Hyvät herrat (Good Gentlemen) was a Finnish TV show that ran from 1990 to 1996. It was political satire with two main characters: kauppaneuvos (lit. commercial counsellor but doesn’t translate entirely) Johannes Paukku, a rich sausage factory owner, and his son-in-law, politician Raimo ‘Tollo’ Koskivuo. While these characters were fictional each week they would invite an actual politician to go to sauna with them. It was a genius mix of scripted comedy and real politics. Their guests would try to defend their own agenda while Paukku and Tollo would try to impose their own political views on them. Sometimes the guests would get picked on. The show was recorded only one day before it ran making it always extremely topical. Many of our top politicians appeared on the show, including our current president, two of our former presidents, former prime ministers, numerous presidential candidates and members of parliament.
Not many people believe me when I tell them about the show. For most it’s out of the question that a politician would be voluntarily naked on prime time TV especially because at the same time they were getting grilled by the actors who in fact seemed to possess inside information that would sometimes catch the guests off guard. But I can promise you that from a Finn’s perspective there was nothing weird about this. Sauna & nudity is natural. I find it a bit strange if a person has never seen his or her friends naked. Never…? What.
I recently watched a Youtube video where a woman who’s moved from the US to Scotland talked about culture shock and one of the things she listed was how over here you hear ‘adult language’ on any TV channel without warnings or censorship. I don’t know if she’s ever visited Finland but if she has not, maybe it’s for the best.
Here the one with his butt up in the air is the current President of Finland who by the way enjoys an approval rate of 89 %.
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