Cilla Jackert: Policing the Screen, AI in TV & Swedish Storytelling

Good afternoon, good evening, good morning, screen rats.

I'm back in the UK.

This is the first episode that I am recording since I got back from Belgium, where it was very wet, very expensive.

And you know, it was all right, it was great.

I loved being in Europe.

I always miss it, always, always miss it.

I think I maybe chose the wrong city to go to with three children, but you know.

Antwerp, lovely place, absolutely stunning.

We stayed in an Airbnb right in the middle of the old town.

Wasn't a lot of cafes and places to go in the morning.

And it was a little bit extortionate, if I'm honest.

But maybe that's my fault.

Maybe that's because I was used to the pound and, you know, the euro being less and us getting a lot more value for money.

But yeah, I mean, it is hard to sort of stomach a 15 euro bagel, let's be honest, on more ways than one.

But I loved being in Europe.

It was great fun.

We went on the boat, which was a seasick vehicle.

Let's just say, oh my God, it was so rough.

I don't like flying.

I really don't like flying.

I've tried to only do long haul, and not for any kind of climate change, carbon footprint thing, although that would be a really noble reason.

My reason is simply because I just don't like small planes.

They scare the shit out of me.

So I'm only going to go on planes if I really have to, like to America or Australia or something, really, really far away.

Otherwise, I'm going to try a different way.

So I went on the boat, didn't love it, couldn't sleep, certainly not on the way back.

The idea of being on that sea for 16 hours on the North Sea after a massive storm as well was just a bit hard to bear.

And I couldn't really believe that the boat wouldn't topple over.

I mean, obviously they're built for like 600 cars, loads of lorries and thousands of passengers.

But to like just go to sleep and lie down in that cabin and just fall asleep, that sort of inertia and feeling under you, I just don't get it.

I sort of used to suffer with vertigo in high places and sometimes not even high places.

And I think this is the closest feeling to it.

I realized I just don't like the feeling of falling.

That's why I don't like roller coasters, airplanes or boats.

It's that feeling under you of movement.

I just, you know, it's just, I mean, it's a bit weird, but in my 20s, I went through this very strange period of feeling like I could feel the earth spinning.

Now, I know that's absolutely crazy and you can't feel that, but I felt like it.

I went through this weird, I don't know what you could even call it really.

If I looked at the moon, it would make me freak out because I could see where I was in space and time and it used to make me feel weird.

And also I felt like if I went into a basement of a building, if I was to push my foot down through the floor, it would be like cracking an eggshell and my foot would somehow be hanging out in space.

It's a very odd thing and it's hard to sort of explain.

But the point is I just, I don't like that feeling.

I don't like the feeling.

It could be, you know, I mean, some people just say it's being out of control and not feeling like you have any say in what's happening to you.

So, you know, I just kind of kept myself busy on the boat, organizing and like, you know, unpacking some clothes and putting them in little piles and sort of concentrating on little jobs, like, you know, getting the food ready and, you know, just a different kind of stress.

And I felt this sort of cold on my back, like I do sometimes when I'm about to fly and I get scared.

I don't know what to do about it.

I've been on hundreds of planes.

I've been on loads of boats.

It doesn't go away.

There's no cure for this, I don't think.

All you can do is sort of talk your way through it.

And after a while, and a couple of drinks does help, I'll be honest with you, it takes the edge off.

And it's always fun to watch the band.

There's a band on the boat and they're sort of playing and they're standing up.

They're standing up so straight and they're not dancing.

And yet the boat is like fucking kicking left and right and up and down.

And they're just like, they're like waxworks.

And they just stand there singing these songs.

And there's a drummer who looks like one of those, you know, monkeys that you wind up and just like fucking hit the, you know, hit the cymbals together.

And it's crazy.

I just don't know how they sort of keep a straight face really.

And you know, people are running to doors and throwing up over the balcony as my son did, which was really hard to watch.

But I used to suffer from that as a kid.

When I used to go to Ireland, I'd be so, so sick.

I mean, it was unbelievable, really.

Used to do the cork to Swansea root when it existed.

And it was just, it was just, you know, being sick all night.

It was a horrible feeling, retching until there's nothing left.

Anyway, what a lovely subject.

Let's get to our guest.

Now today's guest is, I'm gonna let her say her name first, because I am really rubbish at this.

Cilla Jackert.

Cilla Jackert.

She is the writer, the screenwriter of Tuna Blar Linyan, one of my favorite TV shows.

As you may remember, a couple of weeks ago, we had the director of that show, Sana Lenkin, on here talking about that.

Now, Cilla was also the head writer on the TV show Svalesgar, and she single-handedly wrote the film Shed No Tears.

And she's, just check out her IMDB.

She's done loads.

And she's also an author.

She's recently become an author.

And she is currently writing season three of Tuna Blar Linyan, and I cannot wait for that.

That's gonna be absolutely excellent.

And as I've said before, you can catch that show on Viya Play in the UK.

And this is not a sponsorship deal.

I wish they would come to me, come to me.

