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

Ron Leshem, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter and creator of the Israeli series that inspired HBO’s cultural juggernaut “Euphoria,” has stated that television is moving into a golden age of global drama. Speaking at this year’s Canneseries festival, Leshem—whose credits feature “Valley of Tears,” “No Man’s Land” and “Bad Boy”—contended forcefully that independent creators and cross-border narratives hold the key to reinvigorating dramatic television. As streaming platforms increasingly retreat into local-focused content and broadcasters take conservative approaches, Leshem stays firmly confident about the future, backed by his own collection of expansive global initiatives spanning Brazil, Australia, Europe and France. His belief comes at a critical moment when international drama risks being reduced to merely a cost-effective option or exotic niche rather than a artistic movement transforming the medium.

The Case for Daring, Limit-Breaking Storytelling

Leshem’s core argument challenges the prevailing timidity in modern television. Rather than reverting to safe formulas, he argues that global drama offers something the industry desperately needs: real unpredictability. When television channels and digital platforms avoid taking risks, commissioning only proven templates and recognizable plots, they relinquish the format’s fundamental power to inspire and disturb. Leshem believes this juncture demands the reverse strategy—creators must embrace the untested, venture into new spaces, and have faith in viewers to accompany them into uncomfortable, unexpected places. The original Israeli “Euphoria” embodied this principle, bringing genuine rawness and cultural specificity to a narrative that went beyond its roots to become a global phenomenon.

The economics of international production, Leshem emphasises, truly emancipate rather than constrain imaginative drive. Whilst American television continually requires considerable spending to justify green-light verdicts, international productions can achieve similar quality standards at significantly lower expense. This budgetary adaptability somewhat counterintuitively allows more adventurous creative choices. Creators operating in international settings don’t face the same market demands that force American networks toward safe, accessible content. Instead, they can support unique perspectives, non-traditional storytelling, and the kind of daring innovation that finally creates the most memorable and culturally significant television.

• Global drama opens doors to fresh settings, frameworks and dramatic trajectories
• Independent production companies can produce high-end drama at considerably decreased costs
• International content attracts audiences tired of conventional TV
• Cultural particularity generates authenticity that surpasses geographical boundaries

Breaking the Established Formula

The television industry’s current risk aversion constitutes a core misreading of viewer demand. Streaming services and traditional broadcasters have grown obsessed with metrics and algorithmic predictability, leading to an endless parade of rehashed content and franchises. Yet audiences keep turning toward programmes that surprise them—narratives that feel truly transgressive, ethically nuanced, and culturally grounded. Global drama, by its very nature, resists the homogenising impulse that dominates mainstream American television. When creators work across different cultural contexts and production ecosystems, they’re forced to approach things anew, to question assumptions, to move past the well-worn paths that have calcified into industry convention.

Leshem’s personal production outfit, Crossing Oceans, embodies this approach through its deliberately international slate. From “Paranoia” in Brazil to “Revolution,” a France Télévisions collaboration with Iranian filmmakers, his projects intentionally court artistic tension and cross-cultural exchange. These are not prestige vanity projects designed to accumulate festival laurels; they’re strategic wagers that audiences worldwide crave stories that challenge, disorient, and eventually reshape them. By embracing the unfamiliar rather than retreating from it, Leshem suggests, television can reclaim its position as the medium where genuine artistic risk-taking still counts.

From Israeli Heritage to Worldwide Ambitions

Ron Leshem’s path from Israeli television to international prominence exemplifies the profound impact of stories deeply embedded in place. His initial projects in Israeli drama marked him as a unique artistic perspective, prepared to engage with intricate ethical and cultural questions with unflinching honesty. This base proved essential in shaping his subsequent methodology to international filmmaking. Rather than setting aside his cultural distinctiveness for broader commercial appeal, Leshem has continually drawn upon his Israeli perspective as a storytelling strength, proving that profoundly rooted narratives possess global relevance. His trajectory illustrates that the most captivating worldwide programming often emerges not from diminishing cultural specificity, but from deepening commitment to it.

