Swedish drama Love Me is a can’t-miss, must-watch series. Period.
Love Me (Älska mig) is one of the best new shows of the year.
The Swedish drama series revolves around the lives of a family in Stockholm, including father Sten (Johan Ulveson, Bonus Family) and his daughter Clara (Josephine Bornebusch, Welcome to Sweden) and son Aron (Gustav Lindh, Beartown).
We meet senior obstetrician Clara while she’s on a Tinder date, unemployed Aron while he’s with his girlfriend, and retired lawyer Sten while he’s at the travel agency. It’s been 40 years since Sten and Kersti (Ia Langhammer, The Truth Will Out) tied the knot, and he is giving her a holiday abroad to celebrate their long-lasting love and marriage. Only Kersti dies after their anniversary dinner.
Sten is bereft. He also can’t get a refund on the 40,000 kroner trip, so he decides to go solo on the two-week Senior Love Romantica package on Spain’s Gran Canaria — and meets Anita (Görel Crona, Spring Tide).
Clara doesn’t so much meet Peter (Sverrir Gudnason, Wallander) as have a bit of a sarcastic exchange with him at 7-Eleven. But they go on a date. He seems too good to be true — cute (he’s a model), kind, and her friends approve of him — so her self-sabotage kicks in.
And Aron, struggling in his grief, clings to his belief that he and his DJ girlfriend, Elsa (Dilan Gwyn, Da Vinci’s Demons), have more in common than just sex, while his best friend, Jenny (Sofia Karemyr, Partisan), thinks otherwise.
Meanwhile, Kersti is still very much with Sten, as is her impact on her children.
A lot can happen in two weeks. Relationships can develop and fall apart, new jobs can be offered and new hobbies can be started, and the trajectories of people’s futures can shift in an instant.
Created and written by costar Josephine Bornebusch, Love Me is authentic, rich, funny — a show that gives you a big hug when you wrap yourself in it. It’s comfort food for your soul.
Given the year we’ve all had, who couldn’t use some of that?
For me, Love Me is one of the few series, Euro TV or otherwise, for which I felt the TV version of love at first sight in 2020. It had me from the moment Clara told off her Tinder date. Minutes later I laughed out loud at one of Sten’s comments about holiday package pricing. And I felt his heartache soon after that. From there, the humor, the moments of warm fuzziness, the realness of the desires and inter- and intra-personal conflicts continued.
Now I wait for Season 2 with bated breath as I wholeheartedly recommend Season 1.
Costars in the first season include Nina Zanjani (Modus) as Sasha, Clara’s friend and colleague, and Christopher Wagelin (The Truth Will Out) as Vincent, Sasha’s husband, along with Edvin Ryding (Gåsmamman) and Anders Mossling (The Bridge).
Love Me — the winner of the 2020 Kristallen award for Best Television Drama — premieres in the US tomorrow, Thursday, December 24, exclusively on Topic and its digital channels, including Topic on Amazon Channels.
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