Patrick Nebout and Henrik Jansson-Schweitzer, the creators of Disney+/SVT’s ratings-breaking and award-winning Whiskey on the Rocks, have announced two new premium projects from their Stockholm-based boutique production company Dramanation: the Nordic noir actioner Becker & Kempe and the Cold War heist drama Made in Sweden.
They will join the previously announced English language murder mystery series “To Catch A Murderer” (also known as “The Studio”).
Embodying Dramanation’s mission to produce what Nebout calls “flashy, high-profile television series and films that have an international resonance,” Nebout and Jansson Schweitzer are bringing “Becker & Kempe” and “Made in Sweden” to market this week.
Gothenburg’s TV Drama Vision is a Swedish festival videoconferencing forum and market that will take place from January 27th to 26th.
The Scandinavian noir crime/detective action film “Becker & Kempe” (tentative title) is a story set primarily in Sweden’s largest port city, Gothenburg, and tells the story of detectives Mira Baser and Simon Kempe as they fight against international crime and corruption. The screenplay is being written by Morgan Jensen and Theo Gabay, authors of four bestselling novels, and Jensen’s screenwriting credits include SVT-Arte’s “Thicker than Water” and five episodes of the propulsive ZFG-TV4 spy action film “Agent Hamilton.”
This project is being developed in collaboration with the streamer. DramaNation is currently looking for additional local partners, Nebout told Variety.
Touted by Nebout as a “creative cousin” to the Apple TV+ film Tetris, Made in Sweden has also been cast by Nebout as a Cold War political thriller/drama in the vein of Whiskey on the Rocks, reuniting many of the series’ creative talents in writer Jansson Schweitzer and director Bjorn Stein (Midnight Sun).
“Made in Sweden” retells the extraordinary true story of how the Swedish government, seeing North Korea as a lucrative emerging market, spearheaded the sale of 1,000 Volvo 144 sedans to North Korea.
In “Made in Sweden,” the deal is led by idealistic civil servants in the Swedish Ministry of Trade, convinced that trade can counter the Cold War and that Sweden’s position as a neutral country between the United States and the Soviet Union can advance this goal. But as North Korea defaults on its payments and the KGB and CIA intervene, questioning what’s really behind the deal, “Made in Sweden” takes on the look of a car robbery spy thriller.
Nebaut and Jansson-Schweitzer also co-developed and co-produced with Germany’s Odeon Fiction as lead studio and produced “To Catch a Murderer,” written by British authors Dan Gaster, Will Ing and Paul Powell (AMC-AcornTV’s “Art Detective”).
One of the duo’s careers through the line is international ambition. Nice Drama developed and produced Midnight Sun (2016), a high-concept, high-end murder mystery thriller starring Leila Bekti (The Prophet) as a French police officer sent to investigate a murder in Arctic Sweden. Supported by Canal+ and SVT, it was touted as the first French-Swedish co-production.
Produced by Nevaut and Jansson-Schweitzer, along with several other partners, The Hundred-Year-Old Man was Sweden’s biggest box office hit with $22.9 million, and was also a hit in Germany ($11.5 million) on its way to a global trawl of $51.2 million.
Another touchstone is our belief in premium entertainment. This figure continues despite and because orders for Nordic scripted series fell from 129 in 2022 to 57 in 2025, according to Ampere Analysis.
“We’ve moved away from the market, especially talking about streamers. More than five years ago, it was basically all about premium drama. Streaming services didn’t have a lot of reality TV, light entertainment, other formats or sports,” said Guy Bisson, author of Reinventing from the Rubble: Re-Engineering Entertainment, who will present the state of market analysis at TV Drama Vision in Gothenburg on January 27.
“But we are talking about market trends. It cannot be black and white. There is still room and market demand for premium drama,” Bisson added.
As TV Drama Vision prepares to buy Dramanation’s new project, Nebout talks about this, its big-picture approach to local events, its mixed-funding model, and its winning combination of top creative talent and IP.
Your two new series reflect your belief that there is still demand for premium drama.
Our approach is fundamentally to maintain the philosophy we’ve followed for over 15 years: ignore the panic around us and focus on unique scripted entertainment with authentic voices, regardless of format, budget, distribution platform or medium. We believe that viewers still want event drama. The record-breaking ratings for the recent Disney+/SVT miniseries “Whiskey on the Rocks” certainly bear this out. The niche market of premium, compelling scripted entertainment is by no means extinct. While we pay homage to the craze for vertical microdramas, we’re sticking firmly to horizontal flashy dramas.
I believe that “Becker & Kempe” will explore international crimes and relations with other countries such as Svalbard and Spain in the background. “Whiskey on the Rocks” and “Made in Sweden” depict Sweden in the midst of Cold War conflict. Your series are set in Swedish landscapes, including the memorable arctic landscape “Midnight Sun,” but they almost always have an international dimension. Could you please comment?