The creation of Crossing Oceans, his production company headquartered in Los Angeles but working chiefly across worldwide territories, reflects a conscious departure from Hollywood-centric production models. Partnering with long-standing partners Amit Cohen and Daniel Amsel, Leshem has constructed a slate strategically created to foreground creative authenticity over market-tested formulas. His current projects span Brazil, Australia, Europe, and France in collaboration with Iranian filmmakers—a geographical and creative range that would have been inconceivable in conventional television structures. This global footprint represents far more than ambition; it’s a strategic assertion that the trajectory of dramatic television lies in dispersed creative systems where local knowledge and international ambition intersect.

The Euphoria Trend

The groundbreaking Israeli series that influenced Sam Levinson’s HBO adaptation became a landmark cultural achievement, establishing definitively that non-English language drama could achieve extraordinary international box office success. Leshem’s creation connected so deeply with audiences worldwide that it spawned numerous international versions, each tailored to capture local cultural contexts whilst preserving the emotional depth and genuine emotional resonance of the original vision. This success significantly transformed professional attitudes about the commercial potential of international television. Studios and streaming services that had earlier rejected non-English language drama as niche content suddenly recognised the market potential of culturally specific storytelling executed with artistic integrity.

The HBO adaptation rise to the second most-watched series in the network’s history confirmed Leshem’s creative philosophy entirely. Rather than proving that international drama needed Americanisation to succeed, it demonstrated the opposite: audiences craved the psychological complexity and cultural specificity that the Israeli version embodied. Levinson’s adaptation succeeded not by sanitising the source material but by respecting its fundamental boldness whilst adapting it for American sensibilities. This model—honourable reimagining rather than wholesale reimagining—has become more impactful in how global drama is approached, motivating producers to seek authentic local voices rather than imposing standardised templates.

• Original Israeli series spawned numerous cross-border adaptations in various regions
• HBO adaptation achieved the network’s second-most popular series in history
• Success proved international drama could attain unparalleled commercial and critical acclaim

Crossing Oceans: Creating Worldwide Production Operations

Leshem’s production company, Crossing Oceans, represents a carefully structured response to the fragmentation of international TV production. Established in partnership with CAA and based in Los Angeles, the company operates as a genuinely international enterprise rather than a Hollywood-centric operation that periodically expands overseas. Established alongside longtime collaborators Amit Cohen and Daniel Amsel, Crossing Oceans serves as a creative centre where storytellers from diverse geographical and cultural backgrounds gather to develop projects with genuinely global ambition. This structure allows Leshem to preserve creative autonomy whilst leveraging the unique production environments, local knowledge, and pools of creative talent that various regions provide, directly contesting the notion that high-quality drama must originate from established entertainment hubs.

The company’s current portfolio demonstrates the breadth of its international reach and the diversity 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 functions as a facilitator of authentic local voices working in collaboration with international ambition. This approach generates 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 connecting them across borders.

Working Together Between Different Continents

Crossing Oceans’ international partnerships demonstrate how modern international television flourishes through real creative teamwork rather than traditional top-down production models. The collaboration with Iranian filmmakers on “Revolution” reflects this philosophy, introducing viewpoints and narrative approaches that Western-centric production models would typically overlook. By treating these collaborations as equal creative voices rather than subcontractors, Leshem’s company generates productions enriched by varied cultural insights and cultural approaches. This partnership approach challenges conventional wisdom about which regions produce quality drama, establishing that innovation emerges when diverse creative voices work in genuine partnership toward common creative goals.

The simultaneous development of projects across Brazil, Australia, Europe, and France demonstrates how Crossing Oceans operates as a authentically distributed creative enterprise. Rather than centralising decision-making in Los Angeles, the company enables local production teams and creative partners to drive projects forward within their respective territories. This distributed model speeds up production schedules whilst maintaining productions maintain cultural authenticity and local relevance. By treating different territories as collaborative partners rather than satellite offices, Crossing Oceans establishes a production model that values regional expertise whilst preserving the artistic standards and international perspective necessary for global commercial success.

