Omar Sy devoured America’s brightest, gaudiest television as a young boy growing up in France. “I learned a lot from TV shows from the ’80s, you know?” says the Lupin star, calling from his Paris apartment after a long day of shooting his Netflix series. “I don’t know the title in English, but do you remember Super Jimmy?” Honestly, no, it doesn’t ring a bell. But soon it becomes clear that what Sy is actually saying is Super Jaimie, which…also doesn’t ring a bell. “She had super powers,” he says. “It wasn’t Wonder Woman, but she was a superwoman. And her ex-husband was l’homme qui valait trois milliards, a robot guy who was a superman.” Okay, yes! He means The Bionic Woman, about Jaime Sommers, which was indeed called Super Jaimie in France. “We had, also, the two brothers with their car,” Sy says. “With a girl? Two brothers and a girl.” The Dukes of Hazzard? “Yes, those guys!” He laughs with the relief of a man who is finally being understood.
It’s only fair that Sy benefited from our pop-cultural treasures, because now he’s giving back in a major way. Lupin is Netflix’s third most successful global launch, after Bridgerton and The Witcher, part of a huge wave of international TV that’s washing over a grateful, binge-curious America.
Lupin is a contemporary spin on master thief Arsène Lupin—a fictional character as iconic in his native land as Sherlock Holmes—and opens with the glass pyramid glimmering in the courtyard of the Louvre. For Americans, the image is bound to trigger a cascade of romanticized notions of Paris, but it signifies differently for Sy and his character, Assane Diop, a Senegalese immigrant.
Aiming to pull off the robbery of the century, Diop slips unnoticed into the bowels of the Louvre dressed as a janitor, entering through a grim tunnel used by maintenance workers who sweep and polish the empty museum during the small hours. Sy’s own immigrant mother worked nights as an office cleaner. Filming Lupin made Sy think, he says, about “how she was looked at”—or not looked at, since she rarely collided with those whose spaces she tidied, people who “want it to be clean but don’t want to know how it was cleaned.” His character uses peoples’ prejudices and blind spots against them as he performs his heists, while the series itself takes clichéd Parisian settings like the Louvre and reveals their inner workings.
Sy and the creative team did not have American audiences in mind when they developed the show, and the star tries not to think too hard about why such an intrinsically French series as Lupin has stirred so much enthusiasm internationally. “It’s sometimes better if you don’t know,” he says. “If you start to guess then you’re going to try to repeat, and that’s how you’re going to be lost. Just do what you have to do with your instinct, your feeling, your focus, and your work, because there is no recipe. That’s the beauty of it—that there is a part of it that we will never understand. That’s why we’re still here.”
Hollywood has long fancied itself as the center of the entertainment universe, a glorious sun beaming stories to the rest of the world. For most of television history we were exporters, not importers. When the occasional British series—like Upstairs, Downstairs—arrived, it was relegated to Masterpiece Theatre on PBS, or else transformed into an Americanized version, like The Office. That started changing during the dawn of prestige TV, as HBO and Sundance experimented with international series like Extras and Deutschland 83. Now nearly every major streamer is awash with foreign fare. “Technology and the availability of content has just democratized everything,” says Dan McDermott, president of original programming for AMC. The last remaining hurdle, he says, was whether Americans could summon the fortitude to read subtitles. “I think we now know, the answer is yes.”
Subtitles—once associated with challenging, highbrow foreign films—have become de rigueur for millennials and Gen Z audiences, which watch even English-language shows with the subtitles on, either because the intricately layered soundscapes of modern TV don’t translate well to their various devices, or because their parents and teachers will know what they’re doing if they put the sound on.
The result is that if you ask a friend what shows they’re obsessing over, chances are, they’ll tip you off about some great Israeli or Korean series they stumbled upon in the nooks and crannies of Netflix, Amazon, or Hulu, or on subscription streaming services like Acorn, BritBox, and MHz, which are entirely devoted to international TV. From the cozy perch of my living room sofa, I have traipsed across the world with the pensive and unexpectedly soulful spies of France’s The Bureau; eavesdropped on the compelling intricacies of Denmark’s coalition politics with Borgen; luxuriated in the lush Delhi backdrops of Indian rom-drama Made in Heaven; sipped sake in a Tokyo back alley with the oddball customers of Midnight Diner; and savored the cheeky camaraderie and fumbling love affairs of Call My Agent!, as an office full of Parisian movie agents dedicated themselves to massage de l’ego pour célébrités. After bingeing Call My Agent! for weeks, I woke up one morning realizing that I had dreamed in French.
