The much anticipated Norwegian TV drama Nobel premiered last Sunday to strong numbers on NRK (nearly 800,000 viewers for the first episode) and rave reviews (5 stars in Aftenposten, Dagbladet, VG, Nettavisen). Aksel Hennie stars as a returning soldier from Afghanistan and family man who becomes a pawn in a political international game. The 8 part drama was produced by Monster Scripted with support from Nordisk Film & TV Fond. 

What was the genesis for Nobel? Your producer Håkon Briseid told me that you came up with the idea already during The Half Brother seven years ago?
Per Olav Sørensen: After The Half Brother, Håkon asked: what would you like to do next? I said I’d love to work on a story about soldiers in Afghanistan. One of the reasons is political. Norway sometimes pretends that we’re not there with armed forces and I find it frustrating. I also felt that although we are involved in a number of international conflicts, so far no TV show had really dealt with the subject, how families are affected etc. Nobel’s scriptwriters Mette Marit Bøstad and Stephen Uhlander started to think about this idea and added the political conspiracy element. I felt it was a fantastic challenge to be able to bring to the audience such a complex and engaging story, a thriller and drama about friends, family, politics. 

Nobel has been pitched as a Norwegian Homeland. Do you agree?
POS: I haven’t seen enough of Homeland to be able to judge. But of course, when you deal with a contemporary modern drama about war in Syria or Afghanistan, it holds similarities with Homeland. 

There are few contemporary political thrillers in Scandinavia. Was it difficult to convince NRK and other financiers to come on board?
POS: Of course when you pitch a project that has the words political, contemporary, war…broadcasters don’t willingly open their wallet! They’d rather do Nordic noir, relationship drama or literary adaptations. Now that Nobel has premiered on NRK and that we’ve seen the first ratings, we are very pleased. Half the people who watched television last Sunday watched it and we hope to pass one million viewers by the end of the week. For me, these numbers are extremely important. It proves that people do turn on television to watch a tough contemporary Norwegian drama. 

How did you collaborate with the writers?
POS: The process of getting the skeleton of the story on screen involved quite a lot of work. Towards the end of the writing, we decided to be super realistic. That meant we had to take a different direction. We had to change some scenes because soldiers had to act and think in a different way. 

Did you get support from military specialists for the combat scenes?
POS: Yes. We had the special forces with us every time we moved around with the platoon, and they trained our actors, sometimes 3-4 days just for one scene. It was quite time consuming.

Was Aksel Hennie always in your mind?
POS: All actors had to audition. After the test filming and the audition, we offered the top job to Aksel. We needed someone with screen presence and charisma to lift the project and Aksel did a terrific job. 

You directed every single episode of Nobel. Do you think it's important for a series to have the same director for consistency?
POS: That’s the way I like to work. The good thing is that people can ask me when they have doubts or questions. We did not film episode by episode, but location by location. So for instance one day on one location we film scenes for episode 1, 4, 8, the next day in another place we shoot scenes for episode 3, 5, 7 etc. With this way of filming - which is wiser when you have a limited budget - it’s better to have one director.

Nobel had a NOK 70m budget and your previous dramas The Half Brother and The Heavy Water War (both very successful domestically and internationally) had similar budgets. Was it still tight to be able to deliver the quality that viewers around the world are now expecting from TV drama?
POS: To compete with US dramas that have budgets 10 times higher is quite tough. I’ve delivered three TV dramas produced for the same amount of money. I do believe it’s too little money to make world class TV drama. We need more space in terms of days of shoot, minutes per day, size of the crew etc.

What would be your ideal budget?
POS: If Norwegian broadcasters want to deliver that kind of production value, they would need to add NOK 30-40 million to reach at least NOK 100 million.

Are you tempted to go to Hollywood to work on mega budgets?
POS: I have small kids and I’d prefer to see them grow in Norway, and for me not to leave them behind! Nobel was challenging, but 100% worth it. The good thing is that today, you don’t need to go to Hollywood. Americans can come to Europe. There are many interesting new ways to finance projects in our global market. We’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg on how to do it and I’m very positive about the future. My next project will involve international partners. 

Can you give more details?
POS: We are working on a new eight part TV series about the race between Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen to the South Pole so it will be a Scandinavia/UK co-production. We are figuring out this fall how and where to shoot it and working on the script, financing, pre-cast. TV2 is involved in phase 1 of the development, with Scandinavian TV and Film. In the UK The Artists Partnership (Robert Taylor) is handling phase 1 of the development. We will decide on the main Norwegian producer and UK co-producer in phase 2 of the development. The budget will most probably be higher than Nobel because of the weather conditions needed. With The Heavy Water War, I’ve worked on similar conditions. You need shorter days of work because you can’t have a crew working 12 hours in -25°, so it’s more expensive. The series will be not only about the race between Scott and Amundsen but also about the fall of an empire and the start of a new nation.

Another epic adventure and human drama with strong universal appeal…
POS: I love getting into people’s head and creating drama that is both personal and entertaining.