Live from the End of the World

Shut your doors and windows—and tune in on DR2!

Live from the End of the World was a professional near-death experience for me: my first live broadcast since my internship at the evening news, four hours non-stop of international transmissions, unpredictable live acts, a massive orchestra, artists and a firestorm from unsettled viewers. What a rush!

It was also the end of tv history. A megalomaniac tv special on the occasion of the end of the ancient Mayan calendar which was globally construed as an alarm clock ticking down to doomsday. We appropriated this as a parafictive scaffold for our journalistic endeavors, portraying preppers and survivalists, understanding the actual looming threats against humanity: climate change, supervolcanoes, cataclysmic meteor showers, pandemics and system breakdowns. We counted down to 10.18:13 PM CET with the DR Chamber Orchestra and guest stars, on-stage appearances by acclaimed scientists like Anja C. Andersen and Katherine Richardson and correspondents around the world: below ground in a nuclear bunker for government and the Crown, at a certain mountain near Bugarach, France allegedly a kind of UFO garage where attendees hoped to hitchhike their way to salvation, with the emergency services central staff, and among the Mayan descendants on the Yucatan Peninsula.

All of it tongue-in-cheek and dead serious: how will humanity most likely end its days? What does it mean for us as humans to have this awareness of our own demise? And what can we achieve in a last-minute communion?

Creative producer (redaktør)
Executive producers (producenter)

Producer / multicamera director: Jacob Jürs
Line producer (Produktions- og indspilningslede)
Commissioning editor (DR2-redaktør)

Original idea (idé)