An ode to the Kallio way of life

Before there was anything else, there was the Kallio.

In 2017, I had just graduated from film school and was given the opportunity to pitch my own TV series idea to 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 the Third Line 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 to the lines, 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 cafe 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 all of it.

So before there was a protagonist, there was a place.

I started writing the concept for a TV series, which later became the TV series Aikuiset. Its main character was Oona, a chronically jealous and constantly in crisis twenty-something café entrepreneur who spends all her free time with her freelance multimedia artist bestie Artu. Through the main characters and supporting 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, it is important to me that all events take place in 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, a café called Oona's Café, is located on Kolmannen linja in the first production season and later on Castréninkatu. In the series, we hang out in Siltanen, Kutonen and Mäkikupla, at the Karhupuisto cap stand, Kaiku and Ipi, at Avikainen bakery and Kotiharju sauna, listen to the Franzéninkatu soundtrack and drink Aperol spritz on the terrace of Harju 8. 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 Kolmannen linja to Karhupuisto, and my office from Toiinen linja to Kurvi. I was totally immersed in the world of Adults, at work and on 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 escapism, 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, it 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 the Aikuiset series, it is its main character, heart and state of mind.

I have seen most of the series' small cutscenes, short scenes filmed 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, Oona and Artu's 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