It was Netflix that truly normalized international content in America. As the company expanded its worldwide presence, it made it a priority to buy and create what they call “local-language content” for other regions. “We knew that it was silly to say that we’re a global service while having storytellers only from Hollywood,” says Erik Barmack, a former Netflix executive in charge of international originals. (He now runs Wild Sheep Content, a production company focused on making shows for a variety of media entities, like an animated series about African queens he has in development with French African artist Nicholle Kobi.) About his Netflix days, he says, “We needed to find global storytellers. I think the big surprise for us, frankly, was that shows like La Casa de Papel could have such large audiences in the U.S.”
La Casa de Papel—known here as Money Heist—fell flat when its first season aired in Spain. But after Netflix licensed the series, viewers around the world thrilled to the stylish and sexy thriller about a band of antiauthoritarian bank robbers who take over the Spanish equivalent of Fort Knox and start printing currency by the billions. The global buzz about Money Heist persuaded Netflix to produce new episodes, which made it a juggernaut. Such was its cultural ubiquity that at political demonstrations around the world, protesters began donning the robbers’ trademark costume (a Salvador Dalí mask and red overalls) as a symbol of resistance.
By one recent estimate, 60 percent of Netflix drama originals are now being commissioned outside the U.S. And if you’re already scooping up French-made shows for the French and Indian-made series for India, why not make it available everywhere? A show’s nationality and language are increasingly irrelevant, says media analyst Rich Greenfield of LightShed Media: “It’s not American. It’s not Indian. It’s not French. It’s just content.”
Many streaming behemoths are now following Netflix’s lead. Disney is getting into the act with Star, a hub launched earlier this year in places like Europe, Singapore, and Australia, for which it is commissioning a slate of originals. Paramount+ also has its sights on further international expansion. Amazon, Apple+, and HBO Max are already knee-deep in global content, looking not just to capture the attention of audiences abroad but to harness the enormous resources of talent and creativity that exist outside the anglophone sphere.
HBO has long produced programming outside the U.S., but this content rarely crept onto American screens. “I don’t think that we fully took advantage of all of those shows,” says Casey Bloys, chief content officer of HBO and HBO Max. As recently as 2018, when HBO signed up to coproduce the Italian series My Brilliant Friend, an immersive adaptation of the globally popular Elena Ferrante novels, Bloys faced skepticism about whether it would appeal to Americans. “I got a lot of questions like: ‘Well, it’s in Italian! Will people watch it? Will people embrace it?’ ” Bloys says. It went on to be a critically acclaimed word-of-mouth hit.
With HBO Max in the process of rolling out in 60 locations overseas by the end of this year, Bloys foresees a much more reciprocal relationship between the domestic and foreign arms of the company. “Everything that we are producing internationally will eventually live on HBO Max,” he says. The streamer is already highlighting some international series on its American platform—shows like The Investigation, an austere Danish true-crime drama, and La Jauria, a chilling thriller from Chile about a misogynistic online game that turns young women into prey, executive produced by director Pablo Larraín with his brother Juan de Dios Larraín.
Recognizing that American taste is not universal, HBO Max’s U.S. executives won’t dictate overseas acquisitions based on domestic desires. They will, however, try to coordinate so that “we have an understanding in the U.S. about what foreign shows might have crossover appeal,” Bloys tells me. The streamer’s Veneno, for instance, is a visually brazen, emotionally raw Spanish limited series based on the real life of the late transgender sex worker and celebrity Cristina “La Veneno” Ortiz Rodríguez, who’s played by three separate trans actors in bravura performances. The show was a huge hit in its native country last spring and even helped spur the Spanish parliament to legislate protections for trans people. Creators Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi were thrilled to find that international audiences were just as entranced.
“A lot of people are writing us from everywhere!” Ambrossi exclaims over Zoom from their Madrid production office, shaking his mop of dark hair in wonderment. “Everyone is like, I needed to see different trans women, different bodies, different faces, and different experiences portrayed.” Calvo imagined Veneno as a very Spanish tribute to an unsung LGBTQ+ pioneer, something that wouldn’t travel well. But the series’ success has made him realize that viewers are dying to see “something they never saw before”—especially, he adds, when “it’s a story that comes out of your soul.”