It's 3.99 a month and I am now subscribed.

I think it's an absolute bargain for what you get on there.

You get all the Nordic TV series and a bunch of movies as well.

If you like Scandinavian Nordic TV, you're gonna love it.

Swedish, Norwegian, Denmark, even some Finnish stuff on there and Icelandic as well.

And just for clarification, this is not one of the funnier episodes.

This is a serious-ish episode, I'd say.

And there's a lot of talk about the police.

There's talk about some sort of dark stuff as well.

And there's plenty of spoilers for Tuna Blar Linyan, although I do try to keep them at a minimum.

So as I said, this is me talking to Cilla Jackert.

Welcome to Television Times, a new podcast with your host, me, Steve Otis Gunn.

We'll be discussing television in all its glorious forms.

From my childhood, your childhood, the last 10 years, even what's on right now.

So join me as I talk to people you do know and people you don't about what scared them, what inspired them and what made them laugh and cry here on Television Times.

I think it was you and the guy who plays Jesse, is it Per Lasson?

Yeah, Per Lasson, exactly, and a police, and a regular, actually a police.

So what was that?

It was Norwegian media days, I think.

They wanted us to come and talk about Tuna Blå Linjen, as you say in Sweden.

Or Tyne Blå Linjen, I think they say in Norway.

Or Fin Blå Lang.

I can't call it that here because there's a Rowan Atkinson comedy show.

I know that, I know that.

And I was told that before, so I know that.

But that's what they call themselves.

So I'm going to try and say it properly as well.

How's it supposed to be said?

Tornabla Lignen.

That's perfect.

Yeah.

Right.

So the reason I'm speaking to you today, two things is one, you know, Sana, who I knew 25 years ago when she was in London, weirdly, we worked in a coffee bar together.

That's how we met.

She used to walk around London, take pictures with her camera, and we were really good friends.

She's so much younger than me, and she worked in London 25 years ago.

I can't do the math here, but she's supposed to be five years old.

By then, something like that.

She was very young.

She used to take photos of me in black and white and stuff.

And then I think with social media, we must have linked up and then just sort of seen each other's lives.

And then when I knew the show was on, I did actually watch it originally because she was involved.

And Sanne said to me something like, oh, you probably won't get the intricacies because it's set in Malmo.

It's very specific TV shows.

I found it very engrossing.

I know like online people say, what do they say?

Handheld, gritty realism.

It's just like when I found your show, the writing of your show, to just be immediately engaging.

Like I was in there with the characters walking around.

It just felt like you were watching real people.

And I don't often feel like that when I'm watching TV.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's wonderful because it's like so many things I watch, especially if it's American, me and my wife will often turn to each other and go, oh, it's just actors acting again.

Just watching actors acting, you know?

And the same actors acting.

Oh, the same actors, yeah.

In Sweden it's always the same actors acting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I thought it was over, and then it wasn't over.

And I thought, oh, what's this now?

And it came out of nowhere, nowhere.

And I've never seen it done like that, never.

And it made me cry.

I was blown away.

It's just, it's so moving, so moving.

It's the, no, I love to make people cry as a professional, not in my everyday life.

But that, yeah, I wanted to, life happens.

And it happens to Leah.

I can't talk so much about it, as you said, maybe people haven't seen the show and wanted to see it.

Something about your show, it just blows me away.

So happy there's a season three.

You working on that now?

Yes, I am.

We're starting filming in November 1st, I think.

I'm not sure, actually, but very close.

And I'm working on all the screenplays on my own this time.

So it's a lot of work, but I won't do it anymore with the thin blue line.

But if someone else wants to pick up and SVT wants to do more, that's fine.

I can help.

But this is my, in Sweden, we call it Svanssång.

I think it's really hard to explain, but you know, the last song you do for this show anyway.

Svanssång, yeah, we have the same.

This is my Svanssång, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's been, I've been working with the show for 10 years.

It's, I'm more than pleased.

And it's really hard to, you know, working with these questions all the time.

It's always, if the police comes, something is wrong.

And I have to, you talk about the people in thin blue lines being relatable, and you know, you think they're real.

And I have to invest all my feelings because I want everyone that's in thin blue line to be believable and have a, you know, even if they're, and we have in the first season, so I think it's 400 extras.

You know, all of them, I have to understand that.

The only one that I don't really relate to is the in cell in the second episode.

He's just not relatable.

Yeah, there's these things in the characters, like when I'm watching Magnus and Sara, they have, because you see their faults, you still like them, but you see all their faults.

You see for those two, it's the will, they won't, they, right?

Are they going to, are they not going to be together?

And then, but also underlying that is this for them, they do show elements of quite extreme racist behavior, but they're good people and they don't mean to, and they're trying to learn this sort of endemic in the police force, I guess, and they're coming up against like the newer police, like Leah or what's his name?

Khalid, Khalid with his social media policing, which I loved.

I like the way that in the end, it kind of bit him in the ass with people filming him.

And of course, he's going to fall down at some point because the pressure, you know, and then that sort of works against him.

