Arte France’s Alexandre Piel Unveils New Nordic TV Buys, Talks Co-Production Spirit (EXCLUSIVE)
Arte France, the upscale French public service broadcaster, has made the Nordic region one of its biggest shopping destination of TV drama with the U.K., since the Danish cult series “The Killing” (2010) and “Borgen” (2012).
“Occupied”, the Norwegian futuristic political thriller was another landmark show which kick-started in 2015 the channel’s venture into event co-productions with European partners. Today, the prestige broadcaster has widened its series acquisitions and co-productions to the rest of Europe, but the Nordic region remains central to its overall drama programming, which boasts a €33 million($34.3 million) budget across co-pros and acquisitions for 2025.
More from Variety
On the eve of a major drama get-together between French and Nordic professionals, the French-Nordic Series Connection at G?teborg’s TV Drama Vision showcase (Jan. 28-29), Arte France’s deputy head of drama Alexandre Piel, has unveiled his latest Nordic drama pick-ups and co-productions, lined up for 2025.
“Liv,” produced by genre specialist Shuuto for the Scandi platform Altibox, is a Norwegian hospital drama about family dynamics and intertwined secrets starring Jesper Malm (“Ragnarok”) and Charlotte Grundt (“22 July”).
Next to this platform-driven show are the event series “Carmen Curlers” (Seasons 1 and 2) from DR Drama in Denmark and “Mobile 101” from Rabbit Films in Finland, chartering respectively the rise and fall of iconic national brands: the electric hair curlers “Carmen Curlers” and Nokia phones. Another attractive offer is the multi-awarded and smash-hit “P?rni” created by Norwegian star actress Henriette Steenstrup for Monster and TV2 Norway.
Returning hit crime shows will include the Danish-Swedish cult series “Bron” (“The Bridge”), to be binged-watched across four seasons, “Sandhamn Murders,” one of the hottest Swedish brands on the French broadcaster, and slow-burn Danish “DNA”, co-produced by Arte France and TV2 Denmark.
Meanwhile Arte France’s latest three flagship Nordic co-productions, Tomas Alfredson’s “Faithless,” to be screened at G?teborg’s Nordic Light section, “A Life’s Worth” set against the Bosnian 1990s conflict, and Iceland’s high-concept crime “Reykjavik Fusion” (both lined-up for the TV Drama Vision’s Works in Progress), are slated for a late 2025-early 2026 launch in France.
“Diversity is key for us; we don’t want to be locked in a genre,” says Piel. “We curate our series programming, so that our audience will be surprised and inspired. Our editorial strategy is to be open-minded and to build bridges so that our audience can jump from one program to another, one country to another.
We bring in engaging and thought-provoking content, about the nuances and problematics of a world which is increasingly polarised. And our inherent spirit of democracy and humanity is what defines us.”
For Piel, those values at the core of the European cultural channel’s values are shared with the Nordic public service broadcasters, regular co-production partners, such as TV2 Denmark on “DNA”, Norway’s NRK on “Countrymen,” Iceland’s RúV on “Blackport” and Sweden’s SVT on “Faithless”.
New Co-Production Spirit
Digging deeper into Arte France’s co-production strategy, Piel, who heads the foreign drama strand and co-runs the French slate with head of drama Agnès Olier, says his goal is to feed both the linear channel’s Thursday prime time slot and the digital platform arte.tv which –together with Arte’s social media services – jumped 20% in 2024 from 2023 to reach 2.7 billion views. The small output of seven co-productions a year, means that “each project is cherry-picked and strongly evaluated. It also allows us to be bold, risk-taking, and meaningful in how we bring the content to our viewers to create something that is diverse but coherent at the same time,” he argues.
Projects with foreign partners are either minority co-produced, equally produced or initiated, with Arte France’s investments covering up to 25% for premium shows, such as “Faithless” or “A Life’s Worth.”
Piel says “Faithless,” from the Swedish helmer of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” is a typical signature show from an A-list talent, similar to Arte France’s collaboration with Rodrigo Sorogoyen on “The New Years,” commissioned by Spain’s Movistar Plus+, or with Marco Bellocchio on his Cannes showcased “Exterior Night” and upcoming “Portobello” series, which is currently filming.
“We came in early, at pitch stage on “Faithless,” joining Miso Film and SVT which whom we’ve had a smooth collaboration,” says Piel. “Considering Alfredson’s talent, his vision of revisiting Ingmar Bergman’s original screenplay [for Liv Ullmann’s 2000 film of the same name], the project’s contribution to European culture, it made total sense to be part of it.”
Concerning “A Life’s Worth” produced by Banijay Nordic’s banner Yellow Bird and initiated by Arte France, Piel says he came on board as early as 2019, when the senior Swedish TV executive and former Yellow Bird head of business affairs Stefan Baron approached him with the project, inspired by the eponymous novel by Magnus Ernstr?m.
The story about a group of young Swedish UN soldiers and their commander as they struggle with the complexities of war in the Balkans in the 1990s, immediately caught his eye, as he was keen to bring to the forefront a new project about Europe’s recent shared history, like Bellocchio’s take on Italy’s former Prime Minister Aldo Moro’s 1978 kidnapping and assassination in “Exterior Night.”
Headlining Edvin Ryding (“Young Royals”), Maxwell Cunningham (“Top Dog”) and Erik Enge (“Tigers”), the six-part series, now in post-production, is co-produced by Viaplay Content Distribution, handling global sales.
As for “Reykjavik Fusion” produced by ACT4 for Síminn in Iceland, the crime show about a former convict turned chef, was an opportunity says Piel “to work again with creative, committed and fun” Icelandic partners, after his fruitful collaboration on the fishing quota drama “Blackport” with Vesturport.
Underscoring Arte France’s international push and gradual move away from its siloed French/foreign-language strands, Piel admits that this understanding and acceptance of letting stories, talents’ visions – not nationality nor language – drive the production, was a process which took some time. Arte France’s experience in the last three years of working on flagship internationally-oriented projects, such as Rotem Shamir-helmed “No Man’s Land” Season 2 or chess thriller “Remake” from showrunner Yan England, was necessary to come to what he calls “Arte’s new spirit”, inherently and truly European.
Another case in point is “The Affair” showrunner Hagai Levy’s upcoming biopic “Etty,” the story of a young woman during the German occupation in the Netherlands, who learns how to cope with adversity and embraces life. “It’s being shot in Amsterdam, mainly in German and Dutch languages, with our partners SWR in Germany and NPO in the Netherlands, but the show is totally French in investment only,” notes Piel about the series produced by France’s Les Films du Poisson, the Netherlands’ Topkapi Films, Germany’s KomplizenFilm and Italy’s Quiddity.
Asked about Arte France’s creative involvement during development and production, the French executive says his drama department’s input is about probing, not interfering: “We are like gatekeepers, letting the project organically evolve and questioning the producers for the project’s own artistic sake.”
Going forward, Piel says “our next step hopefully will be co-developing with broadcasting partners, including in the Nordics. There’s been musical chairs in the region and in our strong trust-based one-to-one industry, this has slightly disrupted our business. But we have strong, long-lasting relations in the Nordics. We will of course continue to nurture our existing ones with broadcasters and platforms, and initiate new conversations.”
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