Producers might be tempted to make generic content in pursuit of universal appeal, but it turns out that viewers really crave specificity. “Be very, very local, and in making it as personal as possible, somehow there you find the universal themes that an international audience can enjoy,” Israeli director Gideon Raff (the creator of Hatufim, the series on which Homeland was based) once told me.
Israel has emerged as one of the most successful exporters of TV fare, with Tehran (Apple+), Fauda (Netflix), and False Flag (Hulu) finding loyal American followings. A more unexpected Israeli crossover for Netflix was Shtisel, a tender dramedy about the life of an eccentric Orthodox Jewish artist. In the first season, which originally aired in 2013, Akiva Shtisel (Michael Aloni) falls in love with an older widow, played by Ayelet Zurer. Zurer, who now lives in Los Angeles, was baffled when Americans began recognizing her in airports and sending her messages about her Shtisel character, especially so many years after it had aired in Israel. “My mind was blown,” she says, “because (a) it was being shown on Netflix, and (b) it wasn’t dubbed. They got the real thing and liked it!”
Although Zurer regularly pops up on American TV series like Daredevil and You, she returned to her native land to shoot Apple TV+’s Losing Alice, a noirish psychological puzzle by female writer-director Sigal Avin. Filmed in Hebrew, the disorienting drama centers on a film director, played by Zurer, who becomes enraptured by a movie project and its young female screenwriter, and upends her life in the relentless pursuit of artistic passion. Zurer gives an extraordinary, quicksilver performance in what she describes as an existential tale about “making a deal with the devil inside of you.”
Losing Alice is the kind of idiosyncratic project that resembles an independent film far more than a standard Hollywood television production. That indie aura is one of the things that lures us to international shows. They’re often populated by the kind of charmingly realistic-looking faces and ordinary bodies that are mostly invisible on American TV. And the tight budgets and schedules inspire intensely original thinking on the part of everyone involved. “You have a bunch of people who are extremely passionate, and they work very fast,” Zurer says of Israeli TV productions. “They have to think outside of the box to create what they want to create.”
As more streamers set their sights on the wider world, a gold rush for talent is under way. Many of international cinema’s and television’s hottest writers, directors, and actors suddenly find themselves being wooed by American-based companies.
“We’re trying to make sure that we lock up long-term relationships with some of our international creative partners,” says Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke, the goal being to transform the streamer into “an extended global home for talent.” The company’s top priority is to create local-language shows that wow audiences in their home countries. “We’re not making shows in Mexico and hoping they’re going to work in France,” James Farrell, Amazon’s head of international originals, points out. “As long as a comedy makes a ton of people in Mexico laugh, we’re super happy.”
If it happens to also strike a nerve in the U.S. or elsewhere, that’s just a bonus, as happened with the series ZeroZeroZero. A drug-trafficking drama cocreated by Italian director Stefano Sollima, the show is set partly in Mexico and stars several English-speaking actors, including Andrea Riseborough and Gabriel Byrne. “I would get five emails a week from the biggest tastemakers I know saying, ‘This show is incredible, why isn’t it bigger?’ ” Salke recalls. Among the ZeroZeroZero fan club was the musician Drake, who recommended it to his Instagram followers. All of that inspired Salke to relaunch the series earlier this year with a proper marketing campaign and “really elevate it on the service so [viewers] can find it.”
The coronavirus pandemic further accelerated the globalizing of television. Trapped in our homes, we’re bingeing as fast as we can. Dan McDermott, who oversees AMC, BBC America, and SundanceTV, says he’s seen a huge spike in home viewing of their shows, including older content. And because so many shoots had to be shut down in 2020, networks and streaming platforms scrambled to find programming to fill the chasm. “We immediately found a bunch of great shows that we were able to close deals on really quickly,” he says. Recent imports include the British series Gangs of London and Finnish/Irish/Belgian/Icelandic drama Cold Courage. Not only can international content be cranked out faster than many American shows, says McDermott, but those international partnerships “enable us to compete in a bigger market and punch above our weight.”
During the lockdown, my social media feed was abuzz with newly discovered international series. One of the most beloved was Call My Agent!, which Americans discovered en masse just as it was coming to an end in France after four seasons. No one was more startled than the show’s cast.
