In Sweden, a very special reality TV has been experiencing the same success since 2019. Disposed 24/24 for three weeks, voiceless, without humans, it fascinates millions of Swedes each year for the migration of impulses towards summer pastures in the north of the country. The 2025 edition of The great migration of impulses ended, Sunday, May 4, on the platform of the SVT Play national broadcaster. The show is part of what is called “slow TV”, or slow television, which aims to offer calm content, unlike programs that have become the norm on chains and platforms around the world.
In The great migration of Elanswe see for example a female crossing a river in the north of Sweden with its two young. This kind of moment is the peak of the program, because most of the time, it does not happen much. But that is precisely the whole concept, as Cait Börjesson explains, a follower of the first hour. “I spent the last three hours watching impulses that rest and ruminate in the sun. The first thing I do when I wake up is put this show. It seizes me so much. I tell you frankly, do not waste your money at the psychologist, look rather for 15 minutes and after you will feel good.”
To not miss anything from this 7th edition, she even posed a vacation: “There was a swan that was pinned the behind by another swan while he was eating underwater. It was really too funny!” If Cait has to go shopping for example, she follows the show on her phone: “And then I activated the notifications on Facebook, so I receive” pruning “in capital letters on the group.”
The group has more than 80,000 people. A very active community including the producer of the show, Stefan Edlund, is also a part: “There is no one in the forest otherwise it would be afraid of the impulses. We have placed 35 cameras, including 8 nights, and 25 others that we can direct at a distance with a joystick. This program goes against modern television, we see it rather as a living painting.”
The “slow TV” is a genre that took off in 2009 with real -time broadcasting, on a Norwegian channel, of a train trip, from seven hours, from Bergen to Oslo. Since then, broadcasts of 12 -hour knitting marathons, a 134 -hour sea trip or the flow of a crackling fire dominated the viewing rankings.
French researcher Minh-Xuan Truong studies the phenomenon closely at the University of Uppsala: “It becomes a kind of annual ritual where people meet. Contemplative and boredom are so little present in our lives when it has been shown that boredom is so important in all processes, recovery, in creative processes, cognitive acquired. In addition to that, the context in which we are now, superoptimism, doomscrolling, Donald Trump and needs to get better.
“It allows millions of people to have their dose of forest in their living room, their window open to nature.”
French researcher Minh-Xuan Truongin franceinfo
This show in unique format, without narration or music, is broadcast in schools and retirement homes in the kingdom. Because to observe impulses, kings of Swedish forests, offers an immersive meditative and authentic experience of Swedish nature. A place, like a bubble, spared by man.
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