The current TV landscape leans heavily towards shows that skewer the rich from the point of view of writers who wildly, if sneakily, admire them. To be less polite: if shows such as the most recent White Lotus, the Apple TV+ show Your Friends & Neighbours and movies such as Mountainhead are all enraptured with themselves and the people they dramatise – targets who have been known to become the shows’ biggest fans – then for those viewers who have had enough, there is an alternative. It’s in Norwegian, and while watching it will force you uncomfortably close to using the phrase “hymn to middle age”, it does at least avoid the 360 degrees of glorified douchebags presently dominating TV.
The Norwegian dramedy Pernille unfolds over five seasons, recently made available on Netflix, and is part of a small but marked trend around women in middle age that offers a buffer against universal bro culture. In my experience, people don’t generally like to be told they are having a moment, since it draws attention to the fact that they weren’t previously having a moment and likely won’t get another moment any time soon – but the fact remains that middle-aged women are having a moment.
