From Versailles to No Man’s Land: French broadcasters and the new geopolitical reality of the audiovisual industry

ABSTRACT

Based on the examples of Versailles, a series co-produced by Capa Drama with the Quebec company Incendo and Zodiak Fiction for Canal+, and No Man’s Land, a Franco-Belgian-Israeli co-production produced for Arte France and the US platform Hulu, this article aims to compare two different dimensions of the globalisation of the series market and the integration of French producers and broadcasters into this new transnational creative ecosystem. The challenge for the production of Versailles was to bring the French heritage series up to the standards of the English-speaking world while promoting French producers’ financial and artistic creativity in launching series with distinctive stories onto a global market. For No Man’s Land, however, the challenge was to produce a cosmopolitan series, featuring several cultural areas and a multilingual cast. Whether in terms of the broadcasters’ globalisation strategy or in terms of the creative or even cross-cultural challenges raised by the production process, both experiences are representative of the way series are emerging today as a laboratory of audiovisual ‘glocalisation’.

KEYWORDS:

• Economics of artistic creation
• platforms
• intermediation
• editorial strategies
• audiovisual programmes

Although the adoption of new editorial strategies has always been important for ‘traditional’ television channels and producers, the arrival of US streaming platforms in recent years has forced them to focus on these strategies more than ever and has led them to adapt their business models to the new configuration of series production on a global scale. In Europe, where the audiovisual market is highly fragmented (in terms of language, culture and the size of companies in the sector), the restructuring of the market around transnational platforms, which have invested more and more in content while centralising digital distribution, has created new competitive and regulatory challenges for historical players, even raising new questions about hegemony (Bouquillion and Ithurbide 2021). This includes national contexts where traditional media have particularly deep roots.

In order to account for these changes, much of the work focusing on the socio-economics of cultural industries (Euvrard, Kitsopanidou, and Thévenin 2018; Kitsopanidou and Soulez 2015) and on festivals (Thévenin 2020) has taken a resolutely empirical approach. This series of case studies has provided a means of tracking the diversification of the cinema and audiovisual industries in France step by step in real time, and notably the evolving status of series as, increasingly, an alternative form of content to cinema, as well as a loss leader for television channels and platforms. Comparing data from a variety of sources, including interviews as well as sectoral and cross-sectoral studies, has produced several findings that will serve as a basis for our analysis in this paper. Our goal is to explain the changes in the balance of power in series production prompted by the advent of ‘premium’ exclusive content or curated niche fare, from the point of view of producers and managers responsible for a television channel’s editorial line (Grece 2021).¹ Among these observations (Le Diberder 2019), we note that one of the main changes in the audiovisual sector essentially comes down to the recent rise of platforms (Boullier 2021) leading to a surge in the production of fiction series as well as an increase in the circulation of series throughout the world. In this global market for series driven by the platforms, new creative hubs are emerging (Scandinavian countries, Israel, Turkey, Korea etc.) along with a renewal of series writing. In this reshuffle of global series production, we have sought to determine what strategies French producers are using to reposition themselves in response to the globalisation of the creative industries (Bourdon and Sonet 2018; Brigaud-Robert 2011; Lecler 2019; Lizé, Naudier, and Roueff 2011). How have these actors tried to adapt to the globalisation of culture (Appadurai 1996 [2005]; Caillé and Dufoix 2013; Cicchelli and Octobre 2021) and the global dominance of streaming platforms in order to position themselves by producing original series for an international audience?

To support our analysis, we will use the example of the series Versailles (Canal+, 2015–2018), produced by Capa Drama, the Quebec-based company Incendo and Zodiac Fiction for Canal+. This English-language series represents one of the first attempts at integrating French producers and distributors into the new globalised creative ecosystem that has arisen since the major North American platforms began producing their own content. Since Canal+ and Arte are among the broadcasters that have invested the most in developing series targeted at international audiences, we take the French-Belgian-Israeli series No Man’s Land (2020, Arte/Hulu), produced for Arte France and the US platform Hulu, as a counterpoint to the previous strategy, in order to understand how the globalisation of the series market has evolved and also the various ways in which this process can be conceived.²

Establishing an editorial line for the creative industries

In the current market for audiovisual programme production, Canal+ and Arte France embody different approaches to the internationalisation of original series. This difference stems both from the companies’ contrasting business models and from their strategies to confront streaming platforms’ growing dominance. Canal+ has reinvented itself as an aggregator of different forms of content and services, offering tens of thousands of programmes while cultivating its image as an internationally recognised content producer. For series, this has been visible in the launch of the ‘Canal+ original creation’ label as well as a very active acquisition policy (the British studio Red, the German Tandem etc.) and StudioCanal’s investment in independent European production companies (the Spanish company Bambou, UK producers Urban Myth and Sunny March TV etc.), allowing the company greater control over the rights of the series it funds.³ As for Arte, a French-German public channel funded by audiovisual taxes collected in France and Germany, its mission is to broadcast a variety of genres of cultural programming mainly in linear format (traditional television), as well as to offer original, multilingual digital content for all types of screens (live streams, pay-per-view, VOD, DVD etc.). It has been identified as a trendsetter within the industry, particularly in terms of fiction, which accounts for 19% of its content. Arte’s activity thus represents a niche in the series production economy, with modest budgets limiting the number of possible projects in a season; however, it has received recognition for its ability to distribute and co-produce distinctive, risk-taking series whose reach is international from the outset by dint of the channel’s European roots. In the early 2010s, it distinguished itself from the rest of the French media landscape with the creation of its arte.tv platform, which developed a leading identity in this domain, transforming the channel’s editorial strategy and offering a prominent position to high-quality European series. This can be seen in the pioneering launch of a range of Nordic series in France (made possible by the channel’s German side and its production and distribution agreements with Swedish, Danish and Norwegian channels): Äkta människor/Real Humans (SVT1, 2012–2014), Borgen (DR1/Netflix, 2010–2013, 2020), Forbrydelsen/The Killing (DR1, 2007–2012) and Lilyhammer (NRK1/Netflix, 2012–2014). With Canal+ positioning itself as a trailblazer in creating exclusive series in France, Arte has highlighted its distinctive European character in order to grow its investments in fiction, even though the two companies’ resources are hardly comparable. Today, Canal+, with 10 million subscribers, spends three times Arte France’s annual budget for fiction, producing about 10 series.

