The six-part series, which was released today, charts the life of Clark Olofsson, a Swedish criminal who gained celebrity status across the 1960s, \u201970s and \u201980s, particularly for his bank robberies.<\/p>\n
He also inspired the term Stockholm Syndrome, which is now an acknowledged condition worldwide.<\/p>\n
But just which parts of the series are true, and which are fictional? Read on to find out more about the true story behind Netflix\u2019s Clark.<\/p>\n
Clark true story: Who is Clark Olofsson?<\/strong><\/h2>\n ![\"""\"]( "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Bill Skarsg\u00e5rd in Clark<\/span><\/figcaption> Eric Broms \/ Netflix<\/i><\/span><\/div>\nClark Olofsson, whose life inspired the new Netflix series, was born in 1947 in Sweden. He\u00a0was first placed in a young offenders institute at 16 for petty crimes. It was from here that he made his first prison break, later getting sentenced to three years in prison for assaulting two police officers in 1966.<\/p>\n
He escaped later that year, and was involved in a burglary in which his friend, Gunnar Norgren, shot dead a police officer<\/a>. Olofsson was sentenced to eight years in prison for his involvement, following a wide-scale manhunt.<\/p>\nMultiple other robberies and escapes throughout the series that are dramatised are also based on real events, most notably the Norrmalmstorg robbery.<\/p>\n
The series is described as \u201ca fictional take on one of the most controversial personalities in contemporary Swedish history\u201d, so it\u2019s clear that we\u2019re not meant to take everything at face value.<\/p>\n
Major events in Clark\u2019s life, including several relationships such as with Madou and with his wife Marike, are real, but exactly how they transpired and the surrounding events have been fictionalised.<\/p>\n
What really happened at the Norrmalmstorg robbery?<\/strong><\/h2>\n ![\"""\"]( "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Clark at the Norrmalmstorg robbery<\/span><\/figcaption> Netflix \/ Eric Broms<\/i><\/span><\/div>\nIn 1973, Jan-Erik (Janne) Olsson took three people (later four) hostage in a bank, after disguising himself in a wig, make-up and sunglasses<\/a>, and firing shots at the ceiling from a submachine gun.<\/p>\nHe demanded three million Swedish krona and for Olofsson, who he had met in prison, to be brought to the bank.<\/p>\n
Police complied with the latter request, letting Olofsson out of jail and bringing him to Olsson. The ensuing crisis lasted six days, yet by the end, when Olsson and Olofsson were gassed out of the bank\u2019s vault by police and the hostages freed, several of the hostages defended the pair. One of them, Kristin Enmark, even had a brief relationship with Olofsson.<\/p>\n
Swedish criminologist Nils Bejerot subsequently coined the term Norrmalamstrong Syndrome (referred to as Stockholm Syndrome globally) to describe hostages who sympathise with their captors.<\/p>\n
The ordeal is recorded and explained in David King\u2019s book Six Days in August: The Story of Stockholm Syndrome<\/a>.<\/span><\/p> Is Clark based on a book?<\/strong><\/h2>\nThe series synopsis states that the show is \u201cbased on the truths and lies revealed in Clark Olofsson\u2019s autobiography\u201d.<\/p>\n
This autobiography, entitled Vafan var det som h\u00e4nde? (What the hell happened?), was released in 2015. Meanwhile Olofsson\u2019s first book, R\u00e4ttvisans lotteri (The lottery of justice), was released in 1986.<\/p>\n
Where is Clark Olofsson now?<\/strong><\/h2>\n ![\"""\"]( "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Bill Skarsg\u00e5rd in Clark<\/span><\/figcaption> Eric Broms \/ Netflix<\/i><\/span><\/div>\nOlofsson is now 75 years old, and was freed from his latest prison stretch, which he was sentenced to for drug smuggling<\/a>, in 2018.<\/p>\nClark is available to stream on Netflix<\/a> now. <\/strong>Check out more of our\u00a0Drama<\/a>\u00a0coverage or visit our\u00a0TV Guide<\/a>\u00a0to see what\u2019s on tonight.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nThe latest issue of Radio Times magazine is on sale no<\/span><\/b>w\u00a0<\/span>\u2013\u00a0subscribe now<\/a><\/span><\/strong>\u00a0and get the next 12 issues for only \u00a31. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the\u00a0Radio Times podcast<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0with<\/strong>\u00a0Jane Garvey.<\/b><\/p><\/body><\/html>\n
","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By James Hibbs Published: Thursday, 05 May 2022 at 12:00 am Watching Clark on Netflix, you may be inclined to believe it is pure fantasy, with its abundance of plot twists and ludicrous jail-breaks \u2013 however, it\u2019s actually based on real events. The six-part series, which was released today, charts the life of Clark Olofsson, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":14838,"template":"","categories":[5],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/05\/clark-true-story-bill-skarsgard-crime-series-explained-scaled.jpg",2560,1707,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/05\/clark-true-story-bill-skarsgard-crime-series-explained-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/05\/clark-true-story-bill-skarsgard-crime-series-explained-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/05\/clark-true-story-bill-skarsgard-crime-series-explained-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/05\/clark-true-story-bill-skarsgard-crime-series-explained-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/05\/clark-true-story-bill-skarsgard-crime-series-explained-1536x1024.jpg",1536,1024,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/05\/clark-true-story-bill-skarsgard-crime-series-explained-2048x1365.jpg",2048,1365,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By James Hibbs Published: Thursday, 05 May 2022 at 12:00 am Watching Clark on Netflix, you may be inclined to believe it is pure fantasy, with its abundance of plot twists and ludicrous jail-breaks \u2013 however, it\u2019s actually based on real events. The six-part series, which was released today, charts the life of Clark Olofsson,…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/14837"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2022\/04\/01_Clark_Eric_Broms-48b9c71.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Clark Olofsson, whose life inspired the new Netflix series, was born in 1947 in Sweden. He\u00a0was first placed in a young offenders institute at 16 for petty crimes. It was from here that he made his first prison break, later getting sentenced to three years in prison for assaulting two police officers in 1966.<\/p>\n
