“IKEA Heights” had all the trappings of a typical soap opera: romance, intrigue, mystery, some eerie plot-twists, and a trippy intro reminiscent of those 90s era shows.
But while this seven-episode gem of a series is merely a spoof of the genre, it deserves more love than it received when it first came out and went kind of viral back in 2009.
The cliche-filled, laugh-a-minute series by Los Angeles filmmakers Paul Bartunek and David Seger, is made even more special by the fact that it was filmed entirely at IKEA in an outlet in Burbank, California.
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The show’s stellar cast consists of some of today’s hottest TV stars such as Randall Park of “Fresh Off The Boat,” Whitney Avalon of “The Big Bang Theory,” and Matt Peters of “Orange Is The New Black.”
Shot in the course of one year, the scenes of the show were ingeniously set up in IKEA’s varied departments, making clever use of displayed items for sale as props. This is certified guerrilla filmmaking as all the scenes were shot without the store’s permission.
“The store doesn’t know we’re there,” Seger told the Los Angeles Times in 2009. “We’ve had employees ask what we’re doing and we say we’re doing a photo series. They say, ‘OK, just make sure it doesn’t mention IKEA.’ We lie and say OK.”
The show, created for website Channel101.com, recently resurfaced online and earned itself some new fans.
Hooked yet? Here’s another one:
To find out where the treasure’s buried, check out ThisisChannel101’s YouTube channel.
