Swedish humour can be difficult to grasp for newcomers to the country, with Swedes often enjoying dark 'gallows' humour and jokes which make the viewer cringe. Here's a roundup of…

Swedish humour can be difficult to grasp for newcomers to the country, with Swedes often enjoying dark 'gallows' humour and jokes which make the viewer cringe. Here's a roundup of three comedies you can watch to understand Swedish humour. First off is Kvarteret Skatan (The Magpie Quarter), a comedy series from the early 2000s. The show features five Swedish comedians - Vanna Rosenberg, Rachel Molin, Anna Blomberg, David Batra and Johan Glans - who play different characters living in Kvarteret Skatan, an area of an unnamed Swedish town, in a number of different sketches. Kvarteret Skatan is a cult classic, and it's easy to see why. One example is the two intensely competitive businessmen in this clip, played by Batra and Glans, who have what at first appears to be a polite and civil discussion about their performance, which quickly becomes an exaggerated display of Swedish conflict-avoidance and passive-aggressiveness. "I think we can start off with the positive - I thought everything flowed very well on Tuesday." "It's funny you say that, because I actually feel the same way, I was home with a fever and norovirus but I still feel like I got more done that day." Another sketch from Kvarteret Skatan which shows off Swedes' love for gallows humour is this classic dinner party sketch, where Glans' character Martin opens by saying "I think we've all done something a bit illegal". "It was a few years ago so it can't be prosecuted now. You know what it's like," he says, as the group stare at him, becoming more and more shocked. The punchline of the joke exemplifies another aspect of Swedish humour - making fun of Danes. It ends with Batra saying "but, you, know, he was Danish, so that's makes it a bit less serious."