(courtesy Netflix)
One of the most enduring of recent festive viewing traditions has been the Home for Christmas (Hjem til jul) series, now in its third season, which offers up gently soap operatic storytelling with an almost tangible sense of what we think Christmas should look and feel like.
Unlike many Christmas romcoms, which while delightfully escapist, feel almost absurdly hyper make-believe-y, the Norway-set Home for Christmas (Hjem til jul) has an air of groundedness about it, a sense of people living real lives, all of which anchors the show in a world impossibly dusted with the ineffable beauty and wonder of the festive season.
The humanity and warmth of the series might come as a surprise if you recall that the show started all the way back in season 1 with the trope-heavy premise of the lone single person in the family vowing and declaring to their two married siblings and their parents that they have a boyfriend, for real thank you, and that he will be present at the Christmas Eve gathering.
That person was Johanne (Ida Elise Broch), a thirty-something nurse whose professional care and competency at the hospital where she works stood in stark contrast to the shambles of a love life which seemed to lurch from one disaster to another.
Fed up with seeing sister Maria (Helga Guren) and brother Morten (Christian Ruud Kallum) blissfully happy with their partners Ayaz (Sajid Malik) and Sunniva (Cat Haave) respectively – though she loves them dearly and gets along with them famously, their seeming healthy, functional relationships mock her own barren singleness – and her parents, Tor (Dennis Storhøi) and Jorid (Anette Hoff) still very much in love after many decades, Johanne, who lives with her family in a picture-perfect version of the Norwegian capital, Oslo (winter scenes were actually filmed in the copper mining town of Røros), lied about her own loved-up status.
By the end of season one, it’s hinted by way of a clever final scene that her lie is now an unexpected truth but as season 2 makes abundantly and sadly clear, finding love, the real stuff that her parents and siblings enjoy ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- – though her parents spilt during this season so maybe appearances are not, in fact, everything? – is not even remotely easy.
Things end happily thankfully with Johanne finding love with the last person she expected it to be with, but by the start of this third season of Home for Christmas (Hjem til jul) that grand love affair has run its course over differences over having children, and Johanne is alone again, unwilling this time around to expend too much effort in trying to find another relationship.
Over the course of a year, Johanne becomes what her new Swedish nursing colleague and BFF Vera (Felicia Danielsson) calls a “Gold Monk” or someone who hasn’t had sex in a year, and embarrassed that her life has become so starved of physical contact, Johanne, who gets a promotion at work which creates its own rewards and challenges, tries to get a one-night stand to break the drought.
But every time she gets close, whether it’s with a random bartender or a school dad Adrian (John Carew) she meets while contributing to and being part of her nephews’ Christmas school play to help out her burnout sister Maria, she strikes out, realising she’s moved beyond casual dancefloor hook-ups and now needs to at least talk to the guy first.
While she’s not actively looking for a relationship, one is, rather happily, and in the tradition of many a festive romcom, right under her nose with her kitchen builder Bo (Gard Løkke) the obvious candidate for her long-term love and affection.
But naturally, and here’s where Home for Christmas (Hjem til jul) merrily embraces one of the key tropes of the genre – it may be more grounded than many of its counterparts but it’s still a romcom and makes good use of the standard narrative components at hand – they must start out at enemies, or at least as builder and client who seem to clash at every opportunity.
Or more accurately, taciturn, quiet to the point of rudeness Bo drives Johanne, who needs her kitchen fixed in emergency fashion by Christmas Eve so she can host a family gathering, and who finds Bo’s unwillingness or inability to communicate maddening to the point of gibbering fury.
The thing is that Johanne is under a huge amount of pressure professionally and personally with none of the family showing much inclination to join together as a group for Christmas – it gets so bad that her mother goes to Spain with her new guy while her dad prefers to spend Christmas with his old school friend Øystein (Per Egil Aske) indulging their shared love of modern trains (which Johanne dismisses as “oddball”) – and with the one focus she has, her family, falling into disarray, she loses it on a regular basis, channelling all her frustration and impotence to fix her family, which of course she can’t do, into clashes with Bo.
Who, and yes, you must have seen this coming, loves her from the moment he meets her, and after some unexpected narrative twists and turns see them spending time together away from the dusty kitchen, Johanne realises that she loves him too.
It’s a classic romcom but set against some very real world issues of overcommitment, frantic 21st century life and finding love when you’re juggling a thousand other things, and the third season, like its two predecessors, absolutely delivers on the joy and happiness of finding that perfect person almost by accident while serving up rich and cosy festive vibes by the handful.
Home for Christmas (Hjem til jul), which wraps up the series beautifully – though I’d be happy to return to Johanne’s world even if this is the end, and I hoper it is, for her quest for love, true love – and which features lush Christmas visuals which are like a Scandinavian postcard sprung magically to luminously festive life and some truly catchy pop, is the perfect antidote to the dark world swirling around us this Christmas, a heartwarming reminder of the magic of love, of Christmas and how perfect it can be when the two come together as one.