Denmark is a wonderful country to visit, but its late night television can be pretty weird! During out trip to Copenhagen, we were left wondering, “What is going on with late night TV in Denmark??”

One thing I like about staying in hotels is the random television you end up watching. I’m not saying I go to a new country to veg out in front of the TV, but late at night we often end up flicking between news channels, movies and the local stations.

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In Copenhagen, we kept flicking past a really strange-looking programme that had us wondering what on Earth we were watching.

It looked like CCTV footage from inside an industrial building, with long corridors with flickering florescent lights and overhead piping.

At first, I thought it was some sort of horror movie, as there was something creepy about it. The camera angle went from showing the empty hallways to footage taken inside an empty bathroom.

The next time we flicked past the channel, DR Ultra, there was a man in the bathroom, who looked like he was doing some sort of electrical work. We were confused.

What is going on with DR Ultra’s scary late night TV?

As the days went by, and we kept flicking past that channel, we were no closer to figuring out what the hell it was.

Once, we saw the man in the bathroom get a small electric shock from an electric razor. Another time, there were two people rushing around one of the corridors.

At this stage, we thought it was a Big Brother-type reality show, showing after hours footage.

But it was too strange to be Big Brother. The footage barely ever showed people, and the setting was too industrial.

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Once, we found ourselves watching a man examining his spot in the mirror, and jumped when it finally burst all over the mirror.

So was it a Big Brother type reality show we were slowly getting sucked into watching? Or was it some sort of game, where people were trapped inside an industrial building?

We had no idea.

More weird late night TV in Denmark

It wasn’t only DR Ultra that was freaking us out. We also kept flicking past a channel showing people sleeping. At first, we thought it was just part of an ordinary programme, but before long we noticed just how many sleeping people there were.

We stopped on the channel for a few minutes to see a clown-like person tossing and turning in a brightly coloured room. Soon, the camera appeared to pan to the room next door, which showed a different person soundly asleep. Weird.

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It turns out that Denmark’s DR Ramasjang children’s channel films characters from all of its programmes tucked into their beds, fast asleep. This plays from 8:30 pm to 6 am.

Why? Well, it’s pretty genius. It’s done so that when kids are trying to get out of going asleep, or if they’re asking to be allowed to stay up watching TV, parents can show them that all their favourite characters are sleeping, inspiring the children to go to bed too, knowing they’re not missing out on anything. Now that is clever!

As for the DR industrial footage, we eventually took to the internet to find out what was going on. After sifting through some confusing Reddit comments from Danish people claiming it was footage from a prison, I finally got the answer!

DR Ultra shows an all-night surveillance footage taken from the Danish Broadcasting Corporation once normal programming finishes for the night. Highwire production company was hired to create the footage.

“So we created a surveillance universe from the deep, dark basements of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation,” it said. “Here anything can happen – from setting people on fire to showing strange behaviours from your favourite tv hosts. Catch the whole thing after dark on DR Ultra.”

So there you go, the mystery of Denmark’s strange late night programming is solved!

What’s the strangest thing you’ve come across on television when travelling?

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