Global Drama’s Golden Age: Why Television Must Dare to Surprise

Ron Leshem, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter and creator of the Israeli series that influenced HBO’s cultural juggernaut “Euphoria,” has declared that television is moving into a golden age of global drama. Addressing this year’s Canneseries festival, Leshem—whose credits include “Valley of Tears,” “No Man’s Land” and “Bad Boy”—contended forcefully that independent creators and cross-border narratives hold the key to revitalising television drama. As streaming platforms progressively focus on domestically-oriented programming and broadcasters take conservative approaches, Leshem remains bullishly optimistic about the future, backed by his own collection of ambitious international projects spanning Brazil, Australia, Europe and France. His conviction comes at a pivotal juncture when global drama risks being reduced to merely a budget solution or exotic niche rather than a transformative medium reshaping the medium.

The Case for Courageous, Convention-Challenging Story Creation

Leshem’s core argument contests the widespread caution in current television. Rather than falling back on formulaic comfort, he contends that international storytelling offers something the industry critically demands: real unpredictability. When television channels and digital platforms stick to proven models, greenlighting only time-tested formulas and recognizable plots, they surrender the television’s core strength to inspire and disturb. Leshem believes this moment demands the contrasting direction—creators must welcome the unconventional, venture into untested territories, and have faith in viewers to follow them into uncomfortable, unexpected places. The Israeli original “Euphoria” embodied this philosophy, delivering raw authenticity and cultural distinctiveness to a tale that transcended its beginnings to become a global phenomenon.

The economics of worldwide production, Leshem highlights, truly emancipate rather than constrain imaginative drive. Whilst American television persistently calls for substantial financial investment to justify greenlight decisions, cross-border ventures can achieve similar quality standards at reduced financial outlay. This monetary freedom somewhat counterintuitively allows more adventurous creative choices. Creators operating in international settings aren’t constrained by the same market demands that force American networks toward safe, accessible content. Instead, they can invest in unique perspectives, experimental story structures, and the kind of ambitious creative risk that ultimately produces the most enduring and culturally important content.

• Global narratives opens doors to fresh settings, scenarios and dramatic trajectories
• Independent creators can deliver high-end drama at substantially lower costs
• International content engages audiences weary of conventional TV
• Cultural distinctiveness establishes genuine appeal that transcends geographical boundaries

Disrupting the Safe Model

The television industry’s present risk aversion represents a fundamental misreading of viewer demand. Streaming services and traditional broadcasters have become fixated with metrics and algorithmic predictability, resulting in an endless parade of retreads and sequels. Yet audiences keep turning toward programmes that catch them off guard—narratives that feel truly transgressive, morally complex, and culturally grounded. Global drama, by its inherent character, resists the standardising tendency that dominates mainstream American television. When creators work across different cultural contexts and production ecosystems, they’re forced to think differently, to question assumptions, to move past the well-worn paths that have become entrenched as industry convention.

Leshem’s own production company, Crossing Oceans, embodies this approach through its intentionally global portfolio. From “Paranoia” in Brazil to “Revolution,” a France Télévisions collaboration with Iranian filmmakers, his projects deliberately court artistic tension and cultural collision. These aren’t vanity productions designed to accumulate festival laurels; they’re strategic wagers that audiences worldwide hunger for stories that provoke, disorient, and ultimately reshape them. By embracing the unfamiliar rather than shying away from it, Leshem suggests, television can reclaim its standing as the platform where real creative risk still counts.

From Israeli Heritage to Worldwide Ambitions

Ron Leshem’s path from Israeli television to global recognition exemplifies the transformative power of culturally grounded narratives. His initial projects in Israeli drama positioned him as a distinctive creative voice, prepared to engage with intricate ethical and cultural questions with uncompromising integrity. This base proved essential in shaping his subsequent methodology to worldwide content creation. Rather than surrendering his cultural identity for expanded commercial viability, Leshem has consistently leveraged his Israeli perspective as a storytelling strength, proving that intensely localised tales possess global relevance. His trajectory reveals that the most compelling international television often emerges not from diluting cultural identity, but from intensifying it.