And it's very interesting all of that, all the modern policing versus the sort of slightly more old fashioned policing of St.

Magnus doing all his weights and training and making sure he eats properly and he's all muscly.

But then he plays, doesn't he?

He did the sports with the youths, with the kids that need to, you know, so he has a soft side, yeah, soft side as well.

So, yeah, it's intricate character which every human being is, you know, it's not so one sided.

His family is not that soft.

His parents are quite, they're really fun to write, but they're not that nice to him.

And he has this sister that's, you know, they have a lot of problems with the children.

So they're from a really hard family, I guess, and that forms him, his father that used to be a police officer too.

So Oscar, that plays Magnus, so you can give him everything.

He can be, you know, likeable, but doing the worst things.

And that's a problem because in Sweden it's like, oh, they're so nice, these police officers.

That's not at all at real police officers, especially in Malmö, it's not that nice.

And I think, well, they aren't that nice, but you like them because you know them.

And then you think everything they do is nice, but that's not, are nice.

But it's not that they can't see behind their own feelings for the people in the show.

Well, you've got, you don't, I mean, when you, nobody knows what's going on in someone else's mind, but what I like about your show is that you do see all of their life and you can see, for me, like in the second season, I don't think I'm giving too much away here, but when they're having all the refurbishment of the police station.

It was here that Cilla lost her connection.

So there was a brief interlude, but let's get back into it.

She came back online within a few minutes and, I thought I'd let you have that sneak peek behind the curtain.

Sometimes it just doesn't go as planned.

I looked up and you were gone.

I was like, oh, I've offended her.

What have I said?

What have I said?

She's left.

Please remove the entire recording.

I'm sorry.

I'm not sure which episode it was that I was watching, but it was a general theme, wasn't there, in season two, where the police station was having some upgrades and there's buildings.

It's like drilling and banging, and they have to use those toilets, the portaloos.

And you just feel this sort of stress building.

It's kind of irritating.

It's like something going on in the background that makes them tense.

And then they take that out into the streets.

And that's why I found some of that interesting as well.

So you never know what anyone is feeling or what the day's been like before they're outside, you know, all of that.

I really enjoyed that sort of tension.

Was that in the writing or was that directed in or what?

No, it's in the writing.

I think when I met the police officer early on, from as the police officer from Malmö is talking about his work, he said they were renovating or constructing something where he worked and everyone, this was in the summertime, you know, and they all, it was so cold there.

So they had to have their uniform jackets on all the time.

And people sat with hats on because it was cold all the time.

And the rats, they had a big rat problem inside.

You know, they don't like when you do the plumbing.

So the rats came up.

So I thought this is just funny.

And, you know, I had to mirror the stories with all these people coming to work in Sweden.

And you know, they're supposed to be okay with everything, but they're not.

And I started season two with this story that I took from England, that those immigrants in the lorry in Essex.

Essex, yeah.

Essex.

Essex.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is the same story, but because it could happen in Sweden.

But when it's in England, you think, well, that's far away.

That's not our problem.

But that's, it couldn't happen here.

So especially in Malmö, when I'm not from Malmö, I live in Stockholm, and in Stockholm we, oh, everything's so cheap in Malmö, and it's so nice and laid back, and you can buy a falafel for nothing at all.

You know, half the price that you pay in Stockholm, and you can cut your hair and take a cab for nothing.

And it's like, yeah, have you ever thought about why it's so cheap?

Yeah.

And everyone knows it's because you have a lot of labor that's not paid properly.

And they don't get paid right.

And especially at a lot of restaurants, and just people doing your nails.

And we're a part of that.

Everyone's a part of that.

You can see it or you can't.

You can have your nails done for nothing and just look away.

That's the world we live in if you want to have.

They know that, but they don't care, I would say.

Yeah, I agree.

It's funny talking about the police, just going back to what you said a minute ago about the police being nice or something.

Are they?

My police?

Are they nice?

Well, just generally, like our police, if I'm honest, are pretty nice.

The ones I've met here, they're always decent, friendly.

And I was brought up by, my dad was a bit of a criminal.

So I was always told that the police were bad.

And I was like, don't bring the police to the door.

Don't answer the door if the police are there, you know, that kind of thing.

So to me, they were always the boogeyman.

And as I've grown up, I've realized, oh no, the police are generally okay.

Unless you're in London or you're in America, absolutely not, it's a nightmare.

But I find them to be completely approachable.

They're just people doing a job.

And I sort of, when I see them encountering a problem, say in the city I live in, Newcastle, someone's drunk or whatever, and they're trying to deal with it.

And I watch their patience, you know, I watch what they have to deal with and the things they can't say, the things they can.

There's a lot of paperwork.

I just think, oh, it must be a nightmare to be a police officer.

Horrific.

Yeah.

And all these stupid drunk people all the time.

That's the worst.

And seeing the same, you know, people, the same men hitting the same wife over and over again.

And you know, kids suffering inside, you know, I would never, I would never be able to do.

And I agree with you.

