The Legacy (Arvingerne), DR’s most popular in-house TV drama series since Better Times (2008), has also played well in Norway where the Danish family saga finished airing on NRK1 April 21, scoring an average viewing of 734,000 (including playback and web) across all 10 episodes.

Similar numbers were reached in Sweden where episode 4 had 735,000 viewers last Monday on SVT1 after a peak of 900,000 for the opening episode. Season 2 has now started filming with Maya Ilsøe attached again as creator/writer.

In Denmark, Season 1 of Arvingerne finished broadcasting in March 2014 and had an amazing share of 61% with average viewers of 1,709,000. 

In Norway the serial’s opening episode had 735,000 total viewers (across all platforms) with episode 3 peaking at 803,000 and episode 10 closing at 673,000. According to NRK, average live rating was 75% of total viewing, against 14% for playback and 11% for the webb. “All in all we are very satisfied with the performance of Arvingane. The average rating is 734,000 for all episodes. In the context of NRK this is a success”, said Espen Blystad, media researcher at the Norwegian pubcaster. 

In Sweden Arvingarna directed by Swedish star Pernilla August kicked off on April 07 at 21.00 on SVT1 and 900,000 Swedes watched the first episode. After four Monday prime time broadcastings, the series has stabilised at around 740,000 according to SVT. Kaj Larsen, project director at SVT Drama said ‘these are good numbers’ for non-crime Scandinavian drama. In comparison SVT’s own family drama Thicker than Water had an average viewing of just under one million. 

Internationally interest has been almost on par with DR’s previous hits Forbrydelsen (The Killing) and Borgen as over 40 territories have acquired the Danish speaking series, from the UK, Poland, Hungary to Azerbaijan.

Filming has now started on Season two of the family saga in which the lives of the four main characters and siblings Gro (Trine Dyrholm), Fredrik (Carsten Bjørnlund), Emil (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard) and Signe (Marie Bach Hansen) will continue to intertwine. The 7 new episodes will start airing on DR1 in 2015 and several broadcasters have already ordered it including NRK.