Both players face the same inflationary pressure on the cost of exclusive series, which represented 54% of the new titles produced in Europe in 2020 (Fontaine 2022a). The substantial consumption of recent years and the change of scale spurred on by new players such as Netflix⁴ have initiated a process of industrial acceleration in series production (Rosa 2013) that has led to major restructuring of national and transnational media groups. In the continental European market alone, the number of ‘premium’ series increased by about 65% between 2015 and 2020, and has now reached a volume of 696 titles.⁵ In order to maintain such a high level of quality and diversity in an economy with fixed costs that are continually rising, international strategic alliances (e.g. France Télévisions-RAI-ZDF) and co-productions, including direct co-productions with platforms (who have the right to distribute the programme during a second window or, increasingly today, the first window), have become imperative for historical players in the audiovisual sector who have less reach than the transnational platforms.⁶ Though co-productions only accounted for 12% of series titles produced in Europe in 2020 – the equivalent proportion being 23% for cinema (Fontaine 2022a) – the percentage of so-called ‘non-linguistic’ co-productions (that is, fictions co-produced by countries that do not share a common language) is constantly increasing.⁷ Both Canal+ and Arte have followed this same logic, but on different scales defined by their respective models. Owing to its position as Europe’s largest film producer (through its subsidiary StudioCanal), Canal+ can invest in series along with powerful groups such as Sky, the BBC, HBO, Zodiak and Fremantle, while the series co-produced or pre-purchased by Arte are more limited in terms of possibilities for partnerships because of the size of the French and German markets that the channel retains the rights to.

Arte’s partners are thus channels focussed on specific themes and international vendors (buying rights directly) who today frequently compete with platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, and soon with Hulu, HBO Max etc.⁸ These platforms invest across the full spectrum of audiovisual entertainment, combining mainstream productions with national offerings developed to cater to local audiences – for instance, La casa de papel/Money Heist (Antena 3/Netflix, 2017–2021), Squid Game (Netflix, 2021) and Lupin (Netflix, 2021) – but with the additional aim of expanding the series’ circulation in an expanding international market that is increasingly receptive to diversity (D’Iribarne 2008).

Amid this abundant supply of audiovisual content, Canal+ and Arte have both produced original, ‘premium’, internationally oriented series by emphasising the uniqueness of their editorial process, their independent outlook and their grounding in the industries of symbolic goods (Bouquillion, Miège, and Mœglin 2013), while at the same time staking a political and ideological position (Luhmann 1999) connected to their corporate and financial identity. These dimensions are constructed through public statements made by the channels’ fiction department directors, who insist on the distinctive creative process behind their productions. These various conceptions of contemporary audiovisual culture can be seen in the very ways these channels create, produce, sell, distribute and market their content, allowing them to distinguish themselves from other players in the private or public sectors in France and continuing to be seen as a reference by directors, producers and actors, but also by the globalised US platforms that have become their latest customers.

Versailles: a singular identity, a cosmopolitan aesthetic

The creation of the series Versailles, co-produced by Capa Drama, Incendo and Zodiak Fiction for Canal+, is an interesting attempt to define the concept of contemporary international drama series. It reflects a particular response to the globalisation of the audiovisual market in 2015, when international platforms were accelerating their investments in series creation. In the world of cinema and television, it is rare for a company to entrust a single person with editorial responsibility for a sector of activity as strategically important as series creation for a prolonged period of time. This was the case, however, for Fabrice de La Patellière, who headed the original fiction series unit at Canal+ for nearly 20 years. Formerly the fiction advisor at TF1, he joined Canal+ in 2002 after being hired by Dominique Farrugia, then the company’s deputy director for broadcasting and programmes, with the goal of devising an editorial line for a channel that at the time only occupied a marginal position in the field of fiction.

In the early 2000s, French fiction was dominated by made-for-TV films and miniseries. There were few series in a 52-minute format, and they were mainly serialised with self-contained plots for each episode. While the national supply of original fiction in the main European markets expanded significantly between 1996 and 2002, the opposite was true in France. There was hardly any fiction being produced at Canal+ when Fabrice de La Patellière joined the company. The channel’s fiction programming was highly erratic in 2001, consisting mainly of two sitcoms H (1998–2002) and Mes pires potes (‘My Worst Pals’, 2000–2001), a miniseries (6 x 45 minutes) co-produced with the United Kingdom and a handful of television films (Buonanno 2002). The Original Creation unit was set up in the midst of a painful restructuring of the Canal+ group that was announced in July 2002. Fabrice de La Patellière took over fiction at Canal+ with Rodolphe Belmer at the helm of the group and has remained in the position since Maxime Saada became chief executive in 2015.

