(Clockwise from top left): 'The Audacity,' 'My Brother,' 'The Testaments,' 'The Flaws'

AMC Networks, TrustNordisk, Disney, Razor Film Productions

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For an industry still recalibrating after the boom and bust of Peak TV, this year’s Series Mania offered that rarest of commodities: Hope.

The executive side may have lacked some of its usual star power — there were no U.S. network chiefs or global streaming bosses among this year’s keynote speakers — but the festival’s official lineup ranked among its strongest in years.

Series Mania got off to stellar start with The Testaments — Hulu‘s The Handmaiden’s Tale sequel starring One Battle After Another breakout Chase Infiniti — and never looked back, with edgy, boundary-pushing shows from around the world and across all genres. Highlights included The Audacity, AMC‘s Silicon Valley satire from Succession producer Jonathan Glatzer; The Flaws, a German office sitcom that takes its inspiration from Buster Keaton-style silent film comedy; and My Brother, a Swedish family drama that’s as dark and bleak as a Nordic winter.

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It felt like a return to the quality, if not the quantity, of shows from the Peak TV era. Networks and streamers, which have spent the past few years retrenching, may be regaining their appetite for risk.

“There was this sense [post Peak-TV] that now everything’s conservative. It’s got to be a big IP, it’s got to be a big book. It’s got to be boring old genre,” said Steve Matthews Head of Scripted, Creative, at Banijay Entertainment. “But I’m starting to hear: ‘Can you bring us something a bit more bold?’ Buyers are saying: ‘Come on guys, lift your game.”

“Great storytelling, great distinctive voices, are still cutting through,” agreeded Johannes Jensen, Head of Scripted, Business at Banijay. “But it’s become tougher to finance shows, it takes longer and we have to be creative in how we put the financing together. [The days] when the global streamers would come in and fund everything are gone.”

The initial post-Peak years saw “a trend where everything started to become safe, in movies and in TV shows,” said Belgian director Adil El Arbi (Rebel, Bad Boys for Life), attending Series Mania with The Best Immigrant, a Flemish dystopian drama about the rise of the far-right in Europe, which he executive produced. “[But] nowadays, if you want to stand out, you got to be ballsy and bold. Not necessarily shock just to shock, but try to address things that makes people think, that get people talking about your TV show.”

That risky TV can translate into real ratings seems to be born out by some of the buzzier Series Mania shows. The Spanish premiere of Anatomy of a Moment, a period drama about the failed 1981 coup d’etat that nearly toppled Spain’s neophyte democracy, was the best-ever launch for a original series on pay-TV platform Moviestar Plus+. More than a million Swedish viewers turned into the first episode of Swedish legal drama Burden of Justice on public broadcaster SVT, 163 percent above initial forecasts.

“Our show, My Brother, had a retention rate of 98 percent in Sweden over Christmas,” said Matthews. “And it’s one of the darkest series you’ll ever see.”

The streaming giants used Series Mania to announce there were spending money again, and willing to take big swings on original stories.

Sarah Aubrey, Head of Original Content at HBO Max, announced an overall first-look deal with Domingo Corral, the Spanish producer and former Moviestar Plus+ executive whose credits include Anatomy of a Moment and the Oscar-nominated feature Sirât. Angela Jain, head of content for Disney+ across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said she was “ramping up production” and unveiled an eclectic slate of new projects including including a feature doc on Welsh soul singer Duffy, an Italian murder mystery and a Turkish comedy about a 350-year-old virgin vampire who falls in love with a human.

“Our message today is more series, more series, more series,” Thomas Dubois, Head of French Originals at Amazon Prime Video said at a Series Mania session on Tuesday, highlighting Prime Video’s non-English-language slate, including upcoming French YA drama Campus Drivers, adapted from the C.S. Quill book series.

Not to be outdone, on Wednesday, New8, the co-producti

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