Skam (stylized as SKAM; Norwegian pronunciation: [skɑm]; English: Shame) is a Norwegian teen drama streaming television series about the daily life of teenagers at the Hartvig Nissen School, a gymnasium in the wealthy borough of Frogner in West End Oslo and Norway's oldest high school for girls.

Each season has a focus on particular topics that range from relationship difficulties, identity, eating disorders, sexual assault, homosexuality, mental health issues, religion, and forbidden love.

The episode deals with parental depression, love rejection, jealousy, friendship, mutual relationship support, and fear of abandonment.

Originally developed for 16-year-old girls, Andem made use of the "NABC" production model ("Needs/Approach/Benefit/Competition"), and instead of collecting information from a vast amount of sources, she had extensive, hours-long interviews with a single representative to uncover what needs that specific target audience had in order to cover that story.

Andem read the comments for each day, and looked for feedback from the audience on how to end each season while still keeping her original plans in some way.

[17] There were no launch interviews, no reviews,[17] and the actors were shielded from the media, with NRK P3 editorial chief Håkon Moslet saying that "We want most of the focus to be on the show.

[29] The series has been licensed to air as a Nordvision co-production by public service broadcasters in other Nordic countries, specifically:[30][31] Skam received critical acclaim and significant recognition for its portrayal of sexual abuse in the second season and homosexuality in the third.

It received multiple Norwegian awards throughout its run, being honored for its dramatic narrative, innovative storytelling format, writing, directing, and actors' performances.

[citation needed] In Norway, on average, about 192,000 viewers watched the first season, with the first episode being one of the most viewed of all time on NRK TV online.

[41] An October 2016 Aftenposten report detailed that Skam had become popular in Sweden, with "well over 5000" viewers with Swedish IP addresses watching the episodes, not counting the individual clips.

[45] In Finland, the first episode had more than 130,000 views by the end of February 2017, two and half months after its release, described by Yle audience researcher Anne Hyvärilä as "quite exceptional".

[60][61] In February 2018, Prince William and his wife Catherine, members of the British royal family, visited the Hartvig Nissen school to meet with the cast and learn more about Skam, its impact on the actors' lives and to discuss youth and mental health.

[62] Starting with season three, the show attracted an international audience, and NRK was therefore heavily asked to add English subtitles to the Skam episodes online.

[63] When denied official subtitling, fans started making their own translations of the episodes into several world languages, greatly expanding the online fanbase.

[64][65] By the end of 2016, Skam had been trending globally several times on Twitter and Tumblr, and its Facebook, Instagram and Vine presence grew rapidly.

[65][66][67] Filming locations, including Sagene Church,[68] and the Hartvig Nissen school, were visited by fans, and the actors were receiving worldwide attention.

[64] After being featured in an episode in the third season, Gabrielle's song "5 fine frøkner" saw a 3,018 percent increase in listening on Spotify, with over 13 million streams and, at one point, rising to eighth place on the Swedish top music rankings.

[22] The series has received significant attention from international media publications for its unique distribution model of real-time snippet-based information.

[67][72][73][74] Anna Leszkiewicz of New Statesman posted in March 2017 that she considered Skam "the best show on TV", highlighting the second season's handling of sexual assault.

She praised the series for avoiding "shocking, gratuitous rape scenes", instead focusing on a single hand gesture by abuser Nico as a sign of predatory behavior.

"[75] The same month, Elite Daily's Dylan Kickham wrote that the international fanbase for Skam on social media was "much larger than I ever would have predicted", with major fan groups on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.

[64] In the second, she specifically focused on the series' ending, noting that it originally had nine characters designed to each lead a season, and quoted fans with the sentiment that "It seems like such an abrupt decision.

NRK P3 editorial chief Håkon Moslet told her that "There was a lot of piracy", acknowledging that the show's global popularity was the result of fans illegally distributing content through Google Drive, though adding "But we didn't mind".

Producer and project manager Marianne Furevold explained that "We were given a lot of time to do so much research, and I think that's a huge part of the success that we see today with Skam", referencing extensive in-depth interviews, attending schools and youth clubs, and immersing into teenagers' online lives, something that she did not think would have been possible with a commercial network.

Andem had posted on Instagram that she "wouldn't have been able to make a season five as good as it deserved to be", though she had also written that she did not want to give away the producing job of the American version, opting to take on the responsibility of that adaptation.

[80] In December 2017, Tumblr released its list of the most talked-about shows of the year on its platform, with Skam topping the chart as number one, outranking hugely successful American series, such as Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, and The Walking Dead.

Vilde Schanke Sundet argues that the real-time quality of shows like SKAM help broadcasters to reconnect with younger audiences,[82] and has examined viewers motives for engaging with the community online.

[84] In December 2016, Simon Fuller's XIX Entertainment production company signed a deal with NRK to produce an American version of the series, then-titled Shame.

The creators of Skam aimed to help 16-year-old-girls strengthen their self-esteem through dismantling taboos, making them aware of interpersonal mechanisms and showing them the benefits of confronting their fears.

[107] Belgium (Flanders) Croatia In September 2018, Julie Andem announced on her Instagram account that, in coordination with Norwegian book publishing company Armada Forlag, four Skam books, one for each season of the series, would be released to the public, including original, unedited manuscripts, featuring scenes that were never filmed, lines that were later cut, as well as Andem's personal comments and thoughts.