The team drew inspiration from HBO’s first group of original series, including Oz (1997–2003), Six Feet Under (2001–2005) and The Sopranos (1999–2007), without fully reproducing that model: Fabrice de La Patellière explains that this is ‘because we have neither the same means at our disposal, nor especially their culture or their knowledge, their mastery of making series’.⁹ Their goal was to move into territory that had been completely abandoned by other channels, along two lines of strategic development. First, following the example of HBO, the channel began transforming the 52-minute format by creating ultra-realist fiction, including the series Engrenages/Spiral (2005–2020) and then Mafiosa (2006–2014), seeking to develop new subjects, more complex universes and characters and adopting innovative points of view with preliminary research. They aimed to go against the grain of fiction on the other national television channels in France by forging a strong, singular identity in the field of fiction series with editorial choices favouring quality writing, especially with respect to characters. The result, for de La Patellière, was that:

If we put all of Canal’s heroes side by side, they will be completely different, they will stand out from the other channels’ heroes, who are quite conventional. We’ll have the bad boys, the cops who push the limits of the law, the Corsican gangsters, and later even the prostitutes of a nineteenth-century brothel.¹⁰

At the same time, the Canal+ fiction unit worked on historical re-creations based on bold narrative choices and innovative and original viewpoints, often highlighting little-known episodes in French history. These works involved a certain level of artistic ambition: a taste for visually appealing cinematography, high-quality directing and production values that recall a certain kind of cinema. Television films such as 93 rue Lauriston (Denys Granier-Deferre, 2004), on French police collaboration with the Gestapo, Nuit noire, 17 octobre 1961/October 17, 1961 (Alain Tasma, 2004), on the rising tensions in Paris during the Algerian War, and especially Carlos, the three-part biopic by Olivier Assayas (2010) about the Venezuelan terrorist hunted by police throughout the 1970s and 1980s, can now be seen as part of a group of about 20 titles that were characterised by the ambition of their writing and aesthetics, and which also involved relatively large budgets.¹¹

With the transformation of the ecosystem of television channels in France, first by the arrival of subscription channels paid through telecom and Internet service providers, and then by global platforms, Canal+ would increase its investment in original fiction. The new Internet-based players have driven a growing movement to internationalise the range of programming on offer. The international battle for subscribers’ attention has highlighted the growing strategic importance of exclusive access to concepts, talent and catalogues. Like subscription-based television channels in other countries, Canal+ has had no choice but to commit to this same strategy. Beginning with Carlos, the channel was the first in France to commission big-budget, internationally oriented fiction for prime time, a practice that continued into the 2010s with Tom Fontana’s series Borgia (2011–2014), Paolo Sorrentino’s The Young Pope (2016) and Simon Mirren and David Wolstencroft’s Versailles (2015–2018).

Before the first season of Versailles began production, the ‘Canal+ original creation’ label had already become established in France, where the channel was known for its distinctive editorial approach to fiction, gaining increased international visibility from nominations and prizes at major festivals. Carlos, for example, was screened in competition in Cannes in 2010, followed by Les Revenants/The Returned (2012–2015); these were key steps in the subscription channel’s evolution in fiction production, gaining access to the global market for exclusive, high-quality series. This international recognition, later confirmed by the reception of Braquo (2009–2016) and Engrenages, the first French series purchased by the BBC, marked a change in the way French series are perceived, which was also reflected by an increase in sales volume and the involvement of international financial partners (agents, producers, studios etc.). Recruiting talent with international potential, such as Tom Fontana, the creator of Oz (HBO, 1997–2003), for Borgia, and Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein, creators of Broen/The Bridge (SVT1/DR1, 2011–2018), for Midnattssol/Jour polaire (‘Midnight Sun’, 2016), has given Canal+ a distinct competitive advantage, allowing it to become a producer of series whose editorial line and exclusive content have gradually earned the channel an internationally recognised identity. For Versailles, the channel took advantage of these same strengths, creating its own take on the historical costume series and reinforcing its position in a market shaped by worldwide hits such as Downton Abbey (ITV1, 2010–2015), Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011–2019) and The Tudors (BBC/CBC Television/Showtime, 2007–2010), whose formulas it is often accused of borrowing.

Originally planned as a French series, developed in French by a French screenwriter, the series quickly evolved to take full advantage of the Palace of Versailles, one of the world’s most popular tourist attractions.¹² The first season was therefore planned to be shot in English, on location at the palace (Figure 1), with an international cast (but not featuring any stars) and the successful British team made up of Simon Mirren, the screenwriter and producer of series such as Without a Trace (CBS, 2002–2009) and Criminal Minds (CBS, 2005–2020), and David Wolsterncroft, the creator of Spooks (MI-5, BBC One, 2002–2011). Versailles’s goal was to be cinema on television, a television show with cinematic production values; finding the means to do this meant looking beyond France. The first season’s budget (approximately 26 million euros) was thus funded by a combination of subsidies, tax credits (a French tax credit for international production plus a Canadian tax credit), contributions from television channels (the Canal+ group in France), as well as support from outside producers (the Canadian company Incendo)¹³ and the international distributor (Zodiak Fiction).

Figure 1. Versailles: scene set inside the Palace.¹⁴

At the time, the decision to make an English-language series was a determining factor with regard to international sales and access to significantly larger budgets. Even today, shooting in English can make a considerable difference in a series’s price on the market, which can be up to four times higher than the price of a French-language series according to Simon Arnal, a producer for Haut et Court with a brief to make several series maximising international exposure for Canal+. On this point, Fabrice de La Patellière adds that:

The Versailles we presented, the Louis XIV we presented in English, would have been impossible in French. We would have made a different series, maybe just as interesting, but less spectacular. We wanted something fascinating, a spectacle, a powerful series. A series that allowed us to reach a younger, more female audience, that was shown all over the world, that created a lot of buzz in England, because the English found it quite shocking, very French, because there was a lot of sensual charm and a little bit of torture. These powerful series are important.¹⁵

Aude Albano, a producer for Capa, which co-produced the series for Canal+, confirms that shooting in English made it possible to secure funds from international investors in order to give the series its large budget.

