Bolji život


Bolji život is a Yugoslav TV series with mixed elements of soap opera, comedy and drama that aired from 1987 to 1991. Created by the Radiotelevision Belgrade it is considered to be the most successful TV show ever produced in Yugoslavia.
Written by Siniša Pavić, most prolific Serbian screenwriter, the series helped jump start cinematic careers for many of its protagonists, most notably Dragan Bjelogrlić who went on to become successful actor, director, and producer.

History

Bolji život began airing on Radio Television of Belgrade on Saturday, 10 January 1987, opening with the theme song named "Bolji život" written by Ljubiša Bačić, composed by Voki Kostić and sung by Dado Topić that soon became extremely popular.
Early into its run, the series became a massive hit all over SFR Yugoslavia. The first season's final episode that aired 6 June 1987 featuring a bit of a cliffhanger with Giga leaving the household, brought in huge ratings. A total of 22 episodes were shot and aired in the first season.

Plot

The story revolves around the Popadić family and works through their personal struggles as well as their adaptation to the rapid political and economic changes taking place in the post-Tito SFR Yugoslavia during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Family patriarch Dragiša Popadić aka Giga Moravac is an impulsive outburst-prone administrator in his fifties who works as a mid-level manager at a state-owned company's legal department. A member of the Communist League, he moved to Belgrade from Pomoravlje to study at the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Law and stayed in the city after graduating and getting married. His cultured and delicate wife Emilija Konstantinović who comes from an affluent family teaches Latin at a high school. They have three grownup children together all of whom still live with their parents.
As the series starts, the eldest son Saša, a law school graduate, is unemployed; attractive daughter Violeta is trying to jump-start a stage acting career; and the younger son Boba is about to graduate high school though that's anything but certain as his grades are horrible. Meanwhile, Giga's and Ema's marriage is in turmoil as the couple bickers constantly and she soon serves him with divorce papers. This comes as a terrible blow to Giga, weeks after his older sister Jovanka died. The deceased sister's will is revealed, stipulating that her brother's kids each stand to inherit substantial sums of money under specific conditions: Saša has to find a job, Violeta has to get married and celebrate a one-year anniversary, while Boba has to complete his final year of high school with at least a 4 grade average.