It's a lot of really, I never understood that before, but there's a lot of really nice police officers in Sweden too.

But you only need one or two.

And then it's, they fuck everything up for everyone.

Like everyone.

We had this situation film from a football game in Skåne, not in Malmö, in Helsingborg, with a police officer that didn't look good, just hammering away on someone sitting down.

Then everyone forgets about all the nice officers being there and talk to people and calming the situation down, because that didn't look good at all.

I think the worst I've seen this year was in France, I'm not sure exactly, was it Just Stop Oil, or maybe it was something about the police were just dragging people and throwing them around, just like in your show, but in real life and online, social media people were going, yeah, great, the French don't fuck about, they don't take any shit.

And I'm like, yeah, but that's just, they're just throwing a woman across the street, like it's nothing, and they're dressed like the American police, you know, like Transformers, you know, I don't know what they're doing over there.

But I think it's, I met a lot of really nice officers that are doing this for, you know, helping people.

And I think they go into the job, wishing they could change something bigger, I want to be a part of something that can change.

But I think after a while, they're just happy to change that situation, you know, helping someone right there, right then, not changing the world or the society, but just helping someone right in that minute or that moment.

It's very selfless to go into that, because I couldn't do it, I couldn't do it, I would be a bad police person, because I would I would immediately probably want to hit someone if they started attacking me.

Me too, and I don't hit people, but you know.

Before I started to write the show, I thought the big problem was taking the job home, having to deal with something horrible at your work, someone committed suicide, that's a big part of their work.

And then coming home to your family and trying to be normal.

But I understand now the big problem is the opposite, having problem at home, you're having problem with your spouse or your father has cancer or your kid is being bullied.

That's the problem, not to bring that into work.

That's what is struggling me.

And that's why my police officers or the police officers in Timboolang has a lot of, there are a lot of private stories with them.

So we know what they're dealing with when they are working.

That storyline with Jesse, when Fanny turns up and I'm watching Jesse and I'm going, Jesse, don't, don't, man, don't do it.

And then he does.

And then she's around the house and she's sort of getting on with his daughter and they sort of got more in common than he has.

And it was just like a couple of years between.

Oh, my God, this is so uncomfortable.

But I really felt for him, felt for him.

Yeah, you felt exactly that I wanted you to feel.

And that was very uncomfortable with that star line, but he understood that that's perfect reaction.

If he feels, he felt like, no.

And he'd been so, you know, yes, it's been so popular among real police officers.

And suddenly I was going to, you know, make him a villain.

But he, you know, the only problem was she was much younger and, you know, he was her boss.

But otherwise, there could have been a nice story with them.

They could have had, you know, that didn't work at all.

And she's where Malo, that place, did her very well.

Yeah, really, really good.

I think I enjoyed that a lot.

I enjoyed watching it.

I mean, I was uncomfortable, but I'm I did.

It's funny, because normally you go, yeah, do it, do it, but I'm like, no, don't do it.

Please, please don't go there.

Don't go there.

Run.

Go home.

Go home.

Have a shower.

Touching his hand in the car and I'm like, chuck her out the car and drive away immediately.

Thank you.

Do you have to make remakes nowadays?

So you don't have to remake anything.

I know, I know.

It's like, oh, this again.

And I think, you know, one year away from, you know, AI writing, okay scripts for Netflix or VRPlay, or, you know, and you don't have to pay for them and you don't have to work with a screenwriter that's always late, like me, or, you know, they're just going to deliver an okay script.

You've got to have the human experience.

I think it will be some kind of combination maybe, because the thing that you have to work with as a screenwriter, like you can't have that actor that day and it has to be daytime and we can't be anymore in that flat because, you know, all that stuff AI can do really quickly and really easy.

But it takes forever for me, like, oh, no, I can't use that actress there, so I have to move her, you know, all that.

It takes time for me and time is money.

So if you can have AI think, not making up the stories and maybe not write the dialogue, but working with stuff like that.

So do you have to change storylines of cast members dependent on the availability of the actor then?

Yeah, I have to.

It's not been a big problem.

One of the greatest thing with Thin Blue Line is they're always in the same clothes and they work all the time.

You don't have to, you know, you can move things around a lot without it being strange.

And we had a big problem when we filmed the second season, which was during the pandemic.

And during that period, it was like if someone in the family had COVID, the whole family had to stay home for a week.

So every morning they called from the production company or the office and said, you know, now Tare Lasso's kids got COVID, he has to be home for a week.

Oh my God.

But you know, I don't think you can see it.

I can see it because you don't know what it was supposed to be.

But I think we were really saved with this.

They're always someone that owns the scene.

So that's one that's important for that scene.

Then you can move the other.

Did that change actually bring about something good in it that you didn't expect in a different scene?

No, I don't think so.

No, no, it was too much problem.

But it could have been worse, I can say.

Because that's another thing I was thinking of.

I guess it's sort of guilt, isn't it, that Magnus feels?

And he goes to try and find that woman.

Is she Vietnamese?

Yeah.

