TellyCast: The content industry podcast
Sep 18, 2026 · 23 min · 13 segments
Victor Bengtsson runs production at Sidemen Entertainment. In this episode, recorded at the TellyCast Digital Content Forum 2025, he explains how the company built Inside, a Big Brother-style format…
Victor BengtssonGuestJustin CrosbyHostWhen we spoke, we spoke recently, we had a chat for, uh, uh, for telecast and you talked about, um, putting the fun back into creating formats and into TV essentially.
So someone called me on Saturday and said, do you want to go to Cannes? And I was like, fuck yeah.
But TV in general, it felt like anyone who worked in niche short films, big Hollywood productions, anyone who was making anything that was artsy was being hailed as some form of heralds of entertainment.
And anyone who worked in unscripted was almost like you're selling out and you're doing lower tier content.
creators and all of us only have like our talent that is essentially also unscripted but they are being considered great creatives that are coming up with formats and stuff so when we started looking at unscripted and tv and and we were confused i think because what we wanted to be was it's so much fucking fun to go and make a show but it feels like when you release it you're living this world in the traditional sense we have to wait for a commission if you don't get it oh god now we're not going to hit our targets and everything feels like a must deliver or we will be in trouble for us it's like if it doesn't work then we'll fuck it off and we'll try something else that's kind of our approach so what we wanted to do is like find people in the tv space bring them into us and say here's how we do it here it's going to be new for you if you want to book a meeting you can probably just talk to me like i don't know So we really wanted it to be about someone who felt they were tired of having to chase something that we couldn't make sense of.
And instead say, last week we made a show where we tried to throw straws into a jar.
So could you produce that? And then Adam recently joined us and he's been on documentaries and films and worked at Noah before.
It's the idea of keeping simple stupid, I guess, but like even more dumbed down.
So for me, it was like anyone who comes and works on these, please come with the idea that it can be fun and be fucking proud of what you create, I think was also a big thing for me.
But now I'm still confused because everywhere I go, it's like I just get told that I'm making YouTube videos.
When we spoke, we spoke recently, we had a chat for, uh, uh, for telecast and you talked about, um, putting the fun back into creating formats and into TV essentially.
So someone called me on Saturday and said, do you want to go to Cannes? And I was like, fuck yeah.
But TV in general, it felt like anyone who worked in niche short films, big Hollywood productions, anyone who was making anything that was artsy was being hailed as some form of heralds of entertainment.
And anyone who worked in unscripted was almost like you're selling out and you're doing lower tier content.
creators and all of us only have like our talent that is essentially also unscripted but they are being considered great creatives that are coming up with formats and stuff so when we started looking at unscripted and tv and and we were confused i think because what we wanted to be was it's so much fucking fun to go and make a show but it feels like when you release it you're living this world in the traditional sense we have to wait for a commission if you don't get it oh god now we're not going to hit our targets and everything feels like a must deliver or we will be in trouble for us it's like if it doesn't work then we'll fuck it off and we'll try something else that's kind of our approach so what we wanted to do is like find people in the tv space bring them into us and say here's how we do it here it's going to be new for you if you want to book a meeting you can probably just talk to me like i don't know So we really wanted it to be about someone who felt they were tired of having to chase something that we couldn't make sense of.
And instead say, last week we made a show where we tried to throw straws into a jar.
So could you produce that? And then Adam recently joined us and he's been on documentaries and films and worked at Noah before.
It's the idea of keeping simple stupid, I guess, but like even more dumbed down.
So for me, it was like anyone who comes and works on these, please come with the idea that it can be fun and be fucking proud of what you create, I think was also a big thing for me.
But now I'm still confused because everywhere I go, it's like I just get told that I'm making YouTube videos.
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