln. Lena Sjökvist försöker övertala flyktingen Juan att inte tända eld på sig själv men misslyckas. Verner har fått flytta ifrån sin villa eftersom hans bortgångna fru Märtas söner har sålt den. Istället sover Verner på golvet i omklädningsrummet på Tre Kronor. Ungdomarna har första konfirmationsutbildningsträffen och Bimbo tycker att prästen Kaj är het. Bimbo sitter för första gången i knät på Klimax. Hans Wästberg och hans fru Birgitta bråkar först och har sen försoningssex på soffan och i sängen. Sanna bråkar lite med Abby och sedan helt plötsligt så hånglar dom. Sen säger Abby att han är förlovad hemma i Uganda. Kaj vågar bjuda Pilla på middag men när Pilla ska gå hemifrån kommer Sten Frisk och tumult uppstår. Pilla rusar hem till Kaj och tror att hon har dödat Sten.

There are two things I have to end this post with:

1. I can't believe I've missed this series until now. It's great.

2. I can't believe I wrote this post in English, seeing that this is a Swedish phenomenon. But in a way, I must say any chance of getting it out into the world is worth it. Hence, I'll end it with an English screen-shot: