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 declared that television is entering a golden age of international storytelling. Addressing this year’s Canneseries festival, Leshem—whose credits include “Valley of Tears,” “No Man’s Land” and “Bad Boy”—contended forcefully that independent producers and international storytelling hold the key to reinvigorating dramatic television. As streaming services increasingly retreat into 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 international drama risks being reduced to merely a budget solution or exotic niche rather than a transformative medium transforming the medium.

The Case for Bold, Boundary-Pushing Narrative Craft

Leshem’s core argument challenges the widespread timidity in current television. Rather than reverting to safe formulas, he maintains that global drama offers something the industry critically demands: authentic originality. When television channels and digital platforms avoid taking risks, greenlighting only proven templates and conventional stories, they surrender the format’s essential ability to inspire and disturb. Leshem believes this juncture demands the reverse strategy—creators must adopt the untested, explore untested territories, and believe in audiences to go along into uncomfortable, unexpected places. The original Israeli “Euphoria” demonstrated this approach, delivering raw authenticity and local cultural character to a tale that surpassed its beginnings to become a international hit.

The economics of worldwide production, Leshem stresses, actually liberate rather than constrain creative ambition. Whilst American television continually requires massive budgets to justify green-light verdicts, cross-border ventures can achieve equivalent production quality at a fraction of the cost. This budgetary adaptability paradoxically enables more adventurous creative choices. Producers working across borders and cultures aren’t constrained by the same business imperatives that force American networks toward lowest-common-denominator storytelling. Instead, they can support unique perspectives, non-traditional storytelling, and the kind of daring innovation that finally creates the most enduring and culturally important content.

• Global storytelling opens doors to unexplored territories, setups and dramatic trajectories
• Independent producers can deliver high-end drama at significantly reduced costs
• International content attracts audiences tired of conventional TV
• Cultural specificity creates credibility that surpasses geographical boundaries

Disrupting the Established Model

The television industry’s current risk aversion constitutes a fundamental misreading of viewer demand. Streaming services and traditional broadcasters have become fixated with metrics and algorithmic predictability, leading to an endless parade of retreads and sequels. Yet audiences continue gravitating toward programmes that catch them off guard—narratives that feel genuinely dangerous, ethically nuanced, and culturally grounded. Global drama, by its very nature, resists the standardising tendency that dominates mainstream American television. When creators operate within 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 own production outfit, Crossing Oceans, embodies this philosophy through its intentionally global portfolio. From “Paranoia” in Brazil to “Revolution,” a France Télévisions collaboration with Iranian filmmakers, his works deliberately court artistic tension and cross-cultural exchange. These are not vanity productions designed to gather festival laurels; they’re calculated bets that audiences worldwide crave stories that challenge, disorient, and ultimately reshape them. By embracing the unknown rather than retreating from it, Leshem suggests, television can reclaim its position as the medium where genuine artistic risk-taking still matters.

From Israeli Origins to International Goals

Ron Leshem’s journey from Israeli television to international prominence exemplifies the transformative power of culturally grounded narratives. His initial projects in Israeli drama established him as a distinctive creative voice, prepared to engage with complex moral and social themes with unflinching honesty. This groundwork became crucial in shaping his future direction to worldwide content creation. Rather than abandoning his cultural specificity for expanded commercial viability, Leshem has consistently leveraged his Israeli perspective as a artistic resource, proving that intensely localised tales possess universal resonance. His trajectory reveals that the most engaging global content often emerges not from diminishing cultural specificity, but from intensifying it.

The establishment of Crossing Oceans, his production company headquartered in Los Angeles but operating primarily across global markets, reflects a deliberate rejection from traditional Hollywood production approaches. Working alongside long-standing partners Amit Cohen and Daniel Amsel, Leshem has developed a collection intentionally crafted to prioritise genuine creativity over audience-tested conventions. His active ventures span Brazil, Australia, Europe, and France in collaboration with Iranian filmmakers—a creative and geographical range that would have seemed impossible in conventional television structures. This international presence isn’t merely ambitious; it’s a deliberate statement that the trajectory of dramatic television lies in dispersed creative systems where regional expertise and international ambition intersect.

The Euphoria Trend

The original Israeli series that influenced Sam Levinson’s HBO adaptation became a defining cultural moment, demonstrating conclusively that international drama could achieve unprecedented global commercial success. Leshem’s creation resonated so profoundly with audiences worldwide that it produced countless international versions, each adapted to reflect regional cultural nuances whilst maintaining the psychological intensity and emotional authenticity of the original vision. This success dramatically shifted industry perceptions about non-English television’s market prospects. Studios and digital platforms that had traditionally overlooked international drama as limited market appeal suddenly acknowledged the profit prospects of culturally specific storytelling executed with creative excellence.

The HBO adaptation ascent to become 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 craved the psychological complexity and cultural specificity that the Israeli version reflected. Levinson’s adaptation succeeded not by sanitising the source material but by honouring its fundamental boldness whilst translating it for American sensibilities. This model—faithful reworking rather than wholesale reimagining—has become increasingly influential in how global drama is approached, encouraging producers to seek authentic local voices rather than imposing standardised templates.

• Original Israeli series produced numerous cross-border adaptations across different territories
• HBO adaptation achieved network’s second most-watched series of all time
• Success proved international drama could attain remarkable commercial and critical acclaim

Building Global Networks: Creating Worldwide Production Operations

Leshem’s production outfit, Crossing Oceans, represents a carefully structured response to the fragmented nature of international TV production. Founded in partnership with CAA and based in Los Angeles, the company operates as a truly global enterprise rather than a Hollywood-centric operation that periodically expands overseas. Co-founded with longtime collaborators Amit Cohen and Daniel Amsel, Crossing Oceans serves as a creative hub where creators with varied geographical and cultural perspectives converge to develop projects with truly international scope. This structure allows Leshem to maintain artistic control whilst drawing upon the distinct production ecosystems, local knowledge, and pools of creative talent that various regions provide, fundamentally challenging the idea that quality drama must emerge from established entertainment hubs.