And you know, she's so scared of like losing her job or whatever, that she doesn't want his help.

And then you can just feel that he's...

Again, at that point, I was like, don't help her because you're going to get in trouble, because I know what this is.

Because I was once in...

God, where was I?

I think it was Bolivia.

And I'd split up with an ex, and I had a gold chain with me.

And for some reason, I decided, I'm going to give this to a kid, and then they can maybe sell it and get like food for a week or whatever, right?

Because I don't want it.

I want nothing to do with this thing, because they're worth a couple of hundred pounds or something.

And I gave it to this kid outside of a diner, outside of like this kind of cool sort of diner in somewhere, I think, Santa Cruz.

Anyway, and she walked off.

And as she walked off, I saw her friends seeing what she got, and then they started fighting.

And it went, and it just, this little fight went around the corner.

I was like, oh, I've caused a problem there.

That hasn't helped at all.

I've just literally given her a fight basically.

And I sort of, you know, I kind of learned from that and realized that actually, sometimes you should just leave it alone.

And when he was going to help her, I could just see a can of, can of lemons opening for him.

And then, of course, all the other stuff that comes of it, and the sort of trying to find out which police officer did this thing that he didn't do.

And yeah, I mean, I think he tried to, you know, be a better person because Sara, Sara, so she's so nice and do the right thing.

So he tried to do that.

And to make you feel have a meaning, I think it's really, you know, under.

He's not in that good mood in the beginning of season, too, as you can see.

Magnus, Oscar is really good at not looking happy.

I really, I love his character.

I love his character.

It seems quite lonely, though, when he goes back to his apartment and he's just sitting there.

They're all lonely, actually, I think.

Yeah, of course.

I know you've worked on lots of projects, but it's mostly been television, right?

Mostly television.

Yeah, I've written one feature film that made it to the movie.

Mostly it's called Känningensarj, Shed No Tears.

Shed No Tears in English.

Yeah, it's from, it's based on the lyrics and music of one of Sweden's most famous pop artists called Håkan Hellström.

So I made up a story from his lyrics.

Yeah.

So that was, I like Håkan Hellström.

Not so much anymore.

I still like him, but I had to listen so much for two years.

But my kids love him.

He's great.

He's a great artist.

Very, very, very loved in Sweden.

And then I made a lot of TV series.

Yes.

And I've written some books, mostly for children.

Yeah, I saw one of the titles of your books, Dagens Katastrophe.

Today's Katastrophe is the catastrophist of today.

You know, the disasters of today.

It's like we have this newspaper called Dagens Nyheter.

It's today's news.

But this is today's catastrophist of disasters of today.

She's really worried for everything.

This girl, it's about a girl that, you know, hear about everything that's going around and reading the news about, you know, everyone's dying all the time.

And then so this and she gets she gets a dog and that helps her go out, actually, because she's mostly at home.

Was that inspired by COVID then?

No, no, no.

This was before 10 years.

I wrote it in 2030.

Yeah, actually, it's actually I had to look it up.

She's one of the things she's worried about.

She's worried about everything.

Everything is a pandemic.

I had to look it up.

So she was before time.

But it's not so much about the environment because in 2013, it hadn't been.

It's a little bit about the environment, but she's mostly, you know, she's really scared for everything, about everything, for everything.

Yeah, I do worry about this current generation and my kids as well, like the fear, all the stuff on the news.

Even if you sort of shield them from it, it's only one click away.

My kids have all the devices locked down, but there's stuff on the news.

They can just turn it on before Netflix and see something or an advert for something.

And I wonder, because what I don't want them to have is what you're of a similar age to me.

So I had a lot of problems with fear of nuclear war and stuff like that.

But that's the only thing we have to worry about.

I think so, yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, men in trench coats flushing themselves, maybe anyone could take you away in a car.

Don't talk to strangers.

You will be kidnapped and you'll never come home.

Yeah.

Terrifying.

But the thing is, today's kids have to worry about, you know, real stuff that you have to worry about.

But still you have the newspaper that's hammering away with all the selling papers on scaring people.

Oh, of course.

And that's what the kids read too.

So it's really hard for them to know, is this something I really have to be scared about?

Or is this something that's just made up?

You know, 95% have cancer without knowing it.

You know, this moan can be cancer.

Yeah, all the time.

You know, be scared all the time.

I walk past my house and it says like, you know, one in three men under over 50 will die of cancer.

And my kids are looking at going, are you going to die of cancer?

No, but.

Not today anyway.

Social media, it's not making anything.

I said to my kids, don't care about anything.

Just look out for the cars.

Traffic is the worst.

That's the only thing you have to really have under control and see if this car really is stopping for red light.

Care about that and then try to live your life.

I know, we did a little trip with my kids yesterday.

We just got back from Manchester.

It was an impromptu trip just before the school ends.

And my son was like, are we taking the iPad?

And I said, no, we're not taking anything.

He doesn't have a phone.

He has my, he can use my iPad.

The other two are younger, they don't.

And he was like, what am I going to do?