Empathy as the Core Mission

At the heart of Leshem’s vision for global drama lies a core conviction in television’s capacity to foster empathy across cultural boundaries. Rather than treating international storytelling as a business approach or budgetary convenience, he frames it as a ethical necessity—a platform by which audiences across the globe can inhabit unfamiliar perspectives and gain greater insight of distinct cultures. This conceptual approach raises international storytelling beyond mere entertainment into something far more significant: a tool for bridging the psychological distances that divide different populations. By placing empathy at the centre as the central principle, Leshem argues that television can achieve what political discourse often cannot: fostering authentic human bonds across cultural divides.

The expansion of locally created content on global streaming platforms has somewhat counterintuitively created both opportunity and risk. Whilst audiences now access stories from previously marginalised territories, there persists a danger of treating such productions as exotic curiosities rather than stories of shared human experience. Leshem’s commitment to emotionally intelligent narrative directly challenges this performative representation. His projects intentionally resist reductive stereotypes or performative diversity, instead constructing stories that expose the common fragilities, ambitions, and ethical dilemmas that unite humanity. This approach 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 digitally connected but deeply divided world.

• Timeless human stories go beyond cultural and geographical boundaries
• Empathy-based storytelling avoids exoticizing of international productions
• Shared emotional experiences create genuine intercultural understanding
• Television’s strength resides in making faraway lives feel intimately familiar

Theatre as a Method for Understanding

Television drama, when crafted with genuine artistic ambition, operates as a uniquely powerful medium for building empathy. Unlike documentary formats that maintain observational distance, drama invites audiences into the inner emotional lives of characters whose situations may diverge radically from their own. This immersive quality enables viewers to occupy unfamiliar social environments, familial arrangements, and moral dilemmas with an intimacy that builds understanding rather than superficial knowledge. Leshem’s work consistently leverage this strength, building stories that push audiences to examine their own assumptions whilst recognising the essential humanity in characters whose lives initially seem alien or incomprehensible.

The effectiveness of this approach becomes notably evident in programmes tackling conflict, trauma, and community fragmentation. Series like “Valley of Tears” and “No Man’s Land” purposefully situate audiences within disputed regions and divided societies, demanding that audiences navigate moral uncertainty without easy resolution. Rather than providing comforting stories of success or redemption, these series present the messy, complicated reality of how communities survive and occasionally flourish within impossible circumstances. By rejecting reduction, Leshem’s work shows spectators that insight doesn’t necessitate agreement—it requires only the openness to authentically engage with stories markedly unlike one’s own.

What Makes a Series Achieve Success

In an era flooded with content, the distinction between programmes that merely exist and those that genuinely resonate hinges on a commitment to take bold creative steps. Leshem argues that international drama’s greatest asset lies not in its financial limitations but in its potential to venture into dramatic space that conservative American television increasingly avoids. When streaming platforms emphasise algorithmic predictability over artistic surprise, standalone creators operating across continents possess the ability to pursue stories that genuinely unsettle and test audiences. This fearlessness—the refusal to sand down rough edges for commercial viability—transforms television from background viewing into something far more consequential: a medium able to broadening perspectives.

The international productions that break through commercially invariably demonstrate an uncompromising dedication to their source material’s cultural and emotional authenticity. “Euphoria’s” original Israeli iteration prospered not because it catered to American sensibilities but because it proved fiercely true to its specific milieu, ultimately demonstrating that particularity rather than homogenised appeal generates genuine worldwide resonance. Leshem’s current slate of projects—from “Paranoia” in Brazil to partnerships with Iranian creative practitioners—reflects this conviction that the most widely captivating drama arises when filmmakers give precedence to their vision’s integrity over structural pressure to homogenise. Such creative courage, paradoxically, functions as the means of achieving international success.

• Genuine storytelling rooted in distinct cultural settings appeals across audiences
• Artistic risk-taking sets apart compelling shows from forgettable content
• Rejecting market pressures frequently generates stronger financial returns
• Global drama flourishes when creative direction supersedes algorithmic predictability