Bowing March 21 with Apple TV+’s “Carême,” an ambitious sex-sluiced French riposte to “Bridgerton,” 2025’s Series Mania lifted off with a spring in its step, standing tall for one more year as Europe’s premier TV festival.
An extraordinarily long line on Saturday, encircling Lille’s major Nouveau Siècle theater for Joe Wright’s “M: Son of the Century” shows how much Series Mania’s home city in north-east France has taken the festival to its heart.
Europe’s industry has embraced Series Mania for many years as a co-production forum. “I spend my life on this circuit going from town to town and to forums and there’s me and some other guys,” says Steve Matthews, Banijay Entertainment’s head of scripted, creative. “Series Mania last year I couldn’t get a seat in the damn room. And that’s at a forum of young writers pitching projects: standing room only. It gives me hope that there’s a chance for new writers and new talent.”
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Series Mania’s big question in industry terms is how much the event, already Europe’s foremost TV co-production meet, could also replace Mip TV as an early Spring sales market. Some answer to that, trends, buzz titles and deals to date at Series Mania 2025 which runs March 21-28.
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Series Mania Holds, Builds
Certainly, attendance at the Series Mania Forum, the fest’s industry area, is up to an all-time record, tracking for 4,600 delegates, vs. 4,200 in 2024. “Series Mania was already big. This year it feels even bigger,” says Julia Fidel, ZDF head of international fiction – acquisitions. “Series Mania now brings all the different elements of the series industry together. That’s a much-needed offer, with MipTV in Cannes gone, the London TV Screenings having a slightly different focus and the Berlinale not having a dedicate section anymore. It’s now a market but one with very good exclusive offerings.”
A Larger Market Edge
Series Mania has also acquired a larger market edge. In its single biggest new development, Series Mania has added a Buyers Upfront, which looks set to hit the ground running on March 24, showcasing excerpts from Sally Wainwright’s “Riot Women,” “Fusion,” from Erik Barmack and ACT 4, and Constantin’s epic fantasy “War of the Kingdoms.” Unveiling new shows from “Pusher,” “Blackport,” “The Cakemaker” creatives, development program Seriesmakers no longer requires its writers/directors to have had a film at a “A”-festival. “Applications received were more towards the mainstream, in projects and talents,” notes Series Mania director Francesco Capurro. There’s also a larger news flow of international distributors announcing titles brought to market at Series Mania without necessarily playing any festival slot (see Deals to Date below).
What Works With Audiences
Could be called the new industry mantra. That is seen in new Series Mania criteria. It also forms part of a wider market trend. “Because of the state of our industry and global economics, everybody’s trying to play it safe. If there is a major trend, this is still it, minimizing risks. A large onus is being placed on safe bets like book IPs and familiar genres,” says Fidel. “The broad trend is a move towards more cost-effective content investment than perhaps would characterize the market three or four years ago,” agrees Guy Bisson, at Ampere Analysis.
The First Inkling of a Market Rebound
Global streamers are coming back to the table, if only in specific scenarios. “There’s a strong rebound now around co-pros, but only in particular genres: Cozy crime, thrillers, and hard crime,” says Barmack. “After8 a big dip in 2023, it looks like streamers and commercial free-to-air broadcasters are back in the game to some degree,” agrees Bisson, who co-heads an Ampere Analysis presentation at Series Mania on March 25.
Crime Rules, As Ever, But All the More
“Soft, blue sky, cosy crime is huge at ZDF, at the BBC, for example, and works in many different countries, you see a lot of very well produced examples of this genre,” Fidel notes. Showcased at Series Mania’s Forum, procedural Weiss & Morales, couples a German and Spanish cop on a homicide case in sun-blenched Canary Islands landscapes surrounded by a pellucid sea. Crime & thrillers accounted for a whopping 31% of European scripted commissions in the second half of 2024, Ampere Analysis estimates. “Crime has a certain build in dramatic stakes and certain levels of mystery,” says Steve Matthews, Banijay Entertainment’s head of scripted, creative. “I don’t think crime ever hasn’t been at the core of television,” he adds. That in itself may help to explain its recent peak. “There’s a ‘broadcastification’ of streaming: Streamers are becoming more like broadcasters, and when you’re talking about scripted, crime is central to that strategy,” Bisson observes.
The Battle for Innovation
So a major narrative at Series Mania, as the London TV Screenings before them, is the battle for innovation in series whose creators argue are far more than crime dramas. Of Series Mania main competition titles, in “Generations,” from Danish pubcaster DR, a mummified baby’s skeleton is found in the loft of an upper middle class family. It’s 85-year-old matriarch confesses to killing her child. A whydunit it unpicks a family’s down-the-decades dysfunctional dynamics. In Alauda Ruiz de Azua “Querer,” a family drama and court room thriller from Spain’s Movistar Plus+, a woman attempts to convince a court that a crime has been committed, her husband guilty of sexual assault over 30 years.
