Friendship, how it begins and how it outlasts changing circumstances, is the intimate heart of Melk ("milk"). Two women, both single by choice or tragic loss, give birth on the same day in the same hospital in Melk, and subsequently form a friendship despite their differences.
While marriages are interesting, and that remains the basis of many fictional and documentary narratives, multi-faceted female friendship creates a fertile ground for storytelling. For women, the battle of personal priorities, ageing, the coming and going of romances, professional demands, and - sometimes - raising children can all impede the time and energy they have for friendship. But when an allegiance is formed, it is often more intense and emotionally intimate than many romances. For Mathilde (Julia Schact, The Machinery) and Ingri (Ragnhild H. Myntevik, Beware Of Children), they are at a volatile apex in their lives and having someone who can relate, at least to some degree, is enormously comforting to both, eventually. This odd couple have to overcome their initial conflict to find common ground.
Ingrid (Ragnhild H. Myntevik). Credit: Viaplay
Ingri's husband dies while at work on the same day she discovers that she's pregnant. Across town, Mathilde find out that she's pregnant in the hours after dumping her boyfriend Mats (Herbert Nordrum). To complicate matters, Mats' new girlfriend is also pregnant with his child, giving Ingri further incentive to keep her own pregnancy secret. Faced with loss and fragile hope for a future they feel deeply alone in facing, both women initially lash out at one another. But what drives them apart is trivial in the face of what unites them: a resilience and determination to raise their children with the love and security they are fighting for.
Writer Ole Marius Araldsen has a broad CV to date. His longest running series to date is the decade-long Hotel Caesar (2002 - 2012), followed by Maniac and Ammo. After the “overwhelming” two and a half years of research it took to eventually make Ammo, and the decade-long Hotel Caesar, Melk was a welcome new endeavour.
Araldsen says, “It was definitely a big relief to walk into a new series. I love a good soap [Hotel Caesar], but eventually you get tired of the same characters and the same behaviour of those characters. Soap is one of the few genres where the characters don’t really develop as much, so it was a big relief to be able to write characters who change their lives within ten episodes.”
It was a series that, in the spirit of carefree Mathilde, dove headlong into creation without the luxury of the usual time available to series to form and film. At around the time Araldsen was forming his new production company, Anagram Norway, he had met with Schact and Myntevik at their invitation. The two actresses had already conceived of the story (boom, boom).
Mathilde (Julia Schact). Credit: Viaplay
“The two lead actresses both became mothers at more or less the same time and both were struck by this overwhelming feeling that ‘it’s impossible to handle’, which is when they came up with the idea for the series,” explains Araldsen.
“They had already shot one scene and showed it to me and asked if they thought I could do something with their idea.”
So, when Araldsen was asked to pitch ideas to Anagram Norway for a new series in 2017, the timing panned out perfectly.
“During the first pitch meeting I was in with this company, they said they wanted something with a female lead and a comedy element and wanted to know if I had anything. I said, ‘yes, I do’. I showed them the scene [Schact and Myntevik had filmed].”
The idea and the scene won over the meeting, and Araldsen was given eight months to deliver the series in full. It was an unusually short turnaround time, but the cast and crew were unwavering in their determination to bring Melk to fruition.
Writer Ole Marius Araldsen. Credit: Viaplay
“Julia and Ragnhild hadn’t written anything for the screen before, but they were sure they could do this. In the end we had four, sometimes five, writers and the challenge was to convey this global feeling of what it’s like to be a parent. We were under a tight deadline, so the writers were committed to going in the same directions.”
The writers may well have been on the same page, but Mathilde and Ingri’s attitudes to life are – initially, at least – the proverbial chalk and cheese.
Araldsen admits that Ingri’s not the easiest to like, at first, but she becomes someone we empathise with and admire.
“Ingri has always been controlling but when her husband dies unexpectedly, she feels out of control, and she’s scared stiff of not being able to control anything else in her life. When she gives birth, she’s really afraid of anything happening to that child.”
He adds, “We knew where we were taking her character, and knowing she eventually would realise that she can’t be in control or live her life that way, it was easier to like her. I think everyone can relate to that kind of behaviour though, that need to be in control.”
On the other hand, Mathilde is averse to planning and plotting.
“When we first meet her, she’s finally got a reason to grow up,” says Araldsen. “She’s the opposite of Ingri. She wants to live life ‘loose’ before learning she’s pregnant. Her dilemma is that she has just broken up with the father of her child. When she’s about to tell him, he gives his news first that he’s about to become a father with another woman and they officially break up forever. So, instead of telling him, Mathilde decides to raise her child alone.”
Araldsen says that research for Melk – unlike the intense weapons industry deep-dive required for Ammo – was entirely organic.
“I’m a parent of three sons, and I definitely used a lot of my own experiences in this series,” he says with a laugh.
In the process of making Melk, he says that he, Schact, and Myntevik also formed a familial bond, not unlike Mathilde and Ingri’s.
“We became close because we hired a house nearby to where I live. That’s where we shot all the interior scenes for Melk, so it was like becoming a family without knowing one another. It paralleled the story of Ingrid and Mathilde moving in together without really knowing each other.”
Melk is streaming now at SBS On Demand.
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