Veteran TV has been produced successfully by the Swedish broadcaster UR for 5 seasons since 2004. The series is about life after retirement and, in half hour programmes, explores the dreams, the joy, but also the difficulties and the anxiety of growing older.
 
Veteran TV is a tender, humorous and eye opening series about and with the elderly, who are way too underrepresented in today's media. The originality of the series lies in the fact that the reporters are young people well known in their country - such as rock musicians or stand-up comics - who establish a relationship full of empathy and humour with those they interview.
 
The main concept of the Swedish series - doing television with a provocative attitude for and about seniors - has now been turned into a Pan-European collaboration on the living conditions of elderly people.
 
Each participating country has produced three segments, which are being mixed together by UR into 30-minute programmes. Alternatively, the co-producers can use their segments and those of the others for their own national version of Veteran TV.
 
Portraits and reports range from a 90-year-old Dane, ex jazz club owner, who swims in the sea every day, a Dutch lady with flying phobia who is given a course and brought to her dream-city of Vienna, the situation of elderly people suffering from loneliness and how an association helps them offer rooms to students. Stories can be funny or poignant, but all give us a view of what it is like to grow old in six different countries in Europe.
 
Veteran TV is aimed at an audience of adults/elderly/care givers/health staff, but can also interest younger family members who might like the young reporters.