HBO Max Orders Lust With Sofia Helin

HBO Max has ordered Lust, an outrageous and painfully honest eight-part comedy starring Sofia Helin (The Bridge) about four middle-aged women in Stockholm struggling to keep their libidos alive in a sexually frustrating world.

Anette (Sofia Helin), Nadia (Anja Lundqvist), Ellen (Julia Dufvenius) and Martina (Elin Klinga) have all been friends since school and are intrigued when Anette reveals that she is conducting a government survey dubbed Make Sweden Sexy Again. Is good sex, or the lack thereof, impacting the health of Swedish women over 40?

Sofia Helin said: “In my childhood home, there was a book on the bookshelf that was completely torn apart by all the girls and women of the family; the sex survey The Hite Report, the 1976 bestseller by American feminist Shere Hite. Getting an insight into the adults’ most intimate rooms and understanding how different everyone is when it comes to sex was astounding.”

“When me and my friends as adults mentioned that we actually talk to each other about everything but our sex lives, we recalled Shere Hite’s groundbreaking sex survey. It turned into long conversations with a lot of laughter. It is such a vulnerable subject and therefore so liberating to be able to laugh together. Pairing a sex study with a comedy series created a fantastic creative space and it became our series: Lust.”

Executive producer, Christian Wikander, added: “Lust represents our ambition with HBO Max to bring together brilliant creators and talent, on and off screen, to craft truly special series that offer our audiences something different. Firmly rooted in Sweden but centred around universal themes like sex, relationships and getting older, there is great potential for it to resonate globally too.”

Lust, written by Frans Milisic Wiklund and directed by Ella Lemhagen, is already in production and expected to air later this year when HBO Max launches in Sweden.