An ode to the Kallio way of life
Before there was anything else, there was Kallio.
In 2017 I had just graduated from film school and was given the opportunity to pitch my own TV series idea to The national broadcasting company Yle. I knew right away that I wanted to write about Kallio. I didn't know what would happen in the series, who would be in it, or what it would be about. But I knew that it would be set here.
I had lived on Kolmas linja throughout my studies, so in a way I had been doing empirical hands-on research on Kallio for years. At the same time that I had moved there, the now-defunct Good Life Coffee had opened across the street from my house, which quickly became an extension of my home. I hung out at the café several times a week, sometimes every day. I got to know the workers and other locals, and I saw how gentrification was creeping up the hill and spreading to new streets. I wanted to write about that.
So before there was even a protagonist, there was a place.
I started writing the concept for a series, which later became the TV series Aikuiset. Its main character was Oona, a chronically jealous twenty-something café owner who spends all her free time with her freelance multimedia artist bestie Arttu. Through the characters I wanted to portray the people living in Kallio, myself and my friends, half-acquaintances and all those random strangers I had observed while sitting in Kallio cafés over the years. I wanted to use the series to can a certain Kallio atmosphere. The Kallio zeitgeist of that time. What is it like to be a young adult right now in this part of the city?
When writing the series, it was important to me that all the events take place in real existing, authentic places, and if we talk about restaurants, street corners and people, we talk about them by their real names. Luckily, the series was also filmed in real locations around Kallio. The main location of the events, Oona's café called ”Kahvila”, is located on Kolmas linja in the first season and on Castréninkatu in later seasons. In the series, we hang out in Siltanen, Kutonen and Mäkikupla, Karhupuisto, Kaiku and Ipi, at Avikainen bakery and Kotiharju sauna, listen to the Franzéninkatu soundtrack and drink Aperol spritz on the terrace of Harju 8, and so on. Over the course of three seasons, Oona and Arttu explore Kallio almost from top to bottom. As the production seasons progressed, I myself moved from Kolmas linja to Karhupuisto, and my office from Toinen linja to Kurvi. I was totally immersed in the world of Adults, at work and in my free time. My phone was filled with notes for the series, wherever I went in Kallio.
The series was produced for a total of three seasons between 2019 and 2022. In between seasons, things like the coronavirus pandemic happened in the world, but in retrospect, the global crisis actually only softened the series's bouncy atmosphere: instead of the oppressive coronavirus lockdown, I wanted to give the viewers a hug and some escapism. I wanted to depict friendship, love and togetherness without safety gaps. I wanted to depict Kallio's summer and endless parties.
Someone once asked me if Kallio inspired me to write. It would seem stupid and incomplete to answer “yes”, because it is about something more. Life in Kallio turned into fiction. Reality not only inspired, but became fiction. It was not just the starting point of the series, but in a way its entire soul, beginning and end. Could the series be set in another part of the city? Of course not. Kallio is not only the setting of Aikuiset, it is its main character, heart and state of mind.
I have seen most of the series' small establishing scenes actually on the street, in Kallio, and written the scenes as such into the script. Still, when I walk and cycle in Kallio, the series is constantly alive in my head. On screen, the story has already ended, but in the real world its edges are still expanding. I constantly see things in Kallio that could be straight from the series, and I hear sentences that could be lines from the characters. It creates a soft, safe feeling. It's as if the series continues its life and revolves around the streets of Kallio, even though its production has ended. I didn't invent everything and fool myself, but Kallio was there the whole time, like this, chronically changing, but still recognizable. Endlessly infuriating and eternally lovable at the same time.
Anna Brotkin, screenwriter