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

Ron Leshem, the Oscar-nominated writer and co-creator of the Israeli series that influenced HBO’s cultural juggernaut “Euphoria,” has declared that television is moving into a golden age of international storytelling. Addressing this year’s Canneseries festival, Leshem—whose credits feature “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 local-focused content and broadcasters play it safe, Leshem remains bullishly optimistic 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 global drama risks being reduced to little more than a budget solution or exotic niche rather than a artistic movement reshaping the medium.

The Case for Daring, Limit-Breaking Narrative Craft

Leshem’s central argument questions the prevailing caution in modern television. Rather than reverting to safe formulas, he contends that international storytelling offers something the industry desperately needs: authentic originality. When television channels and digital platforms play it safe, approving only established formats and recognizable plots, they forfeit the television’s fundamental power to engage and challenge. Leshem believes this moment demands the contrasting direction—creators must welcome the unfamiliar, push into new spaces, and trust audiences to go along into uncomfortable, unexpected places. The original Israeli “Euphoria” demonstrated this approach, delivering raw authenticity and local cultural character to a narrative that transcended its beginnings to become a global phenomenon.

The economics of international production, Leshem highlights, genuinely free rather than constrain creative ambition. Whilst American television continually requires massive budgets to justify greenlight decisions, cross-border ventures can achieve equivalent production quality at a fraction of the cost. This monetary freedom paradoxically enables more adventurous creative choices. Production teams spanning multiple territories aren’t constrained by the same market demands that force American networks toward formulaic narratives. Instead, they can support original viewpoints, non-traditional storytelling, and the kind of bold experimentation that eventually generates the most memorable and culturally significant television.

• Global narratives opens doors to fresh settings, frameworks and story arcs
• Independent producers can produce premium content at substantially lower costs
• International storytelling engages audiences tired of conventional TV
• Cultural particularity establishes genuine appeal that goes beyond geographical boundaries

Disrupting the Conventional Approach

The television industry’s current risk aversion represents a fundamental misreading of viewer demand. Streaming services and traditional broadcasters have grown obsessed with metrics and algorithmic predictability, leading to an endless parade of retreads and sequels. Yet audiences keep turning toward programmes that surprise them—narratives that feel genuinely dangerous, ethically nuanced, and culturally rooted. Global drama, by its very nature, 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 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 projects deliberately court artistic tension and cultural collision. These are not prestige vanity projects intended to accumulate festival laurels; they’re calculated bets that audiences worldwide crave stories that challenge, disorient, and eventually reshape them. By welcoming the unknown rather than retreating from it, Leshem argues, television can restore its standing as the medium where genuine artistic risk-taking still counts.

From Israeli Origins to International Goals

Ron Leshem’s journey from Israeli television to worldwide success exemplifies the profound impact of stories deeply embedded in place. His foundational creations in Israeli drama established him as a recognisable storytelling force, willing to confront complex moral and social themes with unflinching honesty. This foundation proved instrumental in shaping his subsequent methodology to international filmmaking. Rather than abandoning his cultural specificity for broader commercial appeal, Leshem has repeatedly utilised his Israeli perspective as a artistic resource, proving that profoundly rooted narratives possess global relevance. His trajectory demonstrates that the most compelling international television often emerges not from diminishing cultural specificity, but from deepening commitment to it.

The creation of Crossing Oceans, his production company based in Los Angeles but functioning mainly across global markets, represents a conscious departure from traditional Hollywood production approaches. Collaborating with established creative allies Amit Cohen and Daniel Amsel, Leshem has constructed a slate deliberately designed to foreground artistic integrity over commercially proven templates. His active ventures span Brazil, Australia, Europe, and France in collaboration with Iranian filmmakers—a creative and geographical diversity that would have been inconceivable in conventional television structures. This international presence goes beyond simple ambition; it’s a calculated claim that the trajectory of dramatic television lies in distributed production networks where regional expertise and worldwide vision intersect.

The Euphoria Trend

The groundbreaking Israeli series that influenced Sam Levinson’s HBO adaptation became a cultural watershed moment, establishing definitively that international drama could achieve unprecedented global commercial success. Leshem’s creation struck such a powerful chord with audiences worldwide that it spawned numerous international versions, each tailored to capture regional cultural nuances whilst preserving the psychological intensity and emotional authenticity of the original vision. This success significantly transformed professional attitudes about the commercial potential of international television. Studios and digital platforms that had earlier rejected non-English language drama as niche content suddenly recognised the profit prospects of culturally specific storytelling executed with professional quality.

The HBO version rise to the second most-watched series in the network’s history vindicated Leshem’s creative philosophy thoroughly. 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 embodied. Levinson’s adaptation succeeded not by sanitising the source material but by preserving its fundamental boldness whilst adapting it for American sensibilities. This model—respectful adaptation rather than wholesale reimagining—has become more impactful 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 in various regions
• HBO adaptation achieved the network’s second-most popular series in history
• Success established international drama could attain unparalleled commercial and critical acclaim

Building Global Networks: Creating Worldwide Production Operations

Leshem’s production outfit, Crossing Oceans, constitutes a carefully structured response to the fragmentation of global television production. Established in partnership with CAA and headquartered in Los Angeles, the company functions as a truly global enterprise rather than a Hollywood-centric operation that occasionally ventures abroad. Co-founded with longtime collaborators Amit Cohen and Daniel Amsel, Crossing Oceans functions as a creative centre where storytellers from diverse geographical and cultural backgrounds gather to create productions with genuinely global ambition. This framework allows Leshem to maintain artistic control whilst leveraging the distinct production ecosystems, regional expertise, and creative talent pools that various regions provide, directly contesting the notion that quality drama must emerge from established entertainment hubs.

