Aarno Laitinen was the screenwriter of the series, with his assistant mainly Lasse Lehtinen under the pseudonyms Saara Lenso, Serita Numintio and Sole Sarana.
The main characters of the series are business advisor Johannes Paukku (Matti Tuominen), a sausage manufacturer who got rich with "Paukku's Run" and his son-in-law Raimo "Tollo" Koskivuo (Eero Melasniemi), a social democratic politician, whom Yleni promoted from MP to party secretary and minister during the series.
For this reason, according to Lehtinen, the task turned out to be difficult, because almost all the male actors who were free at the time had an alcohol problem.
Sales advisor Paukku was a chauvinistic and whiny industrialist, Tollo, on the other hand, a sleazy political gambler.
With the help of the characters, the "good brother network" of politics was caricatured, where decisions are plotted in cabinets and sauna evenings "behind the people's backs".
In addition, Paukku and Tollo indulged in high life, drinking, and occasional side-jumping (the business advisor lived in Barcelona, and Mrs. Koskivuoka never appeared in the series either).
The actor Pehkonen died in September 1991, and until the end of the program's life, she was replaced by Tyyne Hurskainen (Anja Pohjola), who commented on politics from her own perspective of a "revolutionary front-line".
During the series, the sauna group was served "turpentine" by several waiters, first Pia (Sarina Röhr), then Timo (Mikko Roiha), whom Paukku called Håkan, and finally Dr. Samuel Livingstone Matabele (Billy Carson).
Paukku treated the waiter characters with open disdain, which was meant to reflect prejudices against women, sexual minorities, immigrants and animal activists.
[7] The Prime Minister Esko Aho participated in the making of the series and appeared in the filming, but at the last drop he refused to air the episode.
The Russian diplomat Viktor Vladimirov, on the other hand, had promised to join Hyvät herrat, but cancelled his arrival a day before filming.
[2] President of Finland Mauno Koivisto was supposed to join an episode of Hyvät herrat to play volleyball with Tollo for the Sikariporras team.
[13] The series made its main star, the sales advisor Paukku, a cult figure, and this echoed in almost every episode from the cry "Personnel, turpentine!"
In the mid-1990s, the current affairs program Mediapeli, shown on MTV3, organized a studio discussion and a viewer survey on the topic "Is it appropriate for ministers to visit the Hyvät herrat show?".
[16] In 2022, Halme and a Finnish hip-hop and R&B singer-artist collaborated on an updated version of Hyvät herrat's signature theme, as the original series soundtracks had been destroyed in MTV's archives.
In the film, when negotiations are underway to end the war between Finland and Sweden, the commander of the Swedish army is softened up by taking him to Paukku's sauna.