Our distributor set an exorbitant guaranteed minimum for the time and, even so, I think that today no one sets this level of guaranteed minimum for distributing series […] They set it at 15% of the funding because of Versailles and because the series was in English. How can you make an international series when you’re a small French quality producer, but no one knows you? The potential of the brand, the reputation of the producers are what make the huge guaranteed minimum possible, and filming in English allowed the series to travel. That brought it to 180 countries across the world and allowed it to raise these immense budgets.¹⁶

The interior sets, an integral part of the series that accounted for 15% of the overall budget, were built in the 2000 m² studios in Bry-sur-Marne by Katia Wyszkop, who had designed the sets for Les Adieux à la reine/Farewell, My Queen (Benoît Jacquot, 2012); the costume designer, Madeline Fontaine, had already been awarded a César for her work on Un long dimanche de fiançailles/A Very Long Engagement (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2003) and Séraphine (Martin Provost, 2008). Outdoor scenes were filmed in part at Versailles and other historic sites including the park in Sceaux, the theatre of the Château de Groussay, the Chapel of the Trinity in Fontainebleau, Maisons-Laffitte, Vaux-le-Vicomte and so on. The first few episodes of the series were directed by Jalil Lespert, the director of Yves Saint-Laurent (2014), with the aim of reinvigorating the historical costume genre while adding the ‘French touch’ that the series’s producers were keen to achieve (Figure 2). An actor who made his name in Ressources humaines/Human Resources (Laurent Cantet, 1999) and a filmmaker whose works had enjoyed a certain level of critical and commercial success, Lespert had also contributed to the reputation of Canal+, particularly through his acting role in Pigalle, la nuit (‘Pigalle by Night’, 2009), a mini-series known for its sultry atmosphere. Contributing to Versailles’s artistic direction by directing several episodes, he brought both his reputation and recognised skills to bear on the project. The series was thus made in France by a French director and crew, both because this was a prerequisite for claiming the international tax credit but also as a conscious production choice: ‘We didn’t make any money at all on that budget. Everything went into the picture. It’s the kind of project where you say, “This is an investment for the future”,’ says Albano.¹⁷

Figure 2. Madeline Fontaine’s costumes for Versailles.¹⁸

As is often the case, though, when moving from the pilot to the finished product, the series quickly settled into a pattern relatively typical of English-language productions, both in terms of the way it was produced and the producers’ relationship with the directors. The directors, hailing from Belgium, Canada, France and the United Kingdom, changed from one episode to the next over the course of each season. In the second and third seasons, Jalil Lespert was replaced by directors who were more experienced in the world of television: Thomas Vincent (The Tunnel, Sky Atlantic/Canal+, 2013–2018) and then the British director Richard Clark (Outlander, Starz, 2014–2022). As noted by the critic Olivier Aim, while attempting to give Versailles a distinctively French aesthetic, the production ended up borrowing elements and making multiple references that point up the ubiquitous nature of English-language media: ‘By trying to build a fiction about the Palace of Versailles as the “centre of the world”, the series only further affirms the unsurpassable influence of the American model.’¹⁹

Developed over the course of four years, with multiple showrunners, creators and screenwriters before the meeting with Simon Mirren and David Wolstencroft, Versailles provides a useful locus for observing the tensions that characterise the globalised audiovisual production industry when it comes to managing artistic enterprise, typically involving circulation, combination and creative adaptation. As a staging ground for encounters between the dominant British/US models and local traditions, television series can be seen as a laboratory for globalisation in the audiovisual business. Versailles was thus presented as an international series inspired by a French model, unlike Canal+’s other original content produced at the same time, which emphasised the identity of French screenwriters and producers crafting distinctive stories, such as Les Revenants (2012–2015) and Le Bureau des Légendes/The Bureau (2015–2020).

Aude Albano adds that:

It wasn’t always easy. We had US showrunners on a French set, which doesn’t work like an US set at all, so authority was shared between us and them and we really had to carve out spaces for each of us to express what we wanted. But on the whole, it worked out very well. And then, in the following seasons, we didn’t work with a system of showrunners, we really collaborated with screenwriters, who produced a lot. The system was: they would write, they would send us what they wrote, and within 24 hours we would send them detailed notes on what worked well or what didn’t. Then they would revise it, improve it, send it back to us etc.²⁰

After four years of development and 120 days of filming, the first season of Versailles became a success abroad. It was sold in 135 countries, more than Les Revenants (117 countries) and Braquo (115 countries). Success came immediately, especially considering that other series, including British competitors, took years to reach the same level of sales. With 239 territories by the end of the third season, Versailles enjoyed exposure worldwide. Even though French critics gave it mixed reviews, deeming its aesthetics too exuberant and noting various historical shortcuts and compromises, Canal+ subscribers watched it enthusiastically. The best start to an original fiction creation since The Tunnel and number one in sales of box sets, Season 1 of Versailles was a resounding commercial success, and the producers went on to demonstrate their ability to create three seasons in a short period of time with substantial budgets for each episode. Praised at the time of its release as an original French production aimed at the globalised series market, the series’s process of creation within Canal+’s fiction unit also illustrates the ongoing tensions between globalised standardisation and re-localised distinctiveness, between economic and artistic creativity. As the head of the channel’s fiction unit admitted:

At Canal+, we don’t just want to make international series in English. We’re French above all. In France, we have our own imagination, our culture, our way of thinking, and that’s where we’re the most legitimate. Les Revenants sold well. But it’s true that a series in French sells less well than one in English. We know that Versailles was made to sell.²¹

Along with other series such as The Young Pope, Versailles represents a milestone for prestigious European co-productions shot mostly or entirely in English and written following the current dominant British and US models. Also made along these same lines are the series Leonardo (France 2/RAI 1/VOX/The CW, 2022), created by the US showrunner Frank Sponitz (The Man in the High Castle, Amazon Video, 2016–2019) and his British colleague Stephen Thompson (Jericho, ITV, 2016), and more recently Marie-Antoinette (Canal+, 2022), created by Deborah Davis (The Favourite, Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018).²² These series have also acted as springboards towards globalisation for French production companies such as Capa Drama and Haut et Court that had initially specialised in producing documentaries and independent cinema.²³

No Man’s Land: ‘a non-English show’?