Because you're going to look outside and you're going to see the countryside.

And after about an hour, he was like, he really liked it.

He was like, oh, I didn't realize they had buildings like that.

Oh, there's so many animals out there.

Oh, wow, it's really green.

Oh, it's really rainy in the middle of the country.

You know, he was seeing all this and he wasn't bored.

And I was really proud of him for getting through, not getting through it, but 48 hours without going on any device or watching TV or anything.

And I thought that was amazing for a kid of his generation.

He's nine, nearly ten.

So I don't think they...

My kids are 19, almost 17 and 14.

You know, they live on their devices, and they do because they have their schoolwork there, and they have their friends there, they listen to music and everything is on their phone.

And so it's really hard to say to them, you can't have that.

But the youngest, I tried to, you know, just TikTok is the worst for her.

It's so toxic.

It's brainwashing.

But she's coming to realize that that's a big problem for her because all these, you know, rumors, always TikTok.

And if you're, you know, a young girl, the only ones, you know, really suffering from social media is young girls.

Yeah, I think it would affect them more.

Yeah, and she's definitely affected.

Yeah, that's the...

What age did you let them have a phone or a device?

Nine, I think.

Wow, that's really...

That's brave.

I can't do it.

In my head, I'm thinking 13.

But I'm not sure if I can get that far.

Can't get that far.

Social media when they were like 12, a phone.

Because I needed them to phone home, actually.

From, you know, from school.

I'm going home now.

You need to...

Yeah.

So all their friends had, that's one.

If I could have kept it from them for a longer time.

When we go away, I put one of these in their pocket.

The Apple tracker.

Tracking your children.

I don't really...

Because that's what I keep thinking.

How did anyone know where I was when I was a kid?

They didn't.

And you survived.

I know.

And I walked to school age 8, 9.

And I wouldn't let my 9 year old walk to school now.

I don't think.

Not in England anyway.

I walked to school from, you know, the second week in school, I was 7.

So that I lived outside Stockholm.

You know, it would have been strange with someone having their parents take them to school back then.

That's really, I mean, that's the only dreams I have now.

I can't find my kid.

Actually, it was in Stockholm, where I, in 2018, I think, we went to Stockholm and my son then, he would have been about 4, 3 or 4, in the old town.

He just ran ahead of me.

You know how they've sort of run into the kind of feet of people and he disappeared for a minute.

We couldn't see him and he turned right and he was at the top of a big load of stairs.

And he was just standing there.

Thank God I was in Stockholm.

But we couldn't see him for a minute.

It's the most scared I've ever been in the old town in Stockholm.

Really, really scary.

I can understand you.

Which TV character do you feel the most affinity with?

Oh, okay, I have to tell you the truth here.

And it must be Hope Steadman in 30 something.

Have you seen 30 something?

Oh, 30 something, I remember that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I never felt so close to someone.

Yeah, and I was like 19, 18, 19, I saw it when I was really young.

And I've always been an old soul.

So I really felt close to her, and we looked so much alike before.

And she's really boring.

I do remember it being on.

It's a great, great, great TV show.

Actually, it still is, yes, and it's old, but you know, it's really hard to see because you can't find it anywhere.

I don't know why.

I remember that being out, and I remember thinking, I would have thought, oh, it's so boring.

It's like for old people, because I would have been about 19 as well.

I was 19 and thought, this is great.

I still refer a lot to that.

But this is a different character, but I really liked Anna in This Life.

Do you remember This Life?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do.

Yeah, I know who you mean.

That was a great show.

Yes, only inspired by old shows that made some impact on me when I was young.

And those two did.

Would you avoid watching procedural police-based television in case it influenced you?

Or would you do anything like that?

No, I don't do that.

So I'm not influenced by that for Thin Blue Line.

This is more, if I would say, of course, I loved Hill Street Blutes when I was young.

And of course, that's an inspiration.

But I think Thin Blue Line is more ER than, you know, any show about police officer.

It's about a group of people working in the same place where everything is about life and death and so on.

And that's it.

It's closer to ER than to a police show.

I understand.

Yeah, I do feel like there's a lot of movement in Thin Blue Line, people moving around in a way that I don't really see that in a normal...

Because I think you watch a police TV show in a different country or whatever, the desks are always clear.

They've always got their own offices.

Whereas in your show, you don't really see much of the police station.

It's more like the meeting room, isn't it?

Where they start their day, and then some hallways, and then they're outside for most of it.

So it's them in the streets, really, for most of it, isn't it?

Yeah, because we decided early on with Sanne Ervin, you know, a regular police officer sits at the desk, you know, typing for like 50% of the work time.

But we didn't want to show that because that's boring.

And all you've seen a lot of police officers, and they're boring to, I wanted it to be full of life.

Police officers life.

I think one of the things I thought was interesting was you never know what's going to happen.

And that doesn't mean it's going to happen something very spectacular.

But you don't know what your next job or what you're going to do in half an hour.

And I think that I wanted that to be shown in this show, you know, this, this definitely did that.

