Sunes jul is a live-action julkalender that originally aired over the Swedish government-operated TV company Sveriges television (aka SVT) in December 1991. The series is based on the book series Sune written by the authors Anders Jacobsson and Sören Olsson - in particular, it took some plot points from the earlier book Sune och svarta mannen - and then received a novelization itself in 1992.
Set during the weeks leading up to Christmas Eve, it follows mostly the same characters as the books: Sune, his younger brother Håkan, his older sister Anna, and his parents, Karin and Rudolf, who all live together in a two-storey house. Sune's girlfriend Sophie also plays a big part in the series. Most of the episodes center around the family trying to do something straight forward to prepare for Christmas but failing due to their eccentricities and/or flaws.
This Julkalender uses the following tropes:
- Adapted Out: Sune's younger sister, Isabelle, is entirely absent from the series (and did not appear in the 1993 film Sunes sommar either). While she gets added back into the novelisation, she is often written out of the adapted plots because she is feeling sick or getting taken care of by the grandparents while the rest of the family does something else.
- Blah, Blah, Blah: In one episode, the family attends a service. The narrator explains that Håkan loathes going to church, and that he thinks everything the priest says just sounds like "blah blah". After the narrator is finished, the camera shifts to show the priest opening his mouth — and proceeding to hold the sermon using only the word "blah". As the scene plays out over about a minute, the priest's blahs remain constantly in the background, and the crowd is shown to be listening attentively to everything he says.
- Broken Record: The very first line of the novelisation has the narration repeat the word "mycket" 10 times, followed by a "bautamycket otålig", to describe Sune's state of mind.Translation
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Sune himself often comes off as this. For example: when he's buying a gift for Sophie, he fails to realise that there are several different people playing Santa in the store and ends up yelling at one of them for 'forgetting' what he had said earlier, and abruptly tells the cashier that he can jump almost a whole meter in high jump after she tells him how much he will need to pay for the gift.
- Creator Cameo: One episode features Sune watching an apparent parody of the earlier julkalender Vilse i pannkakan, featuring the Sune-books' authors as the show's hosts.
- Edible Theme Naming: After the initial airing, the series was sold on VHS in four parts. For some reason, all of the parts have names to do with gratin:Sunes vecka 1: potatisgratäng (Sune's week 1: potato gratin)
Sunes vecka 2: morotsgratäng (week 2: carrot gratin)
Sunes vecka 3: broccoligratäng (week 3: broccoli gratin)
Sunes vecka 4: ingen gratäng (week 4: no gratin)" - Hypocritical Humour: Sune, who may be the most prominent example of a kidanova in Swedish media, expresses disbelief and confusion over why his elder sister would start getting more interested in guys than horses.
- I Kiss Your Hand: In episode 3, Sune is having trouble deciding what to give Sophie for Christmas, and walks up to a cashier asking her "if I were to give you a gift, what would you like?" She responds that she would have liked a kiss. Sune is visibly discomfortable with the request but obliges her with a quick awkward peck on the back of her hand before running away.
- Imagine Spot: Sune has many of these throughout the series, ranging from someone plotting to steal Sophie from him hiding in her closet, to his dad setting fire to a carpet, to ending up in court over illegally cutting down a pine tree.
- Lemony Narrator: Both the narrator of the live-action series and the narration of the novelisation have a tendency toward hamming it up and using Perfectly Cromulent Words and phrases like "läckert braig" (deliciously good-ly).
- Never My Fault: Sune's father Rudolf has a tendency toward this, blaming the government "for having such a freaking bad environment policy that the pine trees get slippery and unusable" when he fails to stick lights to the christmas tree's branches. The rest of the family usually takes this in stride, only suggesting ways to fix the problem, but it reaches a breaking point when one of the doors of their car has frozen shut one morning and he accuses the rest of the family of having done something to cause this.
- No Yay: Happens in-universe in the novelisation, in the chapter "En modig grej" ("A brave thing"), adapted from episode 3. The narration punctuates a cashier saying she would have liked a kiss from Sune (who is anywhere between 7-10 years old) with a "She's almost a biddy! Surely over 20 years old! Yeesh, how disgusting!"
- Plot Hole: Sune's gift to Sophie is first seen wrapped in a small box, and he had written a little rhyme for it, but when he hands it over the gift box has grown much larger with the rhyme nowhere to be seen. This gets fixed in the novelisation, where Sophie reads Sune's rhyme out loud before thanking him for the gift.
- Protagonist Title: Like all the other entries in the franchise. In this case, the name translates to Sune's Christmas.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: The family spends a whole day trying to find a christmas tree in the wild so they won't have to buy one. Not only does a forest guard confiscate the first tree they manage to cut down and give them a fine, but the second one ends up losing all of its leaves once they get home, forcing Rudolf to go and buy one anyway.
- Sleep Cute: A non-romantic version of this is briefly mentioned and played for laughs in the novelisation:Narrator: 36 minutes later Håkan and Pär grow tired. They fall asleep, leaning against each other. Håkan snores, sounding like a tractor that has gotten stuck in a ditch.
- Toilet Humour:
- In one episode, Sune and Håkan describe themselves as "skidnödiga" (having a need to ski). Their father mishears this as the much more commonly used word "skitnödiga" (needing to take a shit), with both sides misunderstanding each other for a bit before Rudolf explodes with anger over the idea of his sons taking a dump on the lawn.
- When Sune's class puts on a school play, Sune gets cast as the backside of the donkey. Since he doesn't want to be silent the entire play, he manages to convince the rest of the class off-screen to let the donkey's front and back be separate characters. Naturally, many of both parts of the donkey's lines end up being butt-based puns.
- Who's on First?: Sune suffers from this occasionally, such as believing that the charity organisation Rädda barnen (lit. "save the children") is instead referring to "the scared children" (also written as "rädda barnen", although the pronunciation usually is slightly different).