“I don’t think we are the first people you would think of for humor, the French people!” says Camille Cottin, who stars as Andréa Martel, a no-bullshit lesbian agent who morphs from seductress to dazed, conflicted working mom over the course of the show’s run. Cottin was amused that viewers outside the country were so beguiled with their “Frenchy adventures.” Humor full of regional in-jokes doesn’t always travel well, which is why many crossover hits fall into genres like thriller or melodrama. But American viewers don’t seem to mind missing out on the show’s culturally specific references, like the dog named after French movie icon Jean Gabin.
Created by Fanny Herrero and based on an idea by former agent Dominique Besnehard, Call My Agent! features French actors like Charlotte Gainsbourg and Isabelle Adjani satirizing themselves. Even if American viewers don’t recognize all the superstars, the sense of reality bleeds through. “I think [Herrero] wanted to talk about things that matter to her,” says Cottin, speaking from her home in Paris. “It could be the equality of the wages between men and women, or the #MeToo thing, like when Juliette Binoche is invited to go on the boat of a magnate who really wants to date her.”
Cottin says that her own character was inspired by a real French talent agent, who inadvertently benefited from the show’s popularity. “She sent me some messages saying that every girl wants to date her now!” Cottin says with a grin.
Call My Agent! exudes a sweetness and esprit de corps that’s unusual in Hollywood portrayals of the movie world. “The industry is often depicted with a touch of cynicism, depicted as sharks,” Cottin says. Although the series has an edge, “it never lets us forget that [these people] make us dream, and that we love the cinema.”
The renewed excitement about certain international shows has led to whispers of spin-offs and revivals. Shtisel recently sprung back to life after a five-year absence, buoyed by its Netflix-driven popularity. Borgen hasn’t aired in Denmark since 2013. But once Netflix began airing its three-season run, the sheer intelligence of the series—about an idealistic prime minister and her team navigating the compromises of multiparty politics—resonated so favorably around the world that the gang is getting back together. The fifth season of The Bureau dropped on Sundance Now in 2020, but there is now talk of a sequel in development. Likewise, Americans’ affection for Call My Agent! has been so fervent that cocreator Besnehard is developing a movie spin-off and a new season, possibly filmed in New York.
“Is it going to happen? I don’t know,” Cottin says impishly. She’s in the midst of shooting the Ridley Scott movie House of Gucci alongside Lady Gaga and Adam Driver, and she’s not sure how the timing would work. If it doesn’t, she will embrace the pleasure of ending on a high: “You have to say goodbye when it’s still sunny.”
Making shows that satisfy a global audience in a world that is constantly fracturing—well, it’s as insanely hard as it sounds. “Each country has its own cultural nuances and lines in entertainment,” says Bela Bajaria, the current head of global TV for Netflix, and they are not always obvious to an outsider. Navigating political fault lines can be dicey too. Netflix has pulled various shows from its platform internationally. In one instance it acceded to Saudi Arabia’s request to remove an episode of talk show Patriot Act from the platform; in another, it canceled a series because the Turkish government asked to eliminate a gay character. Salke says that they’ve had to make equally complicated decisions at Amazon. Amazon’s Indian series Tandav, an edgy political drama, contained scenes (including the depiction of a Hindu god) that so angered Hindu nationalists, it nearly landed its creators in jail this year. The show’s creators apologized and pulled the offending scenes.
In the new global streaming future, the distinction between domestic and international may gradually dissolve, until it becomes nothing more than a hazy memory. Zurer gets a dreamy look on her face when she talks about “crossing the boundary of language.” Speaking different tongues is one of the things that keeps us apart, creating a sense of us and them. “We grew up in different weather and maybe ate different food,” Zurer says with a shrug. “But we have mothers and sisters and fathers, and we cry when someone passes away. We have the same stories, really. The archetypes are the same.”
The distinctions that will matter going forward may not be language or country of origin so much as things like big budget versus small, or original idea versus project attached to a popular franchise (like a video game or comic book). In this new, decentralized entertainment landscape, will Hollywood be dethroned as the worldwide capital of television?
“Hollywood is still going to have these amazing movies and TV shows that travel globally,” predicts Bajaria. “I think that doesn’t go away. But instead of a dream factory only in Hollywood, we might have dream factories in Mumbai, in São Paulo, in Paris.”
Additional reporting by Julie Miller
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