The company’s existing slate 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 distinct perspectives and production methodologies. Rather than applying a uniform creative framework across territories, Crossing Oceans operates as a facilitator of genuine regional storytellers 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 Throughout Continents

Crossing Oceans’ international partnerships illustrate how contemporary global drama thrives through authentic artistic partnership rather than conventional studio hierarchies. The collaboration with Iranian filmmakers on “Revolution” reflects this approach, introducing perspectives and storytelling traditions that traditional Western studios would typically overlook. By treating these collaborations as equal creative voices rather than external vendors, Leshem’s company produces projects strengthened by multiple cultural viewpoints and artistic traditions. This collaborative model disputes traditional beliefs about where quality drama originates, proving that excellence arises when varied artistic perspectives collaborate authentically toward mutual artistic objectives.

The simultaneous development of projects across Brazil, Australia, Europe, and France showcases how Crossing Oceans operates as a authentically distributed creative enterprise. Rather than concentrating control in Los Angeles, the company supports local production teams and creative partners to propel work within their respective territories. This locally-focused structure speeds up production schedules whilst guaranteeing productions preserve local character and local relevance. By treating different territories as equal creative contributors rather than satellite offices, Crossing Oceans pioneers a production model that values regional expertise whilst maintaining the artistic standards and international perspective necessary for global commercial success.

Empathy as Our Central Purpose

At the heart of Leshem’s perspective for international storytelling lies a fundamental belief in television’s ability to cultivate understanding across cultural boundaries. Rather than approaching global narratives as a business approach or financial expediency, he frames it as a ethical necessity—a medium through which audiences across the globe can engage with different viewpoints and gain greater insight of different societies. This conceptual approach elevates global drama beyond entertainment into something more consequential: a tool for bridging the psychological distances that divide different populations. By placing empathy at the centre as the guiding principle, Leshem argues that television can achieve what political discussion frequently fails to do: fostering authentic human bonds across difference.

The growth of locally produced content on international streaming platforms has paradoxically created both opportunities and challenges. Whilst audiences now discover stories from previously marginalised territories, there remains a danger of regarding such works as cultural oddities rather than universal human narratives. Leshem’s insistence on empathy-driven storytelling directly challenges this performative representation. His projects deliberately avoid reductive stereotypes or performative diversity, instead crafting narratives that reveal the shared vulnerabilities, ambitions, and moral complexities that bind humanity. This method transforms viewers into authentic stakeholders in other people’s emotional landscapes, cultivating the kind of cross-cultural understanding that has become increasingly vital in an interconnected yet polarised world.

• Universal human narratives go beyond cultural and geographical boundaries
• Empathy-based narrative avoids exoticisation of international productions
• Shared emotional moments create authentic cross-cultural understanding
• Television’s power resides in rendering distant lives seem intimately familiar

Drama as a Means for Comprehension

Television drama, when delivered with genuine creative vision, functions as a uniquely powerful medium for building empathy. Unlike documentary approaches that preserve a detached perspective, drama pulls audiences into the inner emotional lives of characters whose circumstances may differ substantially from their own. This absorbing quality enables viewers to enter unfamiliar social contexts, familial arrangements, and moral dilemmas with an intimacy that builds understanding rather than simple awareness. Leshem’s output regularly exploit this potential, creating narratives that compel audiences to confront their own assumptions whilst identifying the essential humanity in characters whose existences initially appear alien or incomprehensible.

The impact of this strategy becomes notably evident in works exploring conflict, trauma, and community fragmentation. Series like “Valley of Tears” and “No Man’s Land” purposefully situate spectators within conflicted areas and broken communities, demanding that audiences navigate moral uncertainty without easy resolution. Rather than providing soothing accounts of success or redemption, these dramas present the intricate, messy reality of how communities endure and sometimes thrive within impossible circumstances. By refusing simplification, Leshem’s work shows spectators that understanding needn’t demand agreement—it requires only the openness to truly hear with stories profoundly distinct from one’s own.

What Creates a Series Gain Traction

In an era flooded with content, the distinction between programmes that merely exist and those that genuinely resonate hinges on a readiness to take bold creative steps. 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 streaming platforms emphasise algorithmic formulas over creative innovation, freelance production companies operating across continents possess the freedom to pursue stories that authentically provoke and test audiences. This fearlessness—the resistance to sand down rough edges for commercial viability—transforms television from background viewing into something far more significant: a medium capable of expanding consciousness.

The international productions that achieve commercial success invariably share an steadfast commitment to their original material’s cultural and emotional authenticity. “Euphoria’s” Israeli original version succeeded not because it pursued American preferences but because it stayed fiercely true to its particular setting, ultimately demonstrating that specificity rather than broad genericness generates genuine worldwide resonance. Leshem’s existing portfolio of works—from “Paranoia” in Brazil to collaborations with Iranian filmmakers—embodies this certainty that the most globally compelling narrative work arises when storytellers place emphasis on their creative vision’s authenticity over structural pressure to standardise. Such artistic bravery, paradoxically, becomes the means of achieving international widespread recognition.

• Genuine storytelling rooted in distinct cultural settings appeals across audiences
• Artistic risk-taking distinguishes compelling shows from disposable programming
• Rejecting commercial compromise frequently generates greater commercial success
• Global drama flourishes when creative direction supersedes algorithmic predictability