CORONATION SUITE
A GROUP of actors filmed a spoof soap opera in an Ikea store for a whole year - and nobody even noticed.
Aptly named IKEA Heights, the cheeky parody starred The Office and Veep actor Randall Park and was filmed out of a store in California, USA.
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The ingenious project was dreamed by Dave Seger and Paul Bartunek, who were both eager to film a spoof soap opera back in 2009 but needed a set to film it in.
And that's exactly what they did - for an entire year - at their local IKEA store in Burbank as shoppers went about their daily business in the background.
The seven-part series - which brimmed with cheesy plot lines like a ridiculous romance, unrelenting drama, an amnesia patient and murder - aired on Channel101 with all seven episodes lasting no more than five minutes each.
In one episode, Park - who plays a down-trodden office clerk called James - wakes up in a bed and acts his scene out while an $199 price tag hoovers near his head.
In another scene, a character named Tom tries to explain to his pleading wife why the water in their fake kitchen wasn't running as shopping watched on puzzled.
And in another, James receives a mystery phone call suggesting his wife was having an affair and waves through customers to chase her and her lover down.
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Although IKEA was not too happy about the series being filmed, bosses did see the funny side.
IKEA spokesperson Madeleine Löwenborg-Frick told : "We see the humour in it and we approach our own marketing with a similar tongue-in-cheek humour.
"But unauthorized filming in our stores isn’t a good thing. There’s proper channels that people who want to film in our stores can go through."
The hilarious web series was written by Dave Seger, Spencer Strauss, Paul Bartunek, and Rick and Morty creator Tom Kauffman.
It stars Randall Park, Whitney Avalon, Matt Braunger, Tom Kauffman, Jess Lane, Wade Randolph, Abed Gheith, Delbert Dean Shoopman, and Dean Pelton.
The show - which was rated 7.9 stars on IMDB - is available on YouTube, Netflix, and Vimeo and can be binged in a short 35-minute sitting.
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