Promising to do for the Swedish royal family what Netflix's The Crown did for the British royals, there's a new TV show in the works that will lift the lid on the inner workings of the House of Bernadotte.
Putting King Carl XVI Gustaf, 74, front and centre of the show, Sweden's TV4 and streaming service C More is developing a series that will follow the patriarch's life from his childhood to becoming king in 1973 at the age of 27, and his reign since.
“Other kings and queens are said to have had an impact on world events. The history of our king is something different,” said Asa Lantz, who is co-writing the new series and has been researching the life of King Carl Gustaf for the past few years. “Not as highlighted internationally, but at least as dramatic and fascinating. And for many of us, completely unknown.”
"I've personally never been a fan of monarchy, but I remember reading the treatment of six or seven pages while I was on a flight. As I was reading those pages, I started crying because it was so strong," Josefine Tengblad, head of drama at TV4 and C More, told Variety. "It's a little bit like The King's Speech in the way that it portrays someone who is being groomed to become someone he's not, and is having people trying to change him."
The playboy prince
Gustaf is the youngest child and only son of Prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Vasterbotten, and Princess Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. He became second-in-line to the throne when his father died in a plane crash in 1947, when the young prince was just 9 months old. He became Crown Prince and first-in-line to the throne at the age of 4.
Viewed by many in Sweden as a "playboy prince", Thomas Sjoberg, author of King Carl XVI biography The Reluctant Monarch, told the UK's Telegraph in 2011: "He does all the things that aristocrats tend to do. Expensive holidays on the French Riviera, travelling all over the globe, throwing ridiculously expensive parties, socialising with lots of women when his wife is not present. The Swedish people seem to be very tolerant, and partly that's because they don't see him as a grown-up person."
Marrying German-Brazilian Silvia Sommerlath, a former flight attendant, in 1976, the couple welcomed three children: Crown Princess Victoria, 43, Prince Carl Philip, 41, and Princess Madeleine, 38, who themselves have seven children between them, with another on the way this year for Prince Carl Philip and his wife, Princess Sofia.
"As we understand it, it is planned as a drama documentary. When it comes to documentaries, it is important that they are as close to the truth as possible, and that the facts are presented correctly," the Royal Court told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. "As for the dramatised part of the series, it is of course based on artistic freedom, something we have no control over."
Scroll through the gallery above for some of the Swedish royal family storylines the TV show might portray …