No Man’s Land represents a different approach to the globalised series market, based on highly curated niche content that reveals a certain ‘cosmopolitan cultural exchange’²⁴ (Martuccelli 2006); it is the product of a network of strategic cultural and financial alliances (producers, vendors, distributors etc.) where Arte is currently attempting to position itself.²⁵ Compared to Canal+, Arte moved at a different speed and followed a different path towards creating its own series, moving from a position of resistance to the dominant norms through ‘cinematic authority over the fiction unit’ (Alexandre 2018), embodied by the charismatic Pierre Chevalier, to the democratisation of popular series formats combining niche content and diversity under the leadership of François Sauvagnargues (2003–2011), Judith Louis (2011–2015) and Olivier Wotling (2015–2023).²⁶ Between 2009 and 2015, Arte France’s fiction went through a period of renewal with the acquisition of several original creations from Europe and abroad, as well as the production of innovative 52-minute French series (Ainsi soient-ils/The Churchmen, 2012–2015), some created by recognised auteurs including Bruno Dumont’s P’tit Quinquin/Li’l Quinquin (2014), which filled a new slot dedicated to fiction early on Thursday evenings. This period also saw the beginning of international co-productions with series such as Okkupert/Occupied (TV2, 2015–2020), created by the Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø and co-produced by Yellow Bird, GTV (Groupe Zodiak) and the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK. Finally, beginning in 2015, Wotling, the CNC’s former cinema director, further opened the channel to co-production (Herrens Veje/Ride Upon the Storm, DR, 2017–2018), stepping up partnerships with the platforms and cultivating a reputation for high standards, quality, creativity and good relations with talent. Wotling justified this growing focus on co-production as a means of ‘having a say in the artistic process’, allowing the channel to attract ambitious projects.²⁷ ‘The strength of the “Arte niche” is in distinctive products,’ he explained, ‘which are seen as transgressive. [It’s] a small research and development laboratory for a platform that doesn’t pay for development. Arte absorbs this risk and the platform exerts control over the production.’²⁸ In exchange for this ability to identify and commit to ambitious projects with distinctive styles and themes, Arte has enjoyed editorial independence, even though this professional recognition outside France can result, ironically, in the masking of the Arte group’s identity as a public channel with a focus on culture when these programmes are distributed by the platforms: ‘Arte’s public identity is swept aside when Netflix buys the series,’ Wotling admits.²⁹

No Man’s Land, which followed different trends than Versailles, can thus be taken as a point of comparison in order to understand another approach to editorial positioning and financial structuring for audiovisual fiction. One of the characteristics of the series’s financing comes from its development, which, like the theme that serves as a backdrop to the action (the conflict between the Islamic State and Kurdish soldiers in Syria, the radicalising of Westerners, the political issue of migration), is organically international (Figure 3). No Man’s Land was granted support at the Co-Pro Pitching Sessions, an event for prospective international co-productions at the Series Mania Festival. The project was partly initiated by Israeli producers (Maria Feldmann and Eitan Mansuri) and screenwriters (Ron Leshem and Amit Cohen) with international experience, as well as a collaboration between French (Haut et Court, Arte France) and Belgian (Versus Production) companies well versed in international cinema co-production.

Figure 3. No Man’s Land: during the Syrian conflict, Antoine (Félix Moati, right) goes in search of his sister in Syria. He joins forces with Sarya Dogan (Souheila Yacoub, left), an officer in the YPJ Kurdish Freedom fighters (S01-E04).

It is difficult, however, to fully piece together the chronology of these connections as the project developed in France, since, like most projects, No Man’s Land’s script was already circulating among various partners. Nonetheless, the award at the Co-Pro Pitching Sessions as well as the prize for best pitch at Series Mania in 2017 provided significant support, enhancing the project’s visibility, reinforcing its positioning as a quality series and certainly enlarging its audience in France. One of the producers from Haut et Court has also remarked that while the festival made it easier to look for partners, the involvement of the English company Fremantle, followed by the co-production and purchase for distribution on the US platform Hulu, are what allowed No Man’s Land to receive a budget suitable for a ‘premium’ international series.³⁰ And Wotling stated, ‘For me, the series only became possible and its dimensions only changed the day an international distributor like Fremantle came on board.’³¹ With the evolving economy of digital technology, producers need intense, immersive programmes to access capital, knowledge and an international network. No Man’s Land is neither a ‘glocal’ product, nor is it a European super-co-production event; it is something of a hybrid. For Wotling, the intertwining of different creative methods, both artistic (the writing talent) and financial (the co-producers), was the very condition that made the series possible.

In retrospect, another major element explaining the series’s success is the screenwriters’ ability to master a type of innovative serial writing that combines a story taking place across multiple cultural regions with actors of various nationalities speaking both English and other languages linked to the protagonists’ geographical context (in France, England, Syria and Kurdistan).³² The skill of the Israeli creators, who were well known in the United States (they work and live in Los Angeles and New York), likely also helped the project gain credibility in terms of storytelling and the plot’s relationship to current events, and then take on a form corresponding to the standards for international production of niche series. The series’s multilingual aspect is one characteristic of the recent evolution of this type of series, especially in English-speaking countries, where the range of creative possibilities has expanded to include formats compatible with non-English-speaking languages and cultures. Indeed, there exists real demand for series like this one, which have been labelled by industry professionals as ‘non-English shows’ (that is, international audiovisual productions in which the English language is not exclusive): viewers subscribing to some of the more quality-oriented US platforms such as Hulu, for instance, have been seeking content with a greater variety of references, both popular and sophisticated, local and cosmopolitan, that reflect the experience of cultural otherness. As Amit Cohen, one of the co-creators of the series, explains:

