French Distributor APC Picks Up Finnish TV Show ‘A Good Family’

Paris-based APC (About Premium Content) has acquired world sales rights on the six-part Finnish thriller “A Good Family,” currently filming in Estonia before moving back to Finland.

The high-end drama about love, marriage and parenthood is based on Finnish author and screenwriter Petri Karra’s 2019 novel “The Dark Light” (“Musta Valo”). The creative team takes in creator/producer Minna Virtanen, creator/writer Antti Pesonen and helmer Pete Riski, behind the crime show “Bullets,” which won the MIPDrama Buyers’ Coup de Coeur award in 2018 and launched on Walter Presents in the U.K. in January.

Virtanen said she started collaborating with Karra on the TV show concept even before his novel was published. Then Pesonen’s screenplay was polished by script editors Matti Laine (“The Paradise”) and Charlotte Lesche (“The Lawyer,” “Thicker Than Water”).

Seasoned actor Maria Sid (“All the Sins,” “Before We Die”) and actor/singer Samuli Edelmann (“Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” “Look of a Killer”) are toplining the TV show as police officer Anna and her husband Henrick, novelist and professor of literature, suddenly thrust into a dangerous underworld, when their son brings a heinous crime to their doorstep. Completing the cast as crime boss and devoted father Lefa is Tommi Korpela (“Deadwind,” The Spiral”).

“Many good stories are rooted in strong moral dilemmas and so is ‘A Good Family,’ ” said Virtanen. “The series is a fresh take on Scandinavian crime drama and a distinctive twist on a familiar format, with the storyline of two parents crossing the line to save their son.”

The series is produced by Virtanen’s Vertigo for Finnish commercial channel and streaming service C More/MTV3, with support from Finnish and Estonian tax incentives. The premiere is slated for the fall 2022.

Vertigo’s TV slate in development takes in the four-part political thriller “The Arctic Sea,” co-written by “The Paradise’s” Matti Laine and U.K. writer-producer-presenter Ali May. Inspired by true events, the story focuses on the hijacking of the cargo ship The Arctic Sea, allegedly seized by pirates in July 2009 in the Baltic Sea.

“A Good Family” is the latest Finnish drama picked up for global distribution by APC, after the psycho thriller “Man in Room 301,” Cold War drama “Shadow Lines,” both ordered by Finnish streamer Elisa Viihde, as well as the crime series “Deadwind,” shown on Finnish pubcaster YLE and Netflix.

Headlining APC’s MIPCOM lineup are the Italian family drama “Ever After,” produced by Indigo Film for RAI, Belgium political thriller “Pandore,” produced by Artemis for RTBF, Series Mania Grand Prize Icelandic winner “Blackport,” co-produced by Vesturport and Turbine Studios for RÚV and ARTE, as well as the Swiss comedy “Lucky Day,” produced by IDIP Films and Perpetual Soup for RTS.