HBO Max Greenlights New Swedish Comedy Series

HBO Max has greenlit Lust, a Swedish comedy series produced for the platform by the Fremantle company Miso Film Sweden.

The Max original is an outrageous and painfully honest comedy about four middle(ish)-aged women in Stockholm who are struggling to keep their libidos alive in a sexually frustrating world. Sofia Helin (The Bridge), Anja Lundqvist, Julia Dufvenius and Elin Klinga star.

In Lust, Anette (Helin), Nadia (Lundqvist), Ellen (Dufvenius) and Martina (Klinga) have all been friends since school. They become intrigued when they find out that Anette is conducting a government survey dubbed “Make Sweden Sexy Again”—is good sex, or the lack thereof, impacting the health of Swedish women over 40?

Lust is directed by Ella Lemhagen, produced by Sandra Harms and Karl Fredrik Ulfung and written by Frans Milisic Wiklund. It is based on an idea and in close collaboration with Åsa Kalmér, Julia Dufvenius, Sofia Helin and Anja Lundqvist. Executive producers for HBO Max are Christian Wikander and Camilla Curtis.

Helin said: “In my childhood home, there was a book on the bookshelf that was completely torn apart by all the girls and women of the family; the sex survey ‘The Hite Report’, the 1976 bestseller by American feminist Shere Hite. Getting an insight into the adults’ most intimate rooms and understanding how different everyone is when it comes to sex was astounding. When me and my friends as adults mentioned that we actually talk to each other about everything but our sex lives, we recalled Shere Hite’s groundbreaking sex survey. It turned into long conversations with a lot of laughter. It is such a vulnerable subject and therefore so liberating to be able to laugh together. Pairing a sex study with a comedy series created a fantastic creative space and it became our series: Lust.”

Miso Film’s Harms said: “Lust is a series about female sexuality that makes you laugh, touches you, entertains you but also shines a light on the times we live in. This project has been completely obvious to do from the day the idea was presented. A real dream project.”

Christian Wikander, executive producer at HBO Max, said: “Lust represents our ambition with HBO Max to bring together brilliant creators and talent, on and off screen, to craft truly special series that offer our audiences something different. Firmly rooted in Sweden but centered around universal themes like sex, relationships and getting older, there is great potential for it to resonate globally too.”