SVT’s cheerfully subversive game show IFS – Invandrare för svenskar is starting its sixth season with Assia Dahir taking over the lectern after original host Ahmed Berhan. We had a chance to chat with Assia as well as some of the other cast of characters from this season.
The show’s title flips the script on SFI – Svenska för invandrare, which are of course the state-financed Swedish-language courses for immigrants. Here it is ethnic Swedes who are sitting the course and learning about immigrant culture.
The format is simple: three contestants compete to prove their knowledge about different cultures found in Sweden, aided (or derailed) by a panel dealing out surprising truths and wild lies. The panel has been a rotating Who’s Who of Swedish comedy as well as other witty immigrants, including names like Filip Dikmen and Elaf Ali.
The programme has brought concepts and words from different immigrant cultures into prime-time, where majority Swedes have been the ones playing catch-up. Some critics have accused IFS for stereotyping immigrant groups and refusing to be politically correct.
So I had to of course ask if it is OK to joke about everything? Is there a limit?
– You can joke about a lot of things, the ceiling is high. But of course there is a limit, says Amina Negash, who is one of the immigrant panelists this season.
– In general it should be more fun than offensive, says the new IFS host Assia Dahir.
– I think it is so liberating to be able to laugh at prejudices. In Sweden we usually just keep silent and carry our prejudices inside. It is such a liberating programme, giving us the chance to laugh at those things, describes Malou von Sievers, who is a celebrity contestant in the premiere show of the season.
– It is important to be able to joke about yourself as well, it’s like opening a door to your world, adds Haval Pasha, who is also a panelist this year.
Malou von Sievers goes on to say she was surprised at how the panelists treated each other and really went after each other. She thought it would not have been OK for her to go that hard.
It feels very clear that the humour works when it is directed at your own group or at your own expense, and it wouldn’t work if the majority Swedes were kicking down instead.
– It is a humour programme, but we shouldn’t forget that it is also a reflection of the society. You get to learn things. We are not laughing at people. We are laughing at prejudices you have about us as people. That’s where the little red line goes. You can joke a lot about yourself and your own group, Assia Dahir agrees.
To finish our little chat, I had to ask if there is a prejudice about Swedish people that just might be true?
Assia says it would be the one about visiting children being sent to another room to wait while the family eats dinner. Haval agrees that something like that has happened to him as well, and Amina says that it used to happen “in the olden days”. And they all burst out in a hearty laugh…
For more laughs and learning about your immigrant neighbours, tune in to IFS on SVT Play right here.
Featured photo: Janne Danielsson/SVT
Group photo: Jytte Lindberg
