Yrmy

It was only supposed to be a short animated series, but it became a small phenomenon...

The only previous example of long-running animated series for grown-ups in Finland was Itse valtiaat, a popular weekly show that depicted members of Finnish political establishment as cartoon characters in a kind of second-rate attempt at Splitting Image-style satire of contemporary politics. Script writer Atte Järvinen was one of the main writers of Itsevaltiaat, and he brought to Pasila the same satirical take highly amplified and served it through his trademark rapid-fire dialogue.

Ostensibly dealing with the exploits of a group of police officers in a fictionalised version of Helsinki's police headquarters, Pasila actually excelled in taking the mickey out of all things from popular culture to topical issues in Finnish society. As the show points out, the crimes the Finnish police mostly encounter on daily basis are drunks brawling, domestic violence or petty theft by the marginalised. Pasila's coppers hence had to dig deeper to find the true nefarious criminal masterminds such as parents' councils, choreographers willing for others to die for their art, business consultants running sweatshops with pensioners and football clubs desperate to generate world-class talent (not an easy task in one of the few countries in the world where hockey rules the roost). Along the way, they took on subjects like prostitution, terrorism, net rage, dietary wars (after low-carb it's time for all-crap) and that eternal bone of contention (alternatively, the corner stone) of Finnish culture, alcohol. Pasila explored these themes with greater wit and verve than most Finnish cinema and television, where handling tends to be heavy-handed or wishy-washy. It also tackled head on subjects like religion that are generally tip-toed around.

And it managed to be consistently funny in the process! Some subjects, such as Birtherism or illegal downloading, will undoubtedly appear dated in a few years time, but their handling remains clever and hilarious. Only in a Finnish show could the doomsday scenario of Internet music piracy actualise as a hall full of sad senior citizens dancing only to the maudlin vocalisations of an even sadder crooner, because illegal downloading among the seniors has forced the musicians' union to lay off all instrumentalists from dance bands – and actually seem plausible! A modest cast of four voice actors handled the show's absurdities and delicious dialogue with aplomb, mostly transcending the limitations of such a small ensemble. The episodes worked almost as audio plays, and the simple but distinctive animation gave the stories appropriately expressive and absurd look. The dissonance between surface and content actually worked for the show.

For example, the main character, Inspector Kyösti Pöysti, a thirty-something cynical wanna-be intellectual, is portrayed as a big-headed midget with a piping voice, a dummy in his mouth and a wardrobe borrowed from The Pink Panther's Inspector. With his confrontational sardonic wit, his clumsy snobbery, his chronic inability to commit, his frequent attempts to bugger off to Goa and his bizarre hangovers (including the one which makes him see everyone as Phil Collins), Pöysti serves both as a delicious parody of and a sincere mouthpiece for the urbane, liberal and slightly lost segment of the Finns.

Many other Finns, especially of the older generations, frequently complain that the likes of Pöysti and their world-view are overrepresented in the media. Among the first ones to do so would be Pasila's station chief, the half-senile, wildly irrational and massively moustached Chief Inspector Rauno Repomies who summed up most episodes with jaw-dropping stream-of-consciousness monologues that somehow always managed to ramble their way into The Sound of Music territory of Nazis, nuns and singing children. His antics generally stole the show, which seems fitting in more ways than one. Media itself got what it had coming to in the shape of the hypernarcissistic television show host Juhani Kontiovaara, who is visually, though not personality-wise, an analogue of a certain real-life television personality.

For once quality and public taste agreed, and the short animated series ran for six seasons, something few Finnish shows manage. With that, one could only echo the catchphrase of Pasila's most sympathetic character Pekka Routalempi, the man who could become endlessly engrossed by even the most mundane things: "Fascinating!" Järvinen also had the sense to end the series when it was still on high, with an appropriately self-reflective and sentimentalist closing episode.

The brand was too popular to be left alone, however, and the sequel Pasila 2.5 - The Spin-Off soon followed. Some of the cast was changed and a team of writers replaced Järvinen. Surprisingly, the new show has been a bit more straightforward and predictable but has yet to succumb to banality. Its main contribution has been to flesh out the rather underused character of the macho policewoman Helga. What else Pasila's legacy may be, it has at least opened doors for animation in Finnish television. We would not have the likes of Hullu – hullumpi – yläaste without it. Whether one considers that good or bad is another thing all together.

