Courage in the chest turns 30: – We must be allowed to be proud

Sunday 22 January 1993 saw the premiere of the very first episode of the sitcom Mot i brøset.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary, tv2.no has made a special reunion special – with the actors Nils Vogt (74), Sven Nordin (65) and Hilde Lyrån (60) – which you can see at the top of the article.

Siw Anita Andersen (who played Målfrid) declined to participate in the anniversary broadcast. Arve Opsahl (who played Henry) passed away in 2007.

– We must be allowed to be proud

Nils Vogt played the hotshot Karl Reverud, and is happy that the 30th anniversary of Mot i brøset is being marked and celebrated.

– It’s strange to think about, 30 years. We are still so young and fit, so it is difficult to understand. But it’s nice to mark a birthday like that. It was an experience for all of us.

Colleague Sven Nordin, who played Nils Svendsen, agrees.

– It’s nice to think that we have helped make TV history. In other words, that we have created a program that has stood up so well over time. We feel a little bit that we did pioneering work when we started this, which accelerated a lot of TV productions and commissions in Norway. So I think we can be a little proud of that.

Hilde Lyrån (60) – who entered season 5 as the character Nils’ girlfriend Trine – is surprised that new generations are embracing the series.

– We must be allowed to be proud of this here. Still, 30 years later, people remember it. What’s funny is that there are so many young people – who weren’t born when we finished the series – who have managed to catch it, says Lyrån (60).

The story of Courage in the breast

The courage in the chest story started with the series creator and screenwriter Tore Ryen (76).

From the mid-1980s to the beginning of the 90s, Ryen lived in Los Angeles. There he noticed how popular the situation comedies of the time were in the United States. Series like Cheers and The Cosby Show gathered millions of television viewers every week.

When Ryen was on a visit to Norway in 1991, he was asked by the TV 2 founder and program director Dan Børge Akerø if he could come up with a proposal for a comedy series for TV 2.

Ryen then got the idea to make a Norwegian sitcom, filmed with four cameras in front of an audience – just like the Americans did. Then came the idea for Mot i brøstet, a series that followed three ordinary guys and all the weird things that happened in their everyday lives.

After the Courage in the Chest idea was in place, Ryen started looking for actors.

Arve Opsahl (1922-2007) was the first Ryen thought of. They had done a lot of revue together, and Ryen was determined that he should be in it. Arve Opsahl was therefore offered the role of Henry.

Ryen knew the two-year-younger Nils Vogt from Frogner gymnasium, where they had played both school and Russian revues together. The guardian was Karl Reverud.

Sven Nordin was suggested to Ryen by then TV 2 boss Dan Børge Akerø. Ryen – who had never heard of Nordin – became convinced that he had found his Nils, after joining Akerø at a performance at the National Theater where Nordin played one of the roles.

A typical Mot i brestet week

The Mot i brøstet recordings took place in an old steel warehouse, converted into a TV studio, at Torshov in Oslo.

A typical Mot i brøstet work week looked like this: Series creator Tore Ryen had a manuscript ready every Tuesday. Or at least half a script, according to Nils Vogt.

– And then we got the other half on Wednesday. On Wednesdays we adapted the lines, and on Thursday and Friday we started working on the event. We had Saturday and Sunday off, says Vogt.

The actual recording of the episodes took place on Mondays. First they had a dress rehearsal without an audience, and at half past eight in the evening the 300 audience members were transported into Komistudio.

– As a rule, we were done in an hour and a half. It was really quite incredible. We were very disciplined, says Vogt.

– It was very intense, because it was a way of making TV that is not done very often. In a way, you play a bit of theater as well, since there was an audience there, says Nordin.

Viewer magnet

– There weren’t huge viewing figures at the very beginning. We took some time to recover, says Nils Vogt.

But when the series gained a foothold with the public, the viewing figures rose sharply. Vogt estimates that it took less than a year for Mot i brøstet to end up at the top of the most watched programs in Norway.

Courage quickly gained a fan base, and after the recordings, Vogt, Nordin and Opsahl remained for up to an hour to sign autographs. The signing of autographs first took place on stage in Mot i brøstet-stua, but after eager fans stole props as souvenirs, they had to move the signing sessions to another room.

Arve Opsahl had not felt so popular since the Egon Olsen role in the Olsenbanden films, he told Aftenposten in 1995.

Nordin believes much of the success was due to a lack of a Norwegian situation comedy.

– There was obviously a need there that was met. I remember when we rated the highest. On Monday, which was the broadcast day, we had 800,000 viewers. And then the same episode was repeated two days later, and it had 600,000. That would mean that 1.4 million Norwegians sat and stared at these silly goats here, says Nordin and laughs.

But the critics did not embrace the series, which Nordin remembers well.

– It is not critic food to make such series. After all, it’s simple, popular entertainment, and it’s rare to get a dice roll of five, so we didn’t expect that. But the response we got from the TV viewers lasted a long time for us.

Courage in the chest is available at TV 2 Play.

Sources

Nils Vogt, Sven Nordin, Hilde Lyrån and Tore Ryen.
Courage in the chest – The series that changed television Norway (book, Ivar Kinn/Roger Gjermundsheig, 1996).
Newspaper archive.