Millions are tuning in to the hottest show captivating Sweden: It’s reality, it’s live, and after hours of slow shots of calming nature, the stars arrive — Sweden’s beloved moose on their spring migration.
“The Great Moose Migration” started airing on Tuesday on SVT, Sweden’s public service television company. It captures the creatures on the path they’ve followed for thousands of years to rich summer grazing pastures.
The show will air nonstop for 24 hours for 20 days, following the animals via remote cameras and drones as the moose journey through forests and swim across the Ångerman River, The Associated Press reported.
The series debuted in 2019 on SVT Play and drew about a million viewers in its first year. Last year, viewership exploded to 9 million.
And its fan base is dedicated and massive.
“I make sure I have coffee, I have snacks. Sleep? Forget it, I don’t sleep,” Ulla Malmgren, 62, said in an interview aired Wednesday on NBC’s “TODAY” show.
A Facebook group entitled “Vi som gillar den stora älgvandringen på SVT!” — which translates to “We who like the great moose migration on SVT!” — has over 78,000 members, with fans sharing photos of their TV screens when moose appear.
Locals keep the show playing on their TVs as hours can go by without any action, and when moose appear, they explode in joy.
“I was late to school because I saw a moose, and my teacher was like ‘What? You saw a moose in the city?’ And I was like ‘No, it’s on TV!'” a Swedish student said on “TODAY.”
The show is an example of the wild success of slow TV — no plots, no drama, just a front-row seat to Mother Nature. The Giant Panda Cam at the Smithsonian Zoo, which has attracted over 100 million fans, and the Bald Eagle Cam at Big Bear Valley in California are other examples of the phenomenon.
“Everyone is so stressed today with the social media and the way we produce everything we do in our life and this is the total opposite of that,” Project manager at Sverige’s Television (SVT), Johan Erlag, said on NBC’s “TODAY” show.
“It gives us a really distinctive type of atmosphere, an almost therapeutic slow atmosphere and at the same time it helps us to adjust our mood,” Annette Hill, a media and communications professor at Jönköping University, added.
Producers of the moose livestream said they had to start filming a week earlier than planned due to warm weather that bumped up the migration. But fear not — with three weeks left on the migration journey, there’s plenty of time to tune in.