Kätevä emäntä was the longest running and most popular of the slew of female-fronted sketch shows that populated the Finnish screens in the early 2000s. Not as raunchy as Ranuan kummit nor as bland as Epilaattori, it simply presented a good set of running sketches, like women acting out rock macho clichés, female rally drivers getting distracted by things like mail order catalogues or three tired housewives nonchalantly trying to outdo each other in who goes to most absurd lengths for her family. PMS, ridiculous makeover shows, trendy bimbos and doomed marriage guidance counseling were other familiar themes handled quite deliciously.

The show's best invention was to update national folklore to modern usage. Hence Kalevala-metre spells could be used to clean dirty dishes, unscramble a computer operating system or resuscitate the family mutt that you had accidentally run over. Similarly, a chorus line of modern-day wailing women, cheeks streaked with running mascara, slow-marched through the rain (in disposable rain coats, of course), lamenting their failures to become supermodels or to secure that Gucci handbag from the department store sale. The show was never too out there or risky, but usually appealing and sometimes poignant.

A show like this lives or dies with its actors. Kätevä emäntä had great performances from all involved. The most memorable of the brood were provided by Valonen as a creaky-voiced "come on" fusspot forever trying to balance the scales in her relationship and Kivelä (one of the best Finnish comedians of her generation) as an irresistibly chirpy but irrepressibly fair-minded shop clerk Seija who played the everyday moral conscience to the sulky Finnish shoppers.

The fourth season replaced the familiar title sequence with a parody of the classic Finnish rock band Hurriganes, ditched most of the earlier routines and assumed a darker tone. Themes such as the breakdown of communication between mother and daughter, politicians passing the buck or the insanity of the be-positive-or-perish corporate culture had already been explored, but now they were presented as pitch-black comedy. Laughter did not come as easy as before, but then perhaps the show was better attuned to the times, and reality's absurd humour is always the hardest kind to take.

No surprise then that the fifth season backed up a bit and reintroduced a few more lighter elements back into the mix. Each of its episodes centred on some festival (Christmas, New Year, Midsummer) or celebration (wedding, graduation). Some worked better than others, some would have benefited from having leeway to cast a wider net for their material. Unsurprisingly for a Finnish series, it was the funeral episode, with ideas like people snapping graveside "deadlies" for social media, that had the highest hit ratio. As good as this season was, the second season remains the show's peak.

Volanen and Korpela were part of the team that made Studio Julmahuvi, one of the all time greatest sketch shows in Finnish television history, and its equally brilliant spin-off Mennen tullen. Nearly ten years later, they challenged the expectations again, but now the roots of their inspiration were more obvious. Ihmebantu is modelled on Jam, as a surreal stream of absurd or disturbing scenes linked by a hugely effective dark ambient score. It is derivative, but not slavishly so. Unlike Jam, Ihmebantu does also make good use of the traditional sketch form with many inventive "mockumentary" style stabs that even manage to kick-start the carcass of toilet humour.

The unsettling undercurrent still runs through these as well, as an animal handler trains winos to act in a children's film, a man relays relatives' messages to the dead by shouting into graves and a creepy Father Christmas and his lady (of the night) assistant come to offer a more disturbing yet probably more authentically Finnish alternative to the all-pervading Coca Cola Santa. It's all straight acting and sincere, often tragic characterisation in a preposterous situation, and most of the time the combination produces baffling and hilarious results. The same approach with much tamer ideas was used later in the sketch sections of the more mainstream and popular Putous, the show that also made stars out of Ihmebantu's bit players Hirviniemi, Kuustonen and Toivanen.

When it goes deeper into the dark, the show gets more hit and miss. There is something genuinely disturbing and creative about radio chatter between an airline hijacker, a terrified Finnish passenger and a disinterested American ground controller playing against a totally unrelated montage of eerie night vision city scenes, for example. The comfortable, deadpan callousness gets a perfect swipe here, but elsewhere the affectation sometimes shows. Korpela's provocatively smug monologues as a narcissistic neoliberal twit tend to ramble too much to really work as outrageously as they should. Also the use of filters to distort the image in the middle of scenes doesn't always look so much like reality breaking down as a director trying to be experimental.

As the controversial final sketch summarised, the show wanted to challenge the easy escapism offered by the canned-laughter, catchphrase-driven comedy with the disturbing invasion of the unpredictable and the surreal. Most of the time it would surprise the audience and make them think as much as laugh, sometimes it would just leave them perplexed and frowning. Many were absorbed, many changed channel. That is the risk inherent in sticking one's neck out and trying something different and unexpected. In the five years of shrinking budgets and proliferating reality twaddle since Ihmebantu, few have attempted anything as ambitious as this in Finnish comedy.