Diksha Sundriyal
In Netflix’s ‘Deliver Me,’ two boys find themselves at a crossroads where all paths seem to lead to one tragic end. The story begins with 14-year-old Billy’s death. After running errands for the local gang, he had finally come to the point where he was ready to leave it all behind. But before he could fly to his freedom, he was shot down and died of his wounds soon after. The culprit was found to be Douglas, aka Dogge, Billy’s best friend, who also wanted to escape but was fully aware that he couldn’t. As we follow the threads of Billy and Dogge’s lives, we discover that their backgrounds play an important role in the shapes their stories take.
Deliver Me Takes Place in Fictional Districts of Stockholm
‘Deliver Me’ adapts the book of the same name by Malin Persson Giolito, who used her legal background to delve into a story that explores not just the tragic predicament of its teen protagonists but also examines the fallacies of the system that are in many ways responsible for said tragedies. Setting the story in Stockholm felt natural to Giolito, who also grew up there. Her house was in Djursholm, a municipality known for its well-off residents. This allowed her the perspective into the life of one of her characters (Dogge), but she needed to see things from a different point of view to factor in the story of Billy and his family.
While Giolito could have set the story in real neighborhoods of Stockholm, she wanted the reader to be immersed in the plot without bringing in their prejudices about the otherwise real-life neighborhoods they may be familiar with. The only thing she wanted to be clear on was that Billy was from a more vulnerable place, from every point of view, and Dogge came from what would be a more privileged end of the spectrum. For this, she concocted the places, with Billy’s neighborhood named Våringe and Dogge’s Rönnviken.
While she may have used fictional names for the localities, she based the places entirely on the real counterparts in Stockholm. During her research for the book, she visited the marginalized sections of Stockholm while also paying a visit to the foster and youth homes where youngsters are sent after they are found to have been involved in a crime. She talked to the people to get a better sense of how their lives are affected by being in a place that is more vulnerable than most to violence, especially the impact it has on the children.
To give a more realistic touch to the places, the creators of the Netflix series turned towards real-life locations in Stockholm to portray the neighborhoods of Våringe and Rönnviken. The entire series was filmed in the capital city of Sweden, lending more credibility to the story, which already has roots in the real-life problems that plague the city. To sum it up, even if the locations in ‘Deliver Me’ are fictional, they are inspired by the real model of the city.
Read More: Netflix’s Deliver Me: Where is the Swedish Show Filmed?
