An influential television adaptation of "Pippi Longstocking" debuted on 8 February 1969 in Sweden, and was broadcast for thirteen weeks, during which it acquired a considerable following. It was directed by Olle Hellbom, who later directed other adaptations of Lindgren's works. Inger Nilsson starred as Pippi, and upon the broadcast of the television series, she became a celebrity along with her co-stars Pär Sundberg and Maria Persson, who played Tommy and Annika respectively. In this adaptation Pippi's horse that is unnamed in the novels was called "Lilla Gubben" (Little Old Man). As a result of Lindgren's considerable unhappiness with the lesser-known Swedish film adaptation of "Pippi Longstocking" (1949), she wrote the screenplay for the television adaptation, which stuck more closely to the narrative of the books than the film had. Scholar Christine Anne Holmlund briefly discussed the difference she found between the two iterations of Pippi, namely that Viveca Serlachius's portrayal of Pippi sometimes took on middle-class sensibilities in a way that other iterations of Pippi had not, for example, purchasing a piano in one scene only to show it off in Villa Villakula. In contrast, the Pippi of Hellbom's television series and subsequent tie-in 1970 films, "Pippi in the South Seas" and "Pippi on the Run", is an "abnormal, even otherworldly," periodically gender-defying bohemian reminiscent of Swedish hippies. Holmlund argued that both Gunvall and Hellbom's adaptations depict her as a "lovably eccentric girl."