And many people want to be police officer of the for that reason, because they don't want to sit at the same desk every day for the rest of their life.

They like not knowing what's going to happen when they go to work.

And I think that sounds horrifying.

They don't know.

And one day nothing happens and the next day they have a big fire and 39 people died.

So you never know when you're...

and we wanted to capture that.

You mentioned Helsingborg earlier, and that's the first town I ever went to in Sweden, because I went from, is it Helsingborg to Helsingborg on a boat, I think, from Denmark?

And I was so excited.

I was like, oh my god, I'm in Sweden.

It was the first, I was on my way to Oslo on a boat.

So I was only there for like a couple of hours.

And I was walking around, oh, Sweden, this is great.

I went to this little shop, and they had like this wooden monkey.

So I remember this little wooden monkey, and I thought, okay, I went to buy it, and I thought it's so cute.

I'm going to take that.

I didn't have a lot of money at the time.

I was working in theater, and so I bought it, and I put it on a credit card thinking it was, I don't know, 20 pounds or something.

And then I went out of there, and I sat down at a cafe, and I ordered a coffee, and I paid up front.

And she told me how much kronor it was.

And then I realized what I'd bought was like 180 pounds or something.

Yeah.

It's a designer monkey.

What have I done?

I completely got this wrong.

I got the exchange rate wrong, and I never do.

And I ran out of there, and I went back, and I had to give the guy, I said, I've got to return this.

I'm really sorry.

Can you?

And he goes, well, we'll have to charge you a certain amount, you know, off the credit card or whatever.

So I paid some money, like 15 pounds or something, just to buy this monkey and return it.

So that was my first ever experience in Sweden.

And that was in Helsingborg.

And I felt like it was my fault, I was just not paying attention.

That's very stupid.

No, you're supposed to, you can return everything you want with all the money, but it's a design a monkey isn't supposed to have it in your shelf.

I'll ask you one more question and I'll let you go.

I'll ask you a fun one.

Who was the first person on television that gave you a fuzzy feeling inside your first TV crush?

I think Paul McCartney or Fred Astaire.

Are we talking Abbey Road, Paul McCartney?

Yes, yes.

When you look cool.

So before me actually, but Fred Astaire.

I wrote my first love letter to Fred Astaire.

Really?

Strange.

Yes.

On my mother's typewriter.

Okay.

You got to tell us more about this.

I don't know.

I just loved him.

I thought you watched everything that was on when I was kid.

You know, oh, it's something on the telly.

Let's watch it.

You know, we had two channels and the last program was a 10 and it started at, you know, six o'clock in the afternoon or something.

And I loved all those dance movies from the fifties, you know, with Fred Astaire and Ginger on there's like, and I think they were on quite often.

All the time.

Black and white movies.

And so I loved them.

It was amazing.

I was so in love with it, but I was also in love with Paul McCartney, but not the Paul McCartney from the sixties.

Yeah.

Before I was born.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The cool Paul McCartney.

Well, yeah.

So I guess the thing I remember writing that love letter, and that's actually the first thing I remember writing.

And I know exactly where I put my mother's typewriter, where I sat when I wrote it, but I don't know what I wrote in the letter.

That's amazing.

Your first writing is to Fred Astaire.

I always thought he had quite an old man face when he was young.

It's like Daniel Craig.

Yes.

Just always a gold.

He was so thin.

So it couldn't be, yeah.

He had no baby fat at all.

And I wrote to Fred Astaire in the fifties.

I didn't write to the seventies.

You know, the Fred Astaire in the same age, at the same time that I wrote to.

Nevermind.

I wrote to someone that were in the fifties.

But I don't know.

My father used to be really thin when he was young.

I think I had a thing for, you know, really thin men.

And those movies are amazing.

They are amazing.

And they still are amazing.

I think the movie I watched the most times is Singing in the Rain.

I've seen it so many times and it's still great.

And I'm so happy I showed it to my kids and they liked it too.

Where do you even watch things like that now?

I think because I talk about this often enough that people who my age or your age or a bit older, a bit younger, there's that era where there wasn't so much what they now call content and there wasn't so much available.

So a lot of things were repeated.

So for me, I don't know what it was like in Sweden, but there was a lot of Bewitched, Mr.

Ed, 60s TV show Batman, really 60s stuff and lots of 50s movies and all of, I like, I'm a big comedy guy.

So for me, I remember seeing all of the Jerry Lewis movies, Albert and Costello, all these comedy movies.

I don't know when I saw them, but I know them all.

And I would have seen them all before I was 10 years old.

Definitely, you know, grew up on them.

I didn't see those shows because we saw, you know, foreign TV or shows from abroad, but a special program from them.

It was called The Window to, you know, foreign TV and that we had the show about, the TV show about TV in other countries.

And of course we saw, you know, I talked about Onerdinlinjen.

Do you remember that with the big ship?

That was in the 70s.

A Needing Line?

Yes, about, yes.

Do you remember that?

That was really big, but mostly, you know, there were only, SVT had two channels that were on from like six in the afternoon, two channel, you know, how many programs and the news and sports and you know, Not much for kids.

