Salatut elämät
Finnish television series

Salatut elämät ("Secret Lives", literally "Concealed Lives") is a Finnish television soap opera that premiered on MTV3 on 25 January 1999. The series' storylines follow the daily lives of several families who live in the same apartment block, Pihlajakatu 23 B in Helsinki. The series primarily centres on residents of Pihlajakatu and its neighbouring areas. Only four of the original twenty characters – Ismo (Esko Kovero), Kalle (Pete Lattu), Aki (Sami Uotila) and Kari (Tommi Taurula) – still remain in the series, and most of the series' current characters have made their debuts in 2004 or later. Ismo is the only character who has never left the series.
During the series' 27-year run, over 4,900 episodes have been aired, making it the longest running drama in television in the Nordics. On 12 June 2017, it was announced that Salatut elämät will be on the air until the summer of 2023, making the series the longest-lasting drama series of all time in Finland. It was later stated that the series would continue airing after 2023.
MTV3 also airs reruns of the series every weekend (Monday-Wednesday episodes on Saturday, Thursday-Friday episodes on Sunday). In the summer, the channel airs reruns of the series; in the summer of 2014, episodes from the season 2009–2010 were aired.
“Salatut elämät” enters the record as finnish television series. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Salatut, elämät and Finnish can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q132288. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1999, 2004, 2017 and 2023.
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This entry incorporates text from “Salatut elämät” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.