Matador (Danish TV series)

Matador
Genre	Historical
Created by	Lise Nørgaard
Written by	Lise Nørgaard Erik Balling Paul Hammerich Jens Louis Petersen Karen Smith
Directed by	Erik Balling
Starring	Jørgen Buckhøj Ghita Nørby Holger Juul Hansen Malene Schwartz Buster Larsen Helle Virkner Bent Mejding Jesper Langberg
Narrated by	Ole Andreasen
Theme music composer	Bent Fabricius-Bjerre
Country of origin	Denmark
Original language	Danish
No. of seasons	4
No. of episodes	24
Production
Running time	41–86 minutes per episode
Production company	Nordisk Film
Original release
Network	Danmarks Radio
Release	11 November 1978 (1978-11-11) – 2 January 1982 (1982-01-02)
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Matador is a Danish TV series produced and aired between 1978 and 1982. It is set in the fictional Danish town of Korsbæk (a portmanteau of Korsør and Holbæk) between 1929 and 1947. It follows the lives of a range of characters from across the social spectrum, focusing specifically on the rivalry between the families of two businessmen: banker Hans Christian Varnæs, an established local worthy, and Mads (Andersen-)Skjern, who arrives in town as a travelling salesman as the series opens, and builds up a large business. The name Matador was taken from the localised edition of the boardgame Monopoly, also the series' tentative English title. In addition, in contemporary Danish a "matador" is often used to describe a business tycoon, in the series referring to the character of Mads Skjern and his craftiness as a self-made entrepreneur.

Directed by Danish film-maker Erik Balling, Matador was the idea of author Lise Nørgaard, who wrote the bulk of the episodes, along with Karen Smith, Jens Louis Petersen, and Paul Hammerich. The series is one of the most well-known and popular examples of Danish television and represents a then peak of longtime development of Danish TV drama by the public service channel Danmarks Radio.

The series has become part of the modern self-understanding of Danes, partly because of its successful mix of melodrama and a distinct warm Danish humour in the depiction of characters, which were portrayed by a wide range of the most popular Danish actors at the time; but also not least because of its accurate portrayal of a turbulent Denmark from around the start of the Great Depression and through Nazi Germany's occupation of Denmark in World War II.^[1]

The distinctive and, in Denmark, celebrated theme tune^[2] of the series was composed by Bent Fabricius-Bjerre.

Matador originally aired on DR between November 1978 and January 1982 and has enjoyed repeated successful reruns in 1984-85, 1989–90, 1997–98, 2006–07, 2012–13, 2017-2018 and most recently 2020, for the latter newly restored to High Definition. Individual episodes figure prominently in Denmark's top TV viewing figures of all time, led by episode 9's showing during the series' first rerun on 10 February 1985 with an estimated 3,641,000 viewers, followed closely by 3,516,000 viewers watching the series finale during its original run on 2 January 1982; this in a country of some 5 million people at the time.^[3]

Additionally, the series has been released on VHS and in 2001 on region 2 DVD. This first edition of 12 separate DVDs with two episodes each has been one of the most sold in the country's history and surpassed a total of 1 million copies sold in 2005. A second 2006 13-DVD box set included English subtitles for a wider audience, with various DVD editions surpassing 3.6 million copies sold by 2013.^[4] The series was widely popular in neighbouring Norway, Sweden, and Germany, and it has been broadcast in more than 20 countries worldwide, one of which was Australia, here also widely popular when broadcast on Australian SBS TV in Danish with English subtitles. Queen Mary of Denmark, born in Tasmania, stated in a TV interview on Australian TV in 2004, that she watched Matador whilst learning Danish.^[5]