The Dudesons

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The Dudesons
The Dudesons live at Lillehammer, Norway.
Genre	Extreme sports / comedy / reality
Created by	Jarno Laasala, Tuukka Tiensuu, Jukka Hilden
Starring	Jukka Hilden Jarno "Jarppi" Leppälä Hannu-Pekka "HP" Parviainen Jarno Laasala
Theme music composer	Edward Grieg
Country of origin	Finland
No. of series	5
Production
Executive producer(s)	Jarno Laasala
Running time	22 min
Broadcast
Original channel	MoonTV (FIN), Nelonen (FIN), Spike (USA), Channel V (AUS)
Picture format	16:9 anamorphic
Audio format	Stereo
Original airing	January 2001-present
External links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

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The Dudesons is a Finnish television series, which originally started in January 2001 under the Finnish name Extreme Duudsonit. A combination of extreme stunts, comedy and reality, the show has become the most wide-spread Finnish TV-series of all time. The show follows the every day life of four best friends, who have a tendency for anarchy and perilous situations.

The show has been compared to other popular extreme stunts TV-series such as Jackass, Dirty Sanchez, Wildboyz and Viva La Bam.

1 History
2 The Original Finnish TV-series
3 The Dudesons Movie
4 The Live shows
5 Other appearances
6 References
7 External links

[edit] History

The Dudesons consists of four members: Jukka Hilden (b. 1980), Jarno "Jarppi" Leppälä (b. 1979), Jarno Laasala (b. 1979) and Hannu-Pekka "HP" Parviainen (b. 1981). They were all born in the small city of Seinäjoki, Finland, and Jarno, Jarppi and Jarno became good friends since attending elementary school together. ^[1]

In the mid-1990s The Dudesons were in their teens, and heavy practitioners of snowboarding, skateboarding and downhill mountain biking. Eventually they started shooting videos of their hobbies and this lead to a variety of extreme stunt videos. One of the four Dudesons, Jarno Laasala, was also the director, cinematographer and editor of these videos.

[edit] The Original Finnish TV-series

In January 2000, Laasala found work as an editor for a small cable TV-channel MoonTV. He saw a possibility to make his own show and the next month The Dudesons started shooting a self-financed pilot episode for a series. The pilot was finished in August 2000, and the channel immediately green lighted the first season, titled as Extreme Duudsonit. The episodes started running on MoonTV in January 2001, and the series became the most popular show in the channel. In September 2001, the Dudesons moved from MoonTV to Nelonen, the 2nd biggest commercial network in Finland.

2002 saw the coming of the 2nd season of the Extreme Duudsonit, and the same year The Dudesons were also elected as The Media Persons Of The Year by the readers of Finland’s most popular youth magazine Suosikki.

The third and fourth seasons run respectively in 2003 and 2004, with the latter expanding the previously stunt based show into a more varied reality comedy show. The fourth season also saw the introduction of the 5th member of the Dudesons, the male pet pig Britney (originally called Satan), who has since then remained as an important character in The Dudesons TV-series.

Recurring stunts and segments on the English spoken version of the Dudesons includes: the "Human Dartboard", playing pranks on "Mr Hitler" and a vast array of other stunts "that absolute disregard for [their] own safety."^[1]

[edit] The Dudesons Movie

The international launch of The Dudesons TV-series was supported by the full length feature film The Dudesons Movie, which was released theatrically in Finland on March 31, 2005, and straight to DVD in a dozen other countries. The movie was released in the USA on July 11, 2006, by Warner Rhino. Despite mixed reviews from Finnish mainstream critics, the movie won the "Audience's Favourite Movie" at Jussi Awards, the Finnish equivalent of Oscars, with 47% of votes.

[edit] The Live shows

[edit] Other appearances

The Dudesons are good friends^[2] with American extreme stars Bam Margera and Steve-O and have made three appearances in the popular MTV-series Viva La Bam. They also play supporting roles in Margera’s upcoming feature film Minghags. Margera and Steve-O on the other hand make numerous appearances on The Dudesons TV-series.

The British extreme stunts TV-series World of Stupid also did a half an hour special on The Dudesons.