Television shows gaining a substantial audience outside of their country of origin is far from rare in 2025. Perhaps the biggest success story in this realm has been K-dramas, but “slow TV” has also drawn a growing number of admirers. Writing in The New Yorker in 2014, Nathan Heller explained its appeal. “A slow-TV program is like a great view you encounter on vacation: it’s always there, impervious, but it gains meaning and a story depending on what it conjures in your head,” Heller wrote.
What happens when that idea collides with another television staple: the nature show? For the last few years in Sweden, viewers have been tuning in to an annual event on public broadcasting: footage of moose as they migrate through the northern part of the country. Its title, appropriately enough, is The Great Moose Migration.
In an article for NPR, Ayana Archie has more details on the program’s success. Could this become the next international broadcast sensation? The audience for it is there, at least in Sweden itself. As NPR reports, Sveriges Television AB (also known as SVT) has annually aired a 24-hour broadcast of the migrating moose over the course of multiple weeks since 2019.
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2020 brings with it a vibrant tapestry of evilsThe Great Moose Migration had its roots in a nature documentary that its producers worked on in 2016. Those producers, Johan Erhag and Stefan Edlund, told NPR that they drew inspiration from this project from the longform Norwegian programming that kicked off the slow TV movement.
Viewers outside of Sweden have also taken to The Great Moose Migration. In a recent opinion piece for The Guardian, Claire Cohen wrote that the experience of watching the series was “weirdly gripping, waiting for something to happen.” Perhaps the slow trek of a herd of moose can help rewire our brains to be more attentive to the world around us.
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