The “bigger picture” is perhaps the perilous thread in most of the concepts and stories we engage with, develop, and choose to bring to the screen. Genre doesn’t matter. We look for ripples on the water, how local events and actions have wider impacts. It’s a butterfly effect. Globalization began in the 19th century and today we are inescapably interconnected. Crime knows no boundaries, and geopolitics and ideology now impact every individual on the planet. Whether the story is set in the Swedish North Pole or the streets of Paris, the tension between isolated places and the global stage is what we explore. It’s the ultimate fuel for larger-than-life storytelling and high-stakes escapism.
“Becker & Kempe” is a crime action movie that I made before like “Agent Hamilton.” We’ve arrived at a time when action movies and series, or titles with strong action elements, make up a large portion of the platform’s blockbusters. Could you please comment again?
Action, thriller, and adventure are evergreen genres because they hold an important promise of escapism, especially in difficult times. Escapism doesn’t necessarily mean lighthearted entertainment. For me, the beauty and true power of the Action Edge lies in its versatility. Injecting complex or dark stories and genres like crime and espionage as elements adds a high-octane layer that heightens the stakes. It is therefore no coincidence that Action, in its many iterations and forms, currently dominates the world’s top ten. It provides a universal language.
Do you see “Made in Sweden” as a sequel to “Whiskey on the Rocks”?
Although not a sequel, “Made in Sweden” is thematically a cousin of “Whiskey on the Rocks” and aims to reunite the same creative team. Once again, we live in a Cold War world inspired by an infamous true story, but seen through a different lens. Our take is still satirical, but also leans toward a heist-driven dramatic thriller. Another thematic cousin is Apple’s “Tetris”. It’s a fast-paced, high-stakes game that combines tension and wit. We explore that stark historical period through genre-defying stories and engaging characters.
We’re told that we’re co-developing ‘Becker & Kempe’ with a streaming service and are looking for additional local partners. Do you see this blended financing model as one way forward for the high-end series?
In the new normal, fixed models no longer exist. Marketplaces are evolving every day, and today’s settings may be outdated tomorrow. However, for certain high-end series, partnerships between international streamers and local broadcasters can be a big step forward. We pioneered this in Scandinavia with Whiskey on the Rocks, a co-production between SVT and Disney+. Properly designed, these “windowed” collaborations are a win-win. It facilitates increased production value and risk sharing for ambitious projects. Last but not least, this model allows producers to retain their IP. This is a fundamental change from the “fully streamer-funded and owned” model.
Another feature of your series is the combination of top creative talent who have created hits as novelists and directors, and IP such as historical events and bestsellers. Could you please comment again?
This is a deliberate strategy and positioning on our part. As a boutique focused on scalable and distinctive tentpole drama, our combination of top-notch talent and strong, unique IP gives us a key advantage in breaking through the noise of a saturated market, providing our partners and viewers with peace of mind of high-end quality.
whiskey on the rocks
Whiskey on the Rocks, a fun chronicle of a real-life nuclear crisis, part warm-era comedy and part hilarious political satire, won the 2025 Italia Prize, organized by RAI and sponsored by around 100 public and private broadcasters. It also won Best TV Drama at the Kristalen TV Awards in Sweden, Best Nordic Series at the Aarhus Series Awards in Denmark, and was nominated for a Rose d’Or.
On Swedish pubcaster SVT, the show hit record highs, with the first episode airing on Christmas Day 2024 garnering around 1.2 million viewers. With missed viewing and non-linear viewing on SVT Play, the series’ total reach averaged around 1.8 million viewers per episode, with almost one in six Swedes watching the series. The completion rate was 93%.
“Whiskey on the Rocks,” Disney+’s first Scandinavian original series to premiere on Hulu in select countries and the U.S., begins in 1981 as the crew of a Soviet U-137 “Whiskey” class submarine changes course on its way home. However, he is too drunk to set the new coordinates correctly. This underground facility is located on a rock overlooking the Swedish coast, deep in territorial waters and near the largest naval base. There is also a good chance that it carries a nuclear warhead.
The series’ sympathies lie not with the short-tempered American, Swedish, and Russian military commanders just itching for military action, but with the common people on the ground in Sweden, on the Russian submarine, and in the seemingly disheveled Swedish Prime Minister who turns out to be the source of sanity.
“Whiskey and the Rocks” is also filled with memorable scenes, including a phone conversation between Ronald Reagan and dementia-stricken Leonard Brezhnev, saved by the translator’s clever diplomacy, which averts a nuclear explosion. “Leonard, son of a motherless goat, this is Ronald here,” President Reagan jokingly greeted Breshnev, which translates to “It’s a great honor to steal a moment of your precious time.” “You should hang yourself,” Brezhnev replies. “Hello, Honorable President. To what do I owe this joy?”
“We have three spy planes over this damn submarine, and we need to know if it has nuclear missiles on board,” Reagan barked when Brezhnev’s interpreter said the crisis was just a Russia-Sweden issue. However, Brezhnev was already asleep at this time.
whiskey on the rocks