The company’s current portfolio demonstrates the breadth of its international reach and the range of storytelling approaches it supports. Projects span continents and cultures, from Brazilian psychological dramas to European collaborations and co-productions with Iranian filmmakers, each bringing distinct perspectives and production methodologies. Rather than imposing a standardised creative template across territories, Crossing Oceans operates as a facilitator of authentic local voices working in collaboration 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 championing unique creative perspectives whilst linking them internationally.

Partnerships Across Continents

Crossing Oceans’ global collaborations showcase how current world drama succeeds through real creative teamwork rather than traditional top-down production models. The partnership involving Iranian filmmakers on “Revolution” embodies this approach, bringing perspectives and storytelling traditions that conventional industry approaches would generally dismiss. By treating these collaborations as artistic partners rather than service providers, Leshem’s company creates works enhanced through diverse perspectives and creative practices. This collaborative model disputes outdated assumptions about where quality drama originates, establishing that innovation emerges when varied artistic perspectives collaborate authentically toward common creative goals.

The concurrent development of projects across Brazil, Australia, Europe, and France illustrates how Crossing Oceans operates as a truly distributed creative enterprise. Rather than centralising decision-making in Los Angeles, the company supports local production teams and creative partners to advance initiatives within their respective territories. This distributed model accelerates development timelines whilst guaranteeing productions reflect genuine cultural identity and local relevance. By treating different territories as collaborative partners rather than satellite offices, Crossing Oceans pioneers a production model that honours local insight whilst preserving the artistic standards and international perspective necessary for global commercial success.

Making Empathy Our Primary Focus

At the heart of Leshem’s perspective for global drama lies a fundamental belief in television’s ability to cultivate understanding across cultural divides. Rather than treating international storytelling as a business approach or financial expediency, he frames it as a ethical necessity—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 means of closing the psychological distances that separate nations and communities. By placing empathy at the centre as the guiding principle, Leshem argues that television can achieve what political discussion frequently fails to do: creating genuine human connection across difference.

The proliferation of locally created content on international streaming platforms has somewhat counterintuitively created both opportunities and challenges. Whilst audiences now discover stories from previously marginalised territories, there remains a danger of treating such productions as cultural oddities rather than stories of shared human experience. Leshem’s insistence on empathy-driven storytelling directly counters this performative representation. His projects deliberately avoid cultural stereotyping or performative diversity, instead crafting narratives that expose the common fragilities, ambitions, and moral complexities that bind humanity. This method transforms viewers into authentic stakeholders in other people’s emotional landscapes, cultivating the form of intercultural comprehension that has become ever more essential in an digitally connected but deeply divided world.

• Universal human stories go beyond geographical and cultural boundaries
• Empathy-driven storytelling avoids exoticisation of foreign productions
• Common emotional experiences foster genuine intercultural understanding
• Television’s strength lies in rendering faraway lives feel intimately close

Dramatic Performance as a Method for Learning

Television drama, when crafted with genuine creative vision, functions as a uniquely powerful medium for building empathy. Unlike documentary formats that preserve a detached perspective, drama invites audiences into the subjective emotional experiences of characters whose situations may diverge radically from their own. This immersive quality permits audiences to inhabit unfamiliar social environments, familial arrangements, and moral dilemmas with an closeness that generates understanding rather than mere awareness. Leshem’s output regularly exploit this potential, building stories that force audiences to confront their own assumptions whilst identifying the essential humanity in characters whose existences initially appear alien or incomprehensible.

The effectiveness of this strategy becomes especially evident in productions tackling conflict, trauma, and societal fracture. Series like “Valley of Tears” and “No Man’s Land” purposefully situate spectators within disputed regions and divided societies, demanding that spectators navigate moral uncertainty without easy resolution. Rather than providing reassuring narratives of success or redemption, these programmes present the complex, nuanced reality of how communities persist and periodically prosper within impossible circumstances. By resisting oversimplification, Leshem’s work shows viewers that understanding doesn’t require agreement—it requires only the readiness to genuinely listen with stories profoundly distinct from one’s own.

What Drives a Series Achieve Success

In an era saturated with content, the difference between programmes that merely exist and those that authentically engage hinges on a commitment to take artistic chances. Leshem argues that global drama’s greatest asset lies not in its production budgets but in its ability to venture into dramatic space that risk-averse American television increasingly avoids. When digital services emphasise algorithmic formulas over artistic boldness, independent producers operating across continents possess the ability to pursue stories that truly disturb and push audiences. This fearlessness—the unwillingness to sand down rough edges for palatability—transforms television from background viewing into something far more consequential: a medium equipped to expanding consciousness.

The international productions that gain widespread market traction invariably exhibit an unwavering fidelity to their original material’s emotional and cultural authenticity. “Euphoria’s” initial Israeli adaptation succeeded not because it catered to American preferences but because it proved deeply faithful to its specific milieu, ultimately proving that specificity rather than homogenised appeal produces genuine broad appeal. Leshem’s current slate of projects—from “Paranoia” in Brazil to collaborations with Iranian filmmakers—demonstrates this certainty that the most globally compelling drama emerges when filmmakers give precedence to their vision’s integrity over institutional pressure to dilute distinctiveness. Such artistic bravery, paradoxically, serves as the pathway to international commercial success.

• Genuine storytelling rooted in distinct cultural settings resonates universally
• Creative risk-taking distinguishes memorable television from disposable programming
• Rejecting market pressures often yields greater commercial success
• International television flourishes when creative direction overrides formulaic patterns