The language is part of the characters. There are five different languages and it’s part of the fact that No Man’s Land is, in a sense, the first totally global production that we know of because there are filmmakers from 10 different countries doing the show and casts from almost 10 different countries in five different languages and six different dialects for one language. It’s insane. And then Hulu decided not to dub it and to trust the audience to be able to be invested in a show that is totally globalised and cosmopolitan […]. (LaBat 2020)

Language is also becoming less and less of an obstacle to series obtaining funding, as long as it is justified on a narrative level. Platforms dedicated to original series creation increasingly see multilingualism as a desirable quality, as illustrated by the example of Possessions (Canal+, 2020), a French-Israeli series shot in French and Hebrew, produced by Haut et Court for the French market and sold to HBO. It should be added that the originality of No Man’s Land and its cultural mixing as a ‘non-English show’ helped it reach a level of notoriety and international exposure rarely achieved by a French-German channel and independent producers (the series has been sold in over 140 territories). This broad reach is also reflected in the cast, whose mix of actors who are well known in their native countries (Félix Moati, Mélanie Thierry, Souheila Yacoub, James Krishna Floyd, Dean Ridge), which sets it apart from the majority of US audiovisual productions and their mainstream, English-speaking casts. The series, considered a success on the international scene, did not benefit from the marketing of US stars or from a single, internationally identifiable ‘local’ identity, but it falls into an atypical category of productions which, in order to attract interest, have relied on the dynamics of cultural mixing.

From a narrative, artistic and financial perspective, No Man’s Land is a pure prototype in its economic operation: it would so far appear not to have established a model or opened up a space for cognate new series to occupy. It does, however, seem to have allowed Arte to become more visible to the international platforms. As Wotling observes:

Why did Haut et Court come to us, and why is that happening again now with other producers and other platforms? No Man’s Land helped us to significantly improve our image internationally, in European markets and beyond, even though our means are still limited. We’ve worked with US platforms several times now and they know us better.³³

For the French and Israeli production companies, this experience seems to have indirectly led to the founding of an international co-development alliance, ‘The Creatives’, headed by Haut et Court in France and bringing together nine large independent companies, including the partners who worked on No Man’s Land (the Israeli co-producer Spiro Films, the Belgian Versus Production and the US Masha Productions) and the international production and distribution group Fremantle. Fremantle helps open the door to the US market, bringing with it contacts for publicity and potential buyers, as well as an artistic perspective. This alliance lets its independent member companies find new paths to horizontal integration, allowing them to pursue their creative activities in a globalised market for fiction series marked by accelerated movements of capital (takeovers, publisher/producer and distributor/producer vertical integration as well as exclusivity agreements). It concentrates resources and talent (screenwriters and producers) around a limited number of players but also creates opportunities for more balanced partnerships between French producers and global platforms.

***

From a sociological and economic perspective, series production is affected by the attempts on the part of the industrial actors behind the phenomenon to diversify and adapt to the constant evolution of their competitors, including producers and distributors on the one hand and platforms on the other. Analysing Versailles and No Man’s Land reveals two different, complementary states of these ongoing trends. The goal of this chapter has been to consider the transformations of producers’ and television channels’ editorial strategies with the expansion of a sector that is now just as dynamic and legitimate as the cinema. In a market that has been partly reconfigured around new digital actors, series with ‘premium’ exclusive content or curated niche content have come to represent a major reshaping of the audiovisual industry, with very significant changes to the activities of channels and, in this case, independent producers. The arrival of this newly dominant economy has suddenly accelerated the legitimation of a format that was initially explored by subscription channels and then by internet-based platforms; this format has now become one of the essential economic and symbolic components of the globalised audiovisual production ecosystem. Given these changes in contemporary cultural industries, historical television broadcasters such as Canal+ and Arte face the challenge of continuing to play a role as a catalyst for creation in the ‘new symbolic ecosystem’ produced by globalisation in the audiovisual industry. Our examination of these changes – which is not limited to their geopolitical and geo-economic consequences – aims to initiate a discussion based on the hypothesis that international series, themselves key sites of symbolic production, have the potential to create a tentative form of what might best be described as diverse universalism, while at the same time exposing the economic processes of cultural globalisation and the way they work in individual countries and across Europe.

Translated from the French by Daniel Morgan

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the generous support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the project ‘Producing the Postnational Popular: The Expanding Imagination of Mainstream French Films and Television Series’ (2019–2023).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kira Kitsopanidou

Kira Kitsopanidou is Professor at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, specialising in industrial approaches to French cinema and television. Her major recent publications include: Crowdfunding, industries culturelles et démarche participative. De nouveaux financements pour la création (co-edited with Laurent Creton, Peter Lang, 2016); Ville et cinéma. Espaces de projection, espaces urbains (co-edited with Irène Bessière, Laurent Creton and Roger Odin, Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2016); Le Film français (1945–1958). Rôles, fonctions et identités d’une revue corporative (co-edited with Laurent Creton and Thomas Pillard, Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2015); Le Cinéma 3-D: histoire, économie, technique, esthétique (with Martin Barnier, Armand Colin, 2015); and the Special Issue Le Levain des médias : forme, format, média (co-edited with Guillaume Soulez, MEI, n°39, 2015).

Olivier Thévenin

Olivier Thévenin is Professor of Sociology at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, researcher at the Cerlis laboratory and a member of the LabEx ‘Cultural Industries and Artistic Creation’. His research is in the field of the sociology of the audiovisual, cinema and culture and is concerned with the study of individualisation, mediation, representation and sociability. His work focuses in particular on film festivals, the performing arts, cultural industries and ‘seriephilia’, as well as on changes linked to digital technology in social usage.

