Fjernsynsteater until 2 a.m.

A post on my own wall, 13 May 2024 · two posts in "Peer, du lyver!", August 2024 and March 2025 · a letter, November 2025

It's totally crazy what you get interested in when you're well into adulthood... I've always been a bookworm, practically raised at the local library, but I was never exposed to much older literature, literary history, theater etc. But if you start at the opposite end (Greek and Latin) you really notice what an incredibly huge impact the oldest stories have had on all the great writers of the last 1000 years...

Someone talking to the camera for an hour and a half

When I started getting interested in theater and opera, digital access was what made all the difference. But it started with watching Fjernsynsteateret in the NRK archive — the thing that was a running joke in my childhood...

From a letter to the culture editor at Morgenbladet, November 2025

I came across a program in the NRK archive by an Ibsen actor who has staged many of his characters. It's wonderfully anachronistic — one person talking to the camera for an hour and a half, without the camera moving. And at the same time it was gripping. The actor has such a presence, as he talks about Ibsen's life, the plays, and in between acts out dialogues from the different plays. Fantastic TV! So "calm" compared to TV today.

Afterwards I dove into the archive...

Erasmus Montanus, I mean... And Antigone, with Hålogaland Teater! Because suddenly I'm not just seeing an isolated play, like an episode in some random TV series, forgotten as quickly as it was seen... But I'm suddenly part of a tradition several hundred or several thousand years old. I watch Erasmus Montanus, and think about how people saw the play in 1731. Was it mostly scholars in Copenhagen who watched it, who looked down on the peasants? Were they offended by how Rasmus was portrayed? Did they see him as a hero? Or as a country bumpkin who played the scholar but could never quite become one?

For three hundred years Scandinavians have had this shared reference point when it comes to learning, logic, city versus country, Latin (like little Marius)... Isn't that cool?

"Finnish radio theater"

When I was growing up I remember "Finnish radio theater" was the very example of something dry and boring. But it's actually through Fjernsynsteateret that I largely found my interest in theater (and Ibsen) as an adult. And it's through Fjernsynsteateret that I've been able to share four great Holberg plays with my son.

Theater is different — there are very few full-length recordings on YouTube, and the ones that exist are mostly amateur theater, and technically simple recordings (a fixed camera). But the different national TV stations did have (and some still have) drama productions. In addition we have some paid services, especially from England — The National Theatre at Home, and the Globe (mostly Shakespeare). National Theatre is fantastic — tons of performances with very high production quality, and subtitles (subtitles in the same language are really nice for following along with Shakespeare for example). Have seen everything from Hedda Gabler, Phèdre by Racine to Othello by Shakespeare... Great experiences!

But after Fjernsynsteateret shut down, we have nothing at all in Norway — neither public nor private. Bring back Fjernsynsteateret →

The others can just do their own thing

So that's what I'm up to. Enjoying old American TV programs where men in shirts sit and smoke and talk, without interruption, for an hour, about their ideas. I'm allowed to. Watching Youtube videos that explain to me how to analyze a Shakespeare sonnet. The others can just do their own thing ;)

There aren't that many people around me in Hamar who are interested in hearing about Fjernsynsteateret exactly ;) Also thinking a fair bit about whether there should be more literature and stuff like that in school... Very old-fashioned thoughts but that doesn't mean they're bad ;)

Incredibly sad that they stopped doing Fjernsynsteatret.

Fjernsynsteatret in the archive, collected: kulturbase.no →