'Call Me Dad' takes family and friendship to a very awkward place

Emil and Viktor are the kind of friends where nothing can come between them. Which isn’t as wonderful as it sounds, because now Viktor’s dating Emil’s mother.

A young man rides a bike with a buggy carrying a man and woman embracing

Call Me Dad

What would you do if your best friend, someone you’ve grown up with and known your whole life, suddenly started going out with your mother? That’s the premise of new Danish comedy Call Me Dad, but that’s not the biggest question the series inspires. The actors who play the best friends are also best friends in real life: what inspired them to make a comedy based around an idea seemingly designed to ruin any friendship forever?

Emil (Alex Høgh Andersen - who Viking fans will recognise as Ivar) and Viktor (Magnus Haugaard) are more than just best friends; they’re business partners, running a new sustainable catering company. Emil is the quiet, subdued one, the kind of guy who goes along to get along. Viktor is brash, confident, a go-getter. And what he’s gone and got – even if Emil doesn’t know it yet - is Emil’s mother, Helle (Ellen Hillingsø).

Alex Høgh Andersen as Emil in 'Call Me Dad'

Emil isn’t the type of person to make a scene. He’s more about growing veggies on his roof, fishing rubbish out of local waterways, and installing a new recycling system in his mum’s house while she’s trying to get him to leave for mysteriously unstated reasons. When his girlfriend Carla (Roberta Hilarius Reichhardt) messes up the shopping order for their business, he’s the one making peace while her and Viktor yell at each other; he’s wracked with guilt when he accidentally speaks English to a client, assuming she doesn’t speak Danish.

And things definitely could be going better for Emil at the moment. His catering company accidentally triggered an allergic reaction in a client; when he was supposed to be firing Carla, he ended up asking her to move in with him. So when his mother invites him over to tell him something and Viktor’s hiding in the stairwell, you’d think alarm bells should be ringing.

A man sits on a couch opposite and woman and man sitting together

Alex Høgh Andersen, Magnus Haugaard Petersen and Ellen Hillingsø in 'Call Me Dad'.

“I’m in a relationship with your mum,” Viktor tells him. “We’re curious to know if you can handle it,” she says, sitting next to her lover on the couch. “Of course I can, it’s fantastic,” Emil says… when they finally let him get a word in. And it’s all downhill from there. No wonder the first episode opens with a flash-forward where Emil’s sporting a bloody nose.

As friends and actors, Andersen and Haugaard had been looking for a project to work on together for a while with no luck, so they decided to come up with one themselves. “It’s through my and Alex’s love for each other that the idea for the project was born - and we try to bring that feeling throughout,”

Haugaard said

when the project was announced, while

Andersen said

“to be able to do a project like this with my very best friend is a huge joy. I’m really looking forward to it”.

It's clear the pair have great chemistry together throughout Call Me Dad. They’re completely convincing as best friends, which is good because without that connection the whole series would fall apart. You really need to believe that these two people like each other and get along well – well enough that Emil wouldn’t just start throwing fists around the second he discovered what was going on.

Two men drink wine in a restaurant booth

Magnus Haugaard Petersen and Alex Høgh Andersen in 'Call Me Dad'. Credit: Henrik Petit/Henrik Petit

That chemistry can also makes things awkward to watch. No matter how much Emil might love both of them, that frozen grin of his is not the look of a happy man. Seeing the tug-of-war playing out within him – he wants them both to be happy, just maybe not in each other’s arms – it’s hard not to feel for him. Even if what you feel is that he needs to move to another country and never look back.

This is a show that only real-life friends could make; with anyone else, it’d be unbearable. In a way, it becomes a showcase for their friendship, even as Emil’s life starts to crumble around him. In later episodes Carla lodges a harassment complaint against the catering company (“I thought we agreed not to talk about work at home” she says when Emil tries to bring it up). When Viktor and Helle decide to take their relationship to the next level, Emil might have to get used to being a big brother.

And that blood nose Emil started the series with? It looks like he gets them from stress. He’d better get used to keeping a lot of tissues handy.

Call Me Dad season 1 premieres on SBS On Demand Thursday 29 February.