The creation of Crossing Oceans, his production outfit based in Los Angeles but working chiefly across global markets, constitutes a deliberate rejection from Hollywood-centric production models. Collaborating with established creative allies Amit Cohen and Daniel Amsel, Leshem has constructed a collection intentionally crafted to emphasise genuine creativity over audience-tested conventions. His current projects span Brazil, Australia, Europe, and France in collaboration with Iranian filmmakers—a thematic and territorial diversity that would have seemed impossible in conventional television structures. This global footprint represents far more than ambition; it’s a strategic assertion that the future of television drama lies in distributed production networks where ground-level understanding and global aspirations intersect.

The Euphoria Effect

The original Israeli series that influenced Sam Levinson’s HBO adaptation became a cultural watershed moment, demonstrating conclusively that non-English language drama could achieve extraordinary international box office success. Leshem’s creation struck such a powerful chord with audiences worldwide that it spawned numerous international versions, each modified to represent local cultural contexts whilst preserving the psychological intensity and genuine emotional resonance of the original vision. This success significantly transformed industry perceptions about international television’s commercial viability. Studios and streaming services that had previously dismissed international drama as specialised programming suddenly acknowledged the commercial opportunity of culturally specific storytelling executed with artistic integrity.

The HBO adaptation rise to the second most-watched series in the network’s history validated Leshem’s creative philosophy completely. Rather than proving that international drama needed Americanisation to succeed, it showed the opposite: audiences desired the psychological complexity and cultural specificity that the Israeli version captured. Levinson’s adaptation succeeded not by sanitising the source material but by preserving its fundamental boldness whilst translating it for American sensibilities. This model—respectful adaptation rather than wholesale reimagining—has become growing in importance in how global drama is approached, encouraging producers to seek authentic local voices rather than imposing standardised templates.

• Original Israeli series spawned multiple international adaptations throughout different markets
• HBO adaptation rose to the network’s second-most popular series of all time
• Success demonstrated international drama could achieve unprecedented commercial and critical acclaim

Building Global Networks: Establishing an International Manufacturing Network

Leshem’s production company, Crossing Oceans, constitutes a carefully structured response to the fragmented nature of international TV production. Founded in collaboration with CAA and headquartered in Los Angeles, the company functions as a genuinely international enterprise rather than a Hollywood-centric operation that occasionally ventures abroad. Established alongside long-standing creative partners Amit Cohen and Daniel Amsel, Crossing Oceans serves as a creative hub where storytellers from diverse geographical and cultural backgrounds converge to create productions with truly international scope. This framework allows Leshem to preserve creative autonomy whilst drawing upon the distinct production ecosystems, regional expertise, and creative talent pools that various regions provide, fundamentally challenging the notion that high-quality drama must originate from established entertainment hubs.

The company’s current portfolio demonstrates the extent of the international reach and the range of storytelling approaches it champions. Projects stretch across continents and cultures, from Brazilian psychological dramas to European collaborations and co-productions with Iranian filmmakers, each bringing unique viewpoints and production approaches. Rather than imposing a standardised creative template across territories, Crossing Oceans operates as a facilitator of authentic local voices working in partnership with international ambition. This approach produces productions that demonstrate both cultural specificity and universal emotional resonance, proving that truly global drama emerges not from homogenisation but from celebrating distinctive creative visions whilst linking them internationally.

Partnerships Across Continents

Crossing Oceans’ cross-border partnerships illustrate how contemporary global drama flourishes through genuine creative collaboration rather than conventional studio hierarchies. The collaboration with Iranian filmmakers on “Revolution” reflects this principle, offering viewpoints and narrative approaches that traditional Western studios would generally dismiss. By establishing these relationships as equal creative voices rather than service providers, Leshem’s company produces projects strengthened by multiple cultural viewpoints and cultural approaches. This collaborative model challenges outdated assumptions about where quality drama originates, establishing that creativity develops when diverse creative voices work in genuine partnership toward common creative goals.

The parallel development of projects across Brazil, Australia, Europe, and France demonstrates how Crossing Oceans operates as a genuinely distributed creative enterprise. Rather than centralising decision-making in Los Angeles, the company supports local production teams and creative partners to propel work within their respective territories. This distributed model speeds up production schedules whilst ensuring productions reflect genuine cultural identity and local relevance. By treating different territories as creative equals rather than satellite offices, Crossing Oceans pioneers a production model that honours local insight whilst upholding the artistic standards and international perspective essential to global commercial success.

