Johanna Hagström: Persbrandt will be the elephant in the room – Gothenburg Post

Program leaders’ own experience is the Devil’s Dance strength – and weakness.

The wave of grateful comments on Twitter and the pressure on the chat after Tuesday’s premiere, which tremendously awaited Devil’s Dance program on SVT’s. There are so very many co-dependent families out there whose stories are rarely released.

The hosts Ann Söderlund and Sanna Lundell are public figures who are open about their own experiences of living in abusive families.

It will be both a strength and weakness of the program. Söderlund and Lundell joins the project with all the credibility and authority that comes with the bottoms of the subject. The interviews they do with other sufferers are consistently responsive and empathetic without being Compassion.

Sorry settles their own celebrity status and not least their abusive relatives fame also in the path of the program. When Sanna Lundell interviewing the wonderfully articulate and thoughtful writer Hillevi Wahl slipping call in to the people who grew up with abusive parents often end up in abusive relationships as adults.

Then Lundell partner Mikael Persbrandt that elephant in room that you can not talk about but that takes up so much space that at least I find it difficult to keep the focus on the Wahl says.

There can obviously be no requirement that Lundell and Söderlund should speak out about their abusive men and ex-husband. But they do it anyway, a little, but with a lot unsaid. Lundell ends with a teaser to the next section “… I’ll tell you how and Ann medberoendet has hit our love relationships. This you must see.”

I’d rather have avoided it entirely, if possible, stay focused on the brave people who set up and allow themselves to be interviewed. Their actions shines brightly enough anyway. None who saw the premiere episode will, for example, forget the scene when the 19-year-old Simon confronts his father Inge with his long addiction. It is scathing strong.

Even if the father turns the conversation to be about his own struggle against the abuse instead of talking about his son’s feelings, it is Simon’s immense willpower to rise from the rubble of her childhood and go further that sticks in your heart and let in a ray of hope.

See the first episode here: http://www.svtplay.se/video/2329742/djavulsdansen/avsnitt-1-att-vara-medberoende-till-en-foralder-som-missbrukar