Some, not much for kids and not so many programs.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm showing my son the comedy show Red Dwarf, which he loves, which I loved when I was like 18.

And he's watching, he loves it, but I'm like, you know, this is like 35 years old, right?

Yeah, but still they listen to, you know, music from every age.

My youngest, she will come to me and, you know, listen to this song.

It's like, well, I listened to that.

It came when I was young, when I was 14.

And she doesn't know that because it's all coming from TikTok or from some, like Kate Bush in Stranger Things.

It's new for them, but, you know, I told her this is an old song.

It's from when I was a kid.

And I listen mostly to the music that was right there.

Yeah, my kids say that.

They come home and my son comes home and he says, Dada, do you know Mr.

Boombastic?

I'm going, yeah, why are you talking about that?

Or he came home and he was singing like the Macarena.

It's like the Macarena from what, 1993?

Why are you singing that?

Because, oh, it's a meme or something.

And I know it's a meme or something from TikTok.

How do you know that song?

I was there.

I know the song.

Yeah, exactly.

And my kids listen to Fleetwood Macarena.

Like, okay, because, or maybe in a TV show, my daughter, she watched Riverdale with my husband.

And it's a lot of music there from all, you know, all ages.

And suddenly thinks, oh, this is nice.

Or she listens to the soundtrack on Spotify.

And I think that's a good thing.

Yeah, it's a good thing.

They are very aware of everything.

They show me some new stuff.

But like, I think my son, he was at school, and they did some tests about music or whatever.

And he was the only one that knew who David Bowie was.

So I was very happy.

I was very happy with that.

You should be proud.

And this is, I can't hear, David Bowie was, you know, my number one.

Oh, me too, me too.

Yeah, I was the first album I ever bought with my own money, Scary Monsters.

Oh, the same.

Really?

Well, I actually bought one album before that.

Lodger.

It was the second.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We could do a bowie podcast if you want.

I've got a lot of time.

Okay.

Oh, well, I think we'll wrap it up.

Okay, it was nice to meet you.

Thank you for doing this.

Yes.

Really appreciate it.

Say hello to Senna from me.

I will.

Thank you so much.

Speak to you again.

That was Cilla Jackert, the screenwriter and author from Sweden.

She is responsible for soon to be three seasons of Tuna Blarlinjan, The Thin Blue Line, along with Shed No Tears, and her book, which she mentioned as well, which there'll be links to all of this in the bottom of the episode in the show notes.

Now, before you start messaging me, I realized there were not a lot of questions in that one.

It was more to do with her sort of life and her experience of writing the TV show that she works on, right?

Which is all part of television.

It's all the same thing.

Sometimes we get around to some questions, sometimes we don't.

I'm sure with some guests, we won't even get around to questions.

It's just, it's all about television.

That's the whole point.

This was a bit of an insider view and it was a bit darker and it was a bit more serious, wasn't it really?

Let's be honest about it.

I do endeavor to make this podcast a comedy podcast as much as I can, but occasionally we'll get a straight episode.

And that's what that was.

And you don't need to watch to Nibla Lingen to get an idea of what she was talking about.

I mean, you should, because it's a fucking great show.

It's absolutely brilliant.

But what I'm saying is, it's a behind the scenes look, isn't it?

To how a writer feels writing her show and all the intricacies in that process.

And I think that was a really good little meetup and a little chat.

I didn't know Cilla.

I didn't know her at all.

So it was like, you know, it was a bit random for me.

And I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you got something out of it.

And if these two episodes with her and Samah don't make you go watch the show, then I don't know what will.

Okay, go to Viya Play, watch the show.

It's brilliant.

Tuna, blah, linyin.

Now to today's outro track is called Beat the Fat Man.

It's a song from We Are Animals, one of my favorite albums recorded in 2006 in Japan.

I think I wrote it on piano at some point.

I don't know where, don't ask me, no idea.

I think if I'm honest, it had a dual meaning.

It was sort of about myself and, you know, looking internally and trying to sort of be healthy and things like that, while also looking at it from a world standpoint at the time, in a sort of point in time where basically America was at war with so many countries.

And I was sort of equating the country to be a person.

And if that person was, you know, America as a sort of personified human being, that person would be quite sick and quite fat.

And I think that's what I was doing there.

So it's not anti-American, I think.

It's just a sort of point on consumerism, capitalism, post 9-11, a world political situation.

And this is it, Beat The Fat Man, orchestral, made by me, written by me, recorded in Japan.

Enjoy.

OK, that was Beat The Fat Man by me, Steve Otis Gunn from the album We Are Animals, which as I have mentioned many times, I do intend to remaster next year with all the things I have on my plate.

Come back next week, follow the show, leave a review if you can.

There will be a great episode again next week.

And there's some exciting news for the new year, but I'll keep that under my hat for now.

I hope you enjoy Television Times Podcast episode 29.

Come back next week for the 30th episode.

Can you believe it?

30.

See you then.