First season

During one of their first court dates, on judge's advice, Giga and Ema agree to put the legal divorce proceedings on hold for three months, giving themselves more time to attempt reconciliation.
In parallel, the kids are trying to meet the conditions of aunt Jovanka's testament. Viki seems to be in the best position to collect the money as her longtime boyfriend, architect Filip, is very much intent on getting married. He has got an apartment lined up through his company, though his patience with her is wearing thin and he is very much against her decision to give theater acting yet another shot.
Saša is in a three-year relationship with bookish medical doctor Branka, but his job prospects are bleak. It has been a year since he graduated law school with average grades and he still has not been able to land a job. Numerous rejections are starting to affect his self-confidence and he is beginning to feel inadequate in front of Branka who graduated medicine with top marks the same year he did, but, unlike him, right away found a job that she is now excelling at. Furthermore, Branka's parents, especially mother, rarely miss an opportunity to tell him about it. At the unemployment bureau counter, he meets a flirty and mouthy clerk Koka who chats him up. For his part, he seems very receptive to her relaxed, direct, slightly low-brow, and provocative approach as she seems a polar opposite of his strait-laced girlfriend Branka. While out with Branka one day at a bar, Koka bumps into two of them, saying a flirty hello to Saša followed by a testy chat with Branka who is completely rattled by this encounter.
Meanwhile, Boba's task of graduating with a 4 average seems monumental as he currently has 1s in four of his subjects. His atrocious performance in school brings both Giga and Ema, on separate occasions to discuss matters and work out a game plan with Boba's home room professor Dušan "Terminator" Marković. During one of these visits Ema and Terminator realize they know each other vaguely from years ago, and, though they are both now married, take an obvious shine to one another.
Viki surprisingly manages to pass her theater audition, though it is obvious the reason for the sudden success is jury member Baron being taken with her attractive looks. Though she is ecstatic, Filip is not thrilled with the development and is especially unhappy about the celebrated theater actor and multiple divorcee Baron now wooing his girlfriend, with Viki even welcoming the aging lothario's smooth advances. Frustrated, Filip even contacts Ema hoping to receive some help getting through to Viki whose head is high in the clouds. For the moment at least, Giga and Ema manage to impart some rationality to their daughter, and she seems ready to take the sensible option and make nice with Filip. In parallel, in order to sweeten his case with Viki, Baron arranges for her, a complete novice, to get the demanding role of Juliet in the theater's latest production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, while Baron plays Romeo. He tells her the big news by showing up unannounced at the apartment just as she is getting ready to go out to meet Filip for a date. The news sends her on cloud nine and she immediately puts Filip and the marriage on the back-burner while Filip's frustration grows. Soon, Baron manages to bed Viki who thus becomes his latest conquest. Though he is not aware of the gory details yet, Filip has seen enough to send him over the edge and, overcome with jealousy, he constantly interrupts their rehearsals. It all culminates in an act of madness as he breaks into Baron's apartment with a gun, threatening to kill him, but the verbose actor talks him out of it using a combination of pointed eloquence and dramatic flair.
Based on their few run-ins, Saša is sufficiently intrigued with Koka that he tracks her down and ends up sleeping with her in her apartment. Afterwards, he informs her that he does not want to pursue things further, which she takes in stride to his face, passing it all off as a light fling, but looks visibly shaken after he leaves. He decides to stay with Branka and is soon informed by her that she is pregnant so the parents quickly set about organizing a wedding. Meanwhile, Giga decides to call on his Pomoravlje paisano connections in order to find Saša a job. He wants to track down his old friend Jataganac who is now a powerful politically connected party-installed business manager. Though he manages to get Jataganac's attention after much wrangling, the whole thing eventually goes pear-shaped when Giga refuses to swallow his pride when Jataganac shows up four hours late to the dinner at Popadić's house.
Boba's grades gradually begin improving while Ema starts seeing Terminator regularly as they seem to be in the beginning stages of an affair. Giga who does not suspect much yet starts getting close to his secretary Dara and ends up sleeping with her one day.
Preparations for Saša's and Branka's wedding are anything but smooth as the in-laws are unable to agree on who picks up the tab. Finally, everything is ironed out and the civil ceremony takes place in front of the two sets of families, including Giga and Ema, Viki and Baron, and drunken Boba. However, there is a scandal when Branka sees Koka who unknowingly got brought along to the wedding party by her half-sister who is visiting from Switzerland and knows Branka's father.
Viki's theater goes to Vrnjačka Banja for a pre-premiere of Romeo and Juliet. Though the production is largely shambolic, she catches the eye of an amorous Italian director who begins showering her with attention, praise, and vague promises right in front of jealous Baron. Unbeknownst to her, Filip has also followed her down to Vrnjačka Banja in a desperate attempt to get her back, so three of her suitors are now fighting over her. Intrigued by the Italian, she runs off with him leaving two jilted lovers in her wake.
Some episodes are especially interesting and display these social changes. An example is when all the women go on strike in a company because they are not happy with the rights they get within their union while the male director of the company frantically tries to solve the situation and realises he can do nothing without these women.
The show also focuses on family relations, affairs and teen immaturity. The comedy often is created by the teen character Slobodan "Boba" Popadić. The show can be described as a real life drama mixed with humorous adventures.

Cast

Popadić family

The show has been rerun on RTS multiple times after its original run ended in 1991. In 2007 it was re-run once again on RTS1. The show is sometimes re-run in other parts of the former Yugoslavia as well.
The show's reruns brought in huge ratings for RTS during its dark days of the 1990s. In February 2007, the series' rerun was the third most-watched show on Serbian television with 23.3% of the public tuning in to watch the repeats of the show.
Numerous reruns of the show led to a resurgence of popularity for some of its protagonists. In fall 2011, twenty years after Bolji život stopped airing, the recognizability of Marko Nikolić and Svetlana Bojković, the actors who portrayed the main Popadić couple, was still such that the Agrokor-owned supermarket chain Idea hired them for a Serbian-market television commercial, which they did in character as Giga Moravac and Ema and partly shot in the original apartment where the series was taped. In December 2011, the two appeared as guests for an entire episode of Veče sa Ivanom Ivanovićem, the most-watched television talk show in Serbia, where they mostly discussed Bolji život. The television commercial proved popular so they did another one, again in character, in February 2012.
Croatian television network Doma TV bought the entire run of Bolji život in fall 2012. On 5 November 2012, it started rerunning it to record ratings in the country despite airing in the same time slot opposite Turkish first-run soap opera Muhteşem Yüzyıl about Suleyman the Magnificent on the rival RTL Televizija.
On 16 January 2013, twenty-six years after the series' original run, RTS began the ninth rerun cycle of Bolji život.
It was also aired in Bosnia and Herzegovina every year since 2015 via state-owned TV network FTV.