Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Love & Anarchy’ On Netflix, A Strange Swedish Comedy About Flirting, Challenges And Unintended Consequences

Why do we love seeing people shake up their boring domestic lives on our TV screens? Are we bored ourselves? Or are we happy with our situations and just love seeing people take risks and chances? Love & Anarchy, a Swedish comedy series, is all about risks and chances, as two co-workers challenge each other to flout society in a weird, sometimes-sexy flirtation.

LOVE & ANARCHY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: As a woman works on her laptop, her husband calls from the kitchen that he’s added some things to their shared calendar.

The Gist: Sofie Rydman (Ida Engvoll) is a married mother of two who is an ambitious consultant. She’s starting a new job at an old-school publishing house that finally wants to join the 21st century and create a robust digital operation. One thing that Sofie likes to do is masturbate to porn on her phone, almost delighting in the fact that she could be discovered at any moment.

On her first day at work, she meets crusty creative director Friedrich Jägerstedt (Reine Brynolfsson) and the more forward-thinking Denise Konar (Gizem Erdogan). They read all the manuscripts, and they’re currently arguing over a hot young author that Denise wants to publish. While she’s trying to work, Sofie has a run-in with Max Järvi (Björn Mosten), the young IT intern, who is drilling through the walls. She has the same run-in the next day and advises he should work when people aren’t there.

Late that night, when she thinks she’s alone, Sofie practices some self love in her office. Right then, Max comes into the office sees Sofie doing her business and takes a picture. When he tells her about it the next day and shows her the picture, he tells her that he wants her to do something for him. It turns out that he just wants her to take him to Burger King for lunch. She does so, and starts to find herself attracted to the young dude. After he deletes the picture (and he tells her to delete it from “recently deleted), she takes the phone and dares him to do something outlandish in order to get it back.

After the young female author accuses the publishing house’s biggest moneymaking author of sending a dick pic, all of a sudden a picture of a woman’s privates show up on the company’s Instagram. When everyone goes to Max to find out what happened, he says it’s “hackers,” but Sofie knows better, and is quite impressed. And so the game begins.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Can you think of another show where a middle-aged, happily married woman flirts with a young man via challenges and pranks? Neither can we.

Our Take: Love & Anarchy (Original title: Karlek & Anarki), created by Lisa Langseth, is an odd bird, for sure. We get what Langseth is going for here; Sofia and Max continue to challenge each other in a seemingly hands-off flirtation (at least at first), which feeds into what each other needs out of their lives at that point. We do see Sofia having problems with her conspiracy-theory-spewing father (Lars Väringer), so there are some clues as to why Sofia needs to shake herself out of her busy but inevitably boring family life.

What do we know about Max? He tends to connect more with older women than women her own age. How do we know that? There’s a short scene where Max is at a bar with a friend and an older redhead looks his way. Next thing you know, they’re in bed and en fuego. So that’s what we know about Max, beyond the fact that he really doesn’t love working at the publishing house.

But we don’t know any more about either Sofia or Max more than that, and that’s a problem. Perhaps we’ll get to know them more over the season’s 8 episodes, but after the first 35 minute episode, all we know is that for some reason Sofia is attracted to Max and she likes the danger of this flirtation.

Maybe we would have gotten some deeper characterizations if there wasn’t as much of a concentration on the workplace aspect of the series. We find it hard to believe that such an office exists in 2020; it’s a publishing house that has no digital footprint and whose social media coordinator has struggled to get their Instagram 5,000 followers.

This feels like it would have been a plot from a workplace comedy a decade ago, or even maybe back in the mid-’00s. These days, a publisher without a digital footprint would be hopelessly behind. So we spend a lot of time seeing the people in the office argue with each other, and Sofia making suggestions about using 21st century tools to read manuscripts and/or taking sides. We would have been better served getting to know Max more and finding out more about why Sofia is so bored with what seems to be a happy family life. Otherwise, the flirtation comes out of nowhere and leaves us a bit cold.

Sex and Skin: We see Max having sex with the older redhead, to illustrate that older women intrigue him.

Parting Shot: Sofie leaves her lipstick on Max’s desk and tells him not to give it back to her until she does something outrageous. Then she slinks back to her office. The game is on.

Sleeper Star: Gizem Erdogan as Denise feels like she will be Sofia’s unwitting partner in crime, but she seems to be game to do it.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Sofia complains about Max to her husband Johan (Johannes Bah Kuhnke), he says she should fire him. “There are tons of IT guys out there.” As a former IT guy, I’m rather insulted by that statement, even if it’s true.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The idea behind Love & Anarchy is intriguing, but we wish the main characters in this show had a bit more depth to them. Also, the workplace aspect of the show is distracting, at least in the first episode.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Love & Anarchy On Netflix