Empathy at the Heart of Our Mission

At the heart of Leshem’s vision for international storytelling lies a fundamental belief in television’s capacity to cultivate understanding across cultural boundaries. Rather than approaching global narratives as a business approach or budgetary convenience, he frames it as a moral imperative—a medium through which audiences worldwide can engage with different viewpoints and gain greater insight of distinct cultures. This conceptual approach raises international storytelling beyond entertainment into something more consequential: a tool for bridging the psychological distances that divide different populations. By centring empathy as the central principle, Leshem argues that television can accomplish what political discourse often cannot: fostering authentic human bonds across cultural divides.

The proliferation of locally produced content on global streaming platforms has somewhat counterintuitively created both opportunity and risk. Whilst audiences now encounter stories from previously marginalised territories, there persists a danger of treating such productions as cultural oddities rather than universal human narratives. Leshem’s insistence on empathy-driven storytelling directly counters this tokenisation. His projects intentionally resist cultural stereotyping or superficial representation, instead crafting narratives that reveal the common fragilities, ambitions, and ethical dilemmas that bind humanity. This strategy converts audiences into authentic stakeholders in the emotional worlds of others, nurturing the kind of cross-cultural understanding that has become ever more essential in an interconnected yet polarised world.

• Universal human narratives transcend cultural and geographical boundaries
• Empathy-driven narrative avoids exoticisation of foreign productions
• Common emotional moments foster genuine intercultural understanding
• Television’s power lies in making faraway lives feel intimately close

Theatre as a Method for Understanding

Television drama, when delivered with genuine creative vision, operates as a uniquely powerful medium for cultivating empathy. Unlike documentary formats that maintain observational distance, drama invites audiences into the subjective emotional experiences of characters whose circumstances may differ substantially from their own. This immersive nature enables viewers to enter unfamiliar social environments, familial arrangements, and ethical quandaries with an depth that creates understanding rather than mere awareness. Leshem’s output regularly exploit this potential, creating narratives that force audiences to examine their own assumptions whilst recognising the core humanity in characters whose lives initially seem unfamiliar or bewildering.

The effectiveness of this method becomes notably evident in works addressing conflict, trauma, and community fragmentation. Series like “Valley of Tears” and “No Man’s Land” purposefully situate spectators within disputed regions and divided societies, demanding that audiences navigate moral uncertainty without easy resolution. Rather than offering reassuring narratives of success or redemption, these series present the messy, complicated reality of how people survive and occasionally flourish within untenable situations. By resisting oversimplification, Leshem’s work shows audiences that understanding doesn’t require agreement—it requires only the willingness to genuinely listen with stories markedly unlike one’s own.

What Drives a Series Gain Traction

In an era flooded with content, the distinction between programmes that merely exist and those that authentically engage hinges on a readiness to take creative risks. Leshem argues that global drama’s greatest asset lies not in its production budgets but in its ability to venture into narrative territory that risk-averse American television increasingly avoids. When digital services prioritise algorithmic predictability over artistic boldness, standalone creators operating across continents possess the ability to pursue stories that truly disturb and challenge audiences. This fearlessness—the refusal to sand down rough edges for palatability—transforms television from background viewing into something far more consequential: a medium equipped to broadening perspectives.

The international productions that break through commercially invariably exhibit an steadfast commitment to their source material’s cultural and emotional authenticity. “Euphoria’s” Israeli original version prospered not because it catered to American tastes but because it proved fiercely true to its own context, ultimately establishing that specificity rather than universal blandness produces genuine worldwide resonance. Leshem’s present collection of endeavours—from “Paranoia” in Brazil to partnerships with Iranian filmmakers—embodies this certainty that the most widely captivating drama arises when filmmakers place emphasis on their creative vision’s authenticity over structural pressure to homogenise. Such artistic bravery, paradoxically, becomes the pathway to international widespread recognition.

• Genuine storytelling grounded in specific cultural contexts appeals across audiences
• Creative bold choices distinguishes memorable television from forgettable content
• Refusing market pressures frequently generates greater commercial success
• Global drama thrives when creative direction supersedes formulaic patterns