He escaped later that year, and was involved in a burglary in which his friend, Gunnar Norgren, shot dead a police officer<\/a>. Olofsson was sentenced to eight years in prison for his involvement, following a wide-scale manhunt.<\/p>\n Multiple other robberies and escapes throughout the series that are dramatised are also based on real events, most notably the Norrmalmstorg robbery.<\/p>\n The series is described as \u201ca fictional take on one of the most controversial personalities in contemporary Swedish history\u201d, so it\u2019s clear that we\u2019re not meant to take everything at face value.<\/p>\n Major events in Clark\u2019s life, including several relationships such as with Madou and with his wife Marike, are real, but exactly how they transpired and the surrounding events have been fictionalised.<\/p>\n In 1973, Jan-Erik (Janne) Olsson took three people (later four) hostage in a bank, after disguising himself in a wig, make-up and sunglasses<\/a>, and firing shots at the ceiling from a submachine gun.<\/p>\n He demanded three million Swedish krona and for Olofsson, who he had met in prison, to be brought to the bank.<\/p>\n Police complied with the latter request, letting Olofsson out of jail and bringing him to Olsson. The ensuing crisis lasted six days, yet by the end, when Olsson and Olofsson were gassed out of the bank\u2019s vault by police and the hostages freed, several of the hostages defended the pair. One of them, Kristin Enmark, even had a brief relationship with Olofsson.<\/p>\n Swedish criminologist Nils Bejerot subsequently coined the term Norrmalamstrong Syndrome (referred to as Stockholm Syndrome globally) to describe hostages who sympathise with their captors.<\/p>\n The ordeal is recorded and explained in David King\u2019s book Six Days in August: The Story of Stockholm Syndrome<\/a>.<\/span><\/p> The series synopsis states that the show is \u201cbased on the truths and lies revealed in Clark Olofsson\u2019s autobiography\u201d.<\/p>\n This autobiography, entitled Vafan var det som h\u00e4nde? (What the hell happened?), was released in 2015. Meanwhile Olofsson\u2019s first book, R\u00e4ttvisans lotteri (The lottery of justice), was released in 1986.<\/p>\n Olofsson is now 75 years old, and was freed from his latest prison stretch, which he was sentenced to for drug smuggling<\/a>, in 2018.<\/p>\n Clark is available to stream on Netflix<\/a> now. <\/strong>Check out more of our\u00a0Drama<\/a>\u00a0coverage or visit our\u00a0TV Guide<\/a>\u00a0to see what\u2019s on tonight.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The latest issue of Radio Times magazine is on sale no<\/span><\/b>w\u00a0<\/span>\u2013\u00a0subscribe now<\/a><\/span><\/strong>\u00a0and get the next 12 issues for only \u00a31. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the\u00a0Radio Times podcast<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0with<\/strong>\u00a0Jane Garvey.<\/b><\/p><\/body><\/html>\n By James Hibbs Published: Thursday, 05 May 2022 at 12:00 am Watching Clark on Netflix, you may be inclined to believe it is pure fantasy, with its abundance of plot twists and ludicrous jail-breaks \u2013 however, it\u2019s actually based on real events. The six-part series, which was released today, charts the life of Clark Olofsson, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":14838,"template":"","categories":[5],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/05\/clark-true-story-bill-skarsgard-crime-series-explained-scaled.jpg",2560,1707,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/05\/clark-true-story-bill-skarsgard-crime-series-explained-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/05\/clark-true-story-bill-skarsgard-crime-series-explained-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/05\/clark-true-story-bill-skarsgard-crime-series-explained-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/05\/clark-true-story-bill-skarsgard-crime-series-explained-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/05\/clark-true-story-bill-skarsgard-crime-series-explained-1536x1024.jpg",1536,1024,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/05\/clark-true-story-bill-skarsgard-crime-series-explained-2048x1365.jpg",2048,1365,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By James Hibbs Published: Thursday, 05 May 2022 at 12:00 am Watching Clark on Netflix, you may be inclined to believe it is pure fantasy, with its abundance of plot twists and ludicrous jail-breaks \u2013 however, it\u2019s actually based on real events. The six-part series, which was released today, charts the life of Clark Olofsson,…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/14837"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What really happened at the Norrmalmstorg robbery?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2022\/05\/Clark_LimitedSeries_Episode4_00_30_30_01_Eric_Broms-a45dec2.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Is Clark based on a book?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Where is Clark Olofsson now?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2022\/05\/19-Maj251EricBroms-355d22c.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"