Viaplay has set the US premiere date for Vanguard, the award-winning biopic drama series starring Jakob Oftebro.
With Vanguard, we’ll be seeing the talented Jakob Oftebro (Agent Hamilton, Monster) again very soon, and also on Viaplay. Last month, the streamer debuted the biopic comedy-drama series In the Name of Love, in which Jakob and his real-life brother, Jonas, play the sons of a maverick entrepreneur who built the family fortune on underground porn in the 1970s. Next month, we’ll see Jakob again playing the son of a businessman, only here it is his own character who is the maverick.
In Vanguard (aka Stenbeck), dubbed a real-life Succession, Oftebro stars as Jan Stenbeck, the son of Hugo Stenbeck, who co-founded and ultimately took over Kinnevik, an investment company with holdings in Swedish industrial companies. At 35, Jan appears to have it all: a prestigious career at Morgan Stanley, a glamorous life in New York City, and a budding romance with American socialite Merrill McCloud (Zoe Boyle, Downton Abbey, Frontier). But then tragedy strikes his family in Sweden, thrusting Jan into a leadership role at Kinnevik.
So begins a high-stakes battle between tradition and innovation, as Jan’s visionary ideas clash with his siblings’ conservative approach. His relentless ambition and visionary pursuit reshape the Nordic media and telecom landscape, breaking Sweden’s telephone monopoly and launching TV3, Scandinavia’s first commercial channel. Jan’s bold strategies don’t just transform the Nordic market; they influence global players, inspiring Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV model and laying the groundwork for Vodafone’s rise.
However, Jan’s meteoric ascent comes at a cost. Haunted by loneliness and strained family ties, his life is as tumultuous as it is transformative.
Vanguard premieres in the US with two episodes on Tuesday, November 18, exclusively on Viaplay on Prime Channels and other Viaplay partner channels. One new episode will drop each Tuesday through December 9.
Based on Per Andersson’s biography of Jan Stenbeck, Stenbeck: en biografi över en framgångsrik affärsman, the five-episode drama also features Malin Crépin (When the Dust Settles) as Jan’s sister, Margaretha; Julia Marko-Nord (Thunder in My Heart) as his sister, Elisabeth; Irene Lindh (Arne Dahl) as his mother, Märtha; Lars Lind (Rebecka Martinsson) as his father, Hugo; and Niklas Engdahl (Bonus Family) as his brother, Hugo Jr.
At the Kristallen Awards 2025 (Swedish Emmy®), Oftebro won for Best Actor, with the series earning a Best Drama nomination and Malin Crépin earning one for Best Supporting Actor. Vanguard and Oftebro won the Best Series and Best Actor awards, respectively, at the 2025 Monte-Carlo TV Festival.
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