Notes

1. In this publication from the European Audiovisual Observatory, Christian Grece examines the evolution of the subscription video-on-demand (SVOD), transactional video-on-demand (TVOD) and ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD/BVOD) markets in the EU28 and their impact on the traditional audiovisual market in the segments in which they compete. He observes that, among the factors determining the success of the SVOD market, ‘the challenge for these platforms is to differentiate themselves from the channels by increasing competition on content in order to acquire and retain subscribers with large content with big content investments (original and library) for mainstream services or focusing on niche content (e.g. local/national content, arthouse films, horror, lifestyle, reality TV, factual programming) and curation for smaller players’ (Grece 2021, 20).

2. The distinction between mondialisation and globalisation, at the heart of a key theoretical debate in humanities and social sciences in France, has no real equivalent in the English-speaking world. French theorists generally prefer to use the term mondialisation, considering it more descriptive and universal than globalisation, which refers to ‘global firms’, neoliberal ideology and rivalry between regions throughout the world. For geographers in France, the notion of globalisation adds a local/global dialectic, a transnational dimension (which goes beyond multinational exchange), as well as denoting the dematerialisation and simultaneity of information exchange resulting from the digital revolution. It produces a new, more horizontal relational logic based on systemic interdependence and interlocking scales (Ghorra-Gobin and Reghezza-Zitt 2016).

3. French regulations limit the proportion of productions depending directly on television channels in favour of independent producers. Canal+ does not have rights as a co-producer to the series and films it funds (unlike free-to-air channels such as TF1 or France Télévisions), which limits the channel’s ability to benefit economically from the success of the content it invests in, while also restricting it from building up a catalogue that could help it compete against the major platforms.

4. ‘In a market constrained by COVID-19, global streamers released 71 original European series in 2020, vs. 49 in 2019, with close to 70% commissioned by Netflix’ (Grece 2021, 8).

5. This category of fiction is characterised by a production format of three to thirteen episodes per year, with potential for exportation and international co-production (Fontaine 2022b).

6. See, for example, the recent case of Totems, a series produced by Gaumont, for which France Télévisions was forced to grant first-run rights to Amazon Prime.

7. ‘The majority of international co-productions used to be between two neighbouring countries sharing the same language (e.g. France and Belgium; Germany and Austria). However, non-linguistic co-productions increased in 2020 and represented close to 65% of all co-productions’ (Grece 2021, 8). [‘La majorité des co-productions internationales se faisaient auparavant entre deux pays voisins partageant la même langue (par exemple, la France et la Belgique ; l’Allemagne et l’Autriche). Mais les co-productions non linguistiques ont augmenté en 2020 et ont représenté près de 65 % de l’ensemble des coproductions’].

8. The European Audiovisual Observatory has played down the dominance of online platforms, observing that: ‘Producers are right to believe that SVOD offers a new opportunity to develop and sell their projects. Indeed, SVOD services are investing more and more in original European productions: 2020 saw a 45% increase in television fiction titles coming out despite the COVID-19 crisis. It is also true that in 2020, Netflix became one of the main customers for broadcast TV series, second only to the BBC. However, considering all of the players in Europe, global streaming platforms only provided about 10% of all of the TV series produced in 2020, the remaining 90% having been supplied by traditional broadcasters and their own SVOD services’ (Fontaine 2022b, 6). [‘Les producteurs pensent à juste titre que la SVOD est une toute nouvelle opportunité pour développer et vendre des projets. Il est vrai que les services de SVOD investissent de plus en plus dans la production européenne originale : +45 % de titres de fiction télévisée sont sortis en 2020 malgré la crise liée à la COVID-19. Il est vrai aussi que Netflix est devenu en 2020 l’un des principaux commanditaires des séries TV diffusées devancé seulement par la BBC. Pourtant si l’on considère l’ensemble des acteurs en Europe, les plateformes de streaming mondiales n’ont fourni en 2020 qu’environ 10 % de l’ensemble des séries TV produites, les 90 % restants revenant aux radiodiffuseurs traditionnels et à leurs services de SVOD’].

9. ‘Parce qu’on n’a ni leurs moyens, ni surtout leur culture et leur connaissance, leur maîtrise de la série.’ Lecture given at the seminar ‘Écosystème des séries : approches socioéconomiques’ organised by Kira Kitsopanidou and Olivier Thévenin, Sorbonne Nouvelle, 26 November 2018.

10. ‘Si on met côte à côte tous les héros de Canal, ils seront complètement différents, ils vont trancher avec les héros des autres chaînes, qui sont un peu ces héros conventionnels. Nous ça va être les mauvais garçons, les flics borderline, les truands corses, plus tard les prostituées dans un bordel du XIXème.’

11. The production budget for 93, rue Lauriston, which was typical for this type of television film, came to 2.6 million euros (half as much as the average budget for a fiction film in 2004), out of an annual budget of about 10 million euros for Canal+’s fiction unit in the mid-2000s. https://www.nouvelobs.com/culture/20041214.OBS3689/93-rue-lauriston-ce-soir-sur-canal.html, 15 December 2004.

12. Interview with Aude Albano, 5 March 2020.

13. One third of the budget came from Canal+, one third from Capa, Zodiak Fiction and institutional funds (specifically the international tax credit), plus about five million euros of funding from Canada (Incendo, Canadian tax credit). Cf. Grégoire Poussielgue and Nicolas Mademaine, ‘Versailles, la série royale’, https://www.lesechos.fr/2014/12/versailles-la-serie-royale-1104947, 12 December 2014.

14. Press photograph available at https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/versailles-review-934310/.

15. ‘Le Versailles que l’on a raconté, le Louis XIV qu’on a raconté en anglais, on n’aurait jamais pu le faire en français. On aurait fait une série différente, peut-être tout aussi intéressante mais moins spectaculaire. On avait envie de quelque chose de fascinant, d’un spectacle, d’une série puissante. Une série qui nous a permis de rajeunir notre audience, de féminiser notre audience, et qui a été diffusée dans le monde entier, qui a fait beaucoup de buzz en Angleterre, parce que les Anglais l’ont trouvée très shocking, très française, parce qu’il y avait beaucoup de charme sensuel et un peu de torture. Ces séries puissantes, elles sont importantes.’ Lecture, 26 November 2018.

