Korsbæk på Bakken:
Matador comes to life.

The project: a television world becomes a place

Korsbæk på Bakken is a themed visitor environment based on Matador, the Danish television drama set in a fictional provincial town. For an international audience, the important premise is that visitors arrive with a relationship to a story and are invited to enter its world physically.

The attraction translates a screen-based narrative into a shared place. Its creative challenge is to sustain a believable town while guests move through it in their own way. Recognisable characters become people to encounter, and everyday activities become part of the storytelling.

Peter’s role: co-direction and entertainment

Peter’s documented contribution is direction and entertainment, working alongside director Lisbet Dahl. This locates his role in the performance and living character encounters within a wider collaborative attraction.

The project film shows Peter and Lisbet working over a script. It gives a concrete view of the relationship between preparation and the eventual visitor encounter: a world may feel spontaneous to a guest, while still needing a shared creative language behind it.

The visitor experience: inhabit the story

Although the story and the town are fictional, the setting invites visitors to immerse themselves in the years surrounding the Second World War. What happened? What did people think? How were roles divided between the town’s workers and its more affluent middle class?

The task was to create an immersive narrative that went beyond the television series and involved visitors in everyday life and its activities.

Crochet competitions, town celebrations, song and music events, a dance school and much more were created to immerse guests actively in the period. Nationwide competitions also invited people to take part in dog shows or knit for the town of Korsbæk.

Other events reflected significant moments of the period, including Liberation Day on 5 May, Alsang community singing and the resistance movement.

Peter developed these events, helping to bring the overall experience together and deepen visitors’ immersion.

Korsbæk på Bakken also includes restaurants, shops, period interiors and encounters with characters. Dining and exploring take place within the same fictional town. These elements offer several ways into the story: through a person, a room or an everyday activity.

The design opportunity lies in continuity. A character encounter should belong to the same world as the surrounding place and its hospitality. Each part contributes to the guest’s sense of being present inside a story that continues around them.

Design lesson: align performance, place and hospitality

Korsbæk illustrates the task of bringing an established fictional world into a visitor attraction. Recognition is the starting point; live presence gives the familiar material a new relationship with the guest.

For themed attractions and destinations, the useful questions are practical: what can guests do within this world, whom can they meet, and how does the experience stay coherent across those encounters? Creative direction can connect the answers into an experience that is understandable at human scale.

The official press release of 30 April 2015 documents the opening and credits Peter for co-direction and entertainment.