Top lista nadrealista (1984)

Genre

comedy

Country

Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Length

3 seasons, 27 episodes

Rating

6.5 of 10 from 8 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A sketch comedy show from 1980s Yugoslavia that started as a radio segment. It features short comedic scenes and characters that became famous across the country. The humor is clever and often pokes fun at society and politics.

absurdistsatiricalplayfulwittyenergeticirreverentsmartobservational

What happens

Top lista nadrealista (Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: Топ листа надреалиста, lit. 'The Top List of the Surrealists' or 'The Surrealists' Chart Toppers'), also known as TLN or Nadrealisti (Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: Надреалисти, lit. 'The Surrealists'), is a Yugoslav sketch comedy and variety television show. Produced by TV Sarajevo, it aired on the nationwide Yugoslav Radio Television (JRT) public broadcasting system in three separate instalments between 1984 and 1991, having originated from a weekly fifteen-minute local radio comedy segment that was part of the Primus program on Radio Sarajevo's channel two from 1979 until 1985. In 1984, after establishing a core radio audience locally in the city of Sarajevo, Top lista nadrealista radio segment got spun off into a television sketch series. Two more series on television followed, in 1989 and 1991, making household names of its protagonists all over SFR Yugoslavia and helping launch and solidify successful television, film, and musical careers for some of them (most notably Nele Karajlić and Branko "Đuro" Đurić). Although eventually best known for insightful and often prophetic political humour, TLN initially relied mostly on its protagonists' youthful improvisation and ad-libbing for laughs while staying away from politics entirely. Towards the late 1980s and into the early 1990s—during the show's second and third series, respectively—a period during which some of its most memorable and enduring sketches were created, Top lista nadrealista incorporated political satire while infusing their social satire with additional surrealist and black comedy. The show's 1989-1991 popularity is reflected in some of its sketches' language and phrasing entering public vernacular. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a number of TLN sketches dealt with the deteriorating political situation in Yugoslavia that turned out to be a prelude to the Yugoslav Wars with some sketches proving prophetic, portraying a dystopian near-future—featuring the Yugoslav state being disintegrated, the city of Sarajevo divided between different newly established states, a single family split into two clans warring over control of rooms in their apartment, UN peacekeeping forces adding fuel to the conflict, etc.—years before it became reality. In the context of the Yugoslav Wars that had already begun as the show's third series was being filmed, Nadrealisti held a clear pacifist posture, often using absurdity and dark hyperbole when portraying rising ethnic tensions and imminent war in SR Bosnia and Herzegovina (e.g. warning that "peace may break out and ruin Bosnian harmonious war" or giving alarming instructions on "how the public should act in case of peace"). (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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