16. ‘Notre distributeur a mis un minimum garanti exorbitant pour l’époque, et encore, je pense qu’aujourd’hui on ne met pas ce niveau de minimum garanti de distribution dans les séries […] Ils ont mis 15 % du financement à cause de Versailles et parce que la série était en anglais. Qu’est-ce qui fait une série internationale quand on est un petit producteur français qualitatif, mais que personne ne connaît ? C’est le potentiel de la marque, la réputation des producteurs qui ont rendu possible le minimum garanti énorme, et l’anglais a permis à la série de voyager. Il l’a amenée dans 180 pays dans le monde et a permis de lever ces budgets faramineux.’ Lecture given at the seminar ‘Écosystème des séries : approches socioéconomiques’, organised by Kira Kitsopanidou and Olivier Thévenin, Sorbonne Nouvelle, 22 November 2018.

17. Lecture, 22 October 2018 and interview, 5 March 2020.

18. Press photograph. Detail taken from image available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5jPx75byxj2rptb50s5y5nC/versailles-a-guide-to-its-historical-accuracy.

19. ‘En voulant construire une fiction sur le Château de Versailles comme le “centre du monde”, la série ne fait que consacrer à nouveau et comme jamais l’influence indépassable du modèle américain.’ https://leplus.nouvelobs.com/contribution/1459016-versailles-sur-canal-plus-une-serie-kitchissime-tuee-dans-l-oeuf-par-ses-ainees.html#reaction, 10 December 2015.

20. ‘Ça n’a pas toujours été simple, on avait des showrunners américains sur un plateau français, qui ne fonctionne pas du tout comme un plateau américain, donc l’autorité était partagée entre eux et nous et il a fallu vraiment trouver les terrains sur lesquels on arrivait chacun à exprimer son désir. Mais globalement ça s’est quand même très bien terminé. Et puis, dans les saisons suivantes, on n’a pas travaillé dans un système de showrunners, on a vraiment collaboré avec des scénaristes qui produisaient beaucoup. Le système c’est qu’ils écrivaient, ils nous envoyaient leurs écrits, dans les 24 h on leur renvoyait des notes précises sur ce qui marchait ou pas. Ils retravaillaient, ils amélioreraient, ils nous renvoyaient, etc.’ Lecture, 22 November 2021.

21. ‘Chez Canal +, on ne veut pas juste faire des séries internationales en anglais, on est avant tout Français. En France, on a un imaginaire, une culture, une manière de penser et c’est là qu’on est le plus légitime. Les Revenants s’est bien vendu. Mais c’est vrai qu’une série en français se vend moins bien qu’une série en anglais. Versailles, on le sait, c’était pour vendre […].’ Lecture at the master class ‘Les coproductions internationales en série : bilan, enjeux économiques et culturels’, organised as part of the seminar ‘Nouveaux métiers, nouveaux marchés, nouvelles pratiques’, Kira Kitsopanidou, Sorbonne Nouvelle, 26 April 2017.

22. The BBC is now the leading purchaser of fiction in Europe. The majority of quality series co-produced in Europe involve the United Kingdom, often in a partnership with the United States and Canada, but also France.

23. Haut et Court’s cinema co-productions allow it to draw on a well-established network of international partners.

24. ‘Interculturalisme cosmopolite.’

25. On average, Arte produces three or four series (including one mini-series) per year through international co-production. As a minority partner in the series’s production, the channel’s participation is limited compared to a player such as StudioCanal. While the series that Arte pre-purchases or co-produces recall the model of subscription channels, Arte France’s budget for original creations is six or seven times smaller than the equivalent budget at Canal+. The total amount dedicated to fiction (acquisitions and co-productions) is about 30 million euros at the time of publication.

26. ‘l’appropriation cinématographique de l’unité fiction.’

27. ‘avoir voix au chapitre artistique.’

28. ‘La force de la “niche Arte” sont les produits singularisants, perçus comme transgressifs. Un petit laboratoire de Recherche et de Développement pour une plateforme qui ne paye pas le développement. Arte porte ce risque et la plateforme maintient la pression sur la production.’ Lecture given at the seminar ‘Ecosystèmes des séries : approches socio-économiques’, Sorbonne Nouvelle, 22 November 2021.

29. ‘L’identité d’Arte auprès du public est balayée quand Netflix achète la série.’

30. Interview with Simon Arnal, 25 February 2022. It is possible that after the initial impact, Versus Production (the Belgian co-producer) as well as secondary partners including Wallimage, Belga Films Fund and Inver Tax Shelter were influenced by the Co-Pro Pitching Sessions.

31. ‘Pour moi, la série n’est possible et ne change de dimension que le jour où il y a un distributeur international comme Fremantle qui vient sur la série.’ The final budget was between 13 and 14 million euros for eight episodes. Interview with Olivier Wotling, 3 February 2022.

32. The series’s French producer, Simon Arnal, confirms Olivier Wolting’s statements. He estimates that French and English languages are spoken almost equally (45% and 40% respectively) in the series. Interview, 25 February 2022.

33. ‘Pourquoi Haut et Court vient nous voir et pourquoi cela se reproduit maintenant avec d’autres producteurs et d’autres plateformes ? No Man’s Land a fait considérablement évoluer notre image, même si nos moyens restent limités, au niveau international, sur le marché européen, etc. Cela fait quelques fois que nous travaillons avec des plateformes américaines, nous sommes davantage connus.’ Interview, 3 February 2022.