You’ve seen them dragging strollers through the gray slush on their way from ICA, or standing in the playground trying to warm their under-clothed bodies with 7-Eleven coffees. You’ve seen them at parties, making everyone switching to English as soon as they enter the conversation, making sure they will never learn our language. You’ve seen them at work; as hair stylists, bartenders, DJs or any creative job that doesn’t require any Swedish language skills. I’m talking about the husbands and partners of Swedish women. In some exciting part of the world where Swedes love to go to – New York, Paris, London, Dubai, you name it – they were enticed into a romantic relationship. And a few years later, when babies come into the picture, moving to Sweden became the natural next step, as there is no place to raise little ones as the country of pappaledighet and free pre-schools. It was only a matter of time before this hit the big screen (and you can say that about TV series too nowadays, as every Swede has a flatscreen the size of an average movie screen in their living room).

Welcome to Sweden is a new Swedish sitcom, shot in Sweden for TV4 (as the channel’s first-ever English-speaking series), but also sold to NBC. It is based on the personal life of Greg Poehler, a former US lawyer who fell in love with a Swedish woman and now lives in Stockholm. In the series, Poehler plays Bruce, a New York accountant who falls in love with Emma (Josephine Bornebusch) and follows her to Sweden. Lena Olin and Patrick Duffy star as the couple’s respective parents and rumor has it Will Ferrell (also married to a Swedish woman, but still living on American territory) and Gene Simmons (!) will make cameo appearances. Filming began in May 2013 and we’re now eagerly finally able to view the result, which is being broadcast this year. “The reason this comedy has attracted all these people is because its theme is universal: love conquers all…even if it means moving to Sweden,” says Carrie Stein, who was involved in pitching the series to US broadcasters.

So is moving to Sweden really so bad that you can talk about it in terms of survival, like a war or a terrible disaster? I guess it can be at times, when the winter darkness seems never-ending, it’s too butt-cold to leave the apartment, and your only social window to the world is the SFI (Swedish For Immigrants) classroom.

But I also know that this situation lends itself very well to comedy – having imported an American myself, there have been numerous times he’s been coming home from his SFI class reporting scenarios that seem to be taken right out of a cringe-worthy film scene. Like that time he came home with a map of the male and female genitalia that far exceeded my anatomical knowledge, or when the whole class were asked to sing Helan går during their first-ever lesson. If SFI gets at least as big a role as Patrick Duffy, the success of this series is a given. My boyfriend passed the D test a month ago, which means he survived the four stages of SFI education and has completed the course. I still suffer from the loss, and I dearly hope that Welcome to Sweden will fill the vacuum.