Other Series Mania Buzz Titles
Capturing the epic tragic emotional battles with self of the mentally disturbed, often with large humor, “Empathy,” from Florence Longpré and Crave, looks likely to further consecrate the Québécois auteur, already a Canneseries double winner with “Audrey’s Back.” Off its world premiere last week at Spain’s Malaga Festival, there’s good word on Areplayer’s “Mariliendre,” a flamboyant LGBTQ musical produced by “La Mesías” creators Javier ambrosia and Javier Calvo. Explaining Mussolini’s rise to power over 1919-26, Joe Wright’s “M. Son of the Century” weighs in as one of the biggest and most stylish of competition entries: stagey, sepia-tinted, Brechtian, melding silent movie avant garde experimentation and a techno score, and dominated by Luca Marinelli’s tearaway lead performance.
Tapping Into the Zeitgeist
Nearly half of Series Mania main competition titles are inspired by true events. Titles consistently tap into current day zeitgeist travails, whether the collateral of geopolitical conflict (“Kabul,” “A Life’s Worth”), rape in marriage (“Querer”) or the chillingly familiar ability of a buffoon, Benito Mussolini, to exploit the resentments of his age to rise to power. (“M. Son of the Century”). Series Mania has always embraced the contemporary world, however. “It’s something we kept telling our programming team also: ‘Open up, open up to the society and to the world.’ It’s changing a lot,” Laurence Herszberg, Series Mania managing director, told Variety when its lineup was announced.
Pubcasters, Commercial Broadcasters Boss Europe
France Televisions Manuel Alduy and Mediaset’s Caroline Renzon’s kick off Forum panels on Tuesday. That is no coincidence.. Extraordinary but true, in Europe, during the second half of 2024, a whopping 52% of first-run scripted series commissions were made by public broadcasters. Commercial FTA broadcasters accounted for 21%. Streamers came in third with 17% of orders. Streamers can of course make some of the biggest series out there, such as Apple TV backed “Carëme,” But pubcasters don’t do badly. One Series Mania competition title, fall of Kabul ensemble drama-thriller “Kabul,” backed by The Alliance and New8 pubcasters, comes in at roughly $20 million, considered a very large budget by European standards for a six-part series financed without a streamer, Variety notes.
Deals to Date
Series Mania-related deal announcements in the immediate run-up to the festival, and its first weekend:
*Series Mania program Seriesmakers unveiled new projects from “Pusher,” “Blackport,” “The Cakemaker” creatives in a high-caliber lineup.
*Fifth Season has secured global distribution rights, excluding the Nordics, to “Vaka,” a six-part dystopian thriller series from Skybound Entertainment, the company behind “Invincible” and “The Walking Dead.” The show premieres on Prime Video in the Nordics.
*”Gulliver’s Travels” is set for “fun” TV series adaptation with “Full Monty” producer Uberto Pasolini serving as showrunner. World sales will be jointly handled by Germany’s Beta Film and ZDF Studios.
*Studiocanal is bringing to market Canal+ gritty mafia thriller “The Corsican Line” with “Furies” star Lina El Arabi, ’24: Legacy” Lead Raphaël Acloque. Pierre Leccia writes-directs, reuniting with “Mafiosa” producer Nicole Collet at Image et Compagnie.
*The Duplass Brothers Productions’ “Penelope,” an acclaimed coming of age drama, is heading to Sky in U.K., Ireland after a Fremantle deal.
*”Yours, Margot,” by “Compartment No. 6” director Juho Kuosmanen, a 2023 Seriesmakers winner, has been boarded by Elisa Viihde.moving a late step towards production.
*France TV Distribution’s Corsica blood feud thriller ‘Vendetta,’ from “A Prophet” producer Marco Cherqui, will launch at Series Mania
*Vivica A. Fox, Lynn Chen, Dwayne Perkins have boarded multicultural rom-com “Love Bait,” as producer Quentin Lee of Margin Films brigs onto the market rom-com TV series “Morning, Paris!” at the Series Mania Forum.
*REinvent International Sales has boarded crime series “The Pushover” from “Fatal Crossing” creators.
*About Premium Content (APC) has acquired international rights to Norwegian drama “Requiem for Selina,” a hot property on the pre-sales market before its premiere at Series Mania International Panorama.
*Viaplay Content Distribution has pre-sold “A Life’s Worth” to Spain and Greece. Produced by Yellowbird in co-production with Viaplay and Arte France, the International Panorama title has also licensed to Arte for France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria; Viaplay holds other world rights.
*British network Channel 4 has commissioned its first digital original drama, “Beth,” a three-part sci-fi thriller starring Nicholas Pinnock, Abbey Lee.
*At Series Mania’s Co-Pro Pitching Sessions, Australia’s Wooden Horse, behind Disney+’s “The Clearing,” will unveil new project “The Chaplain,” which promises a potentially captivating blend of drama and comedy, set against the bustling backdrop of an international airport.
*Dario Argento’s 1985 horror classic ‘Phenomena’ — ‘Creepers’ in the U.S. — is getting a series adaptation from Italy’s Titanus Production, to be revealed at Series Mania’s Pitching Sessions.
