If you wanted to gauge how far the growing Greek TV industry has come in just a few short years, you’d have to look no further than last month in Lille, France, where Series Mania offered a splashy showcase for the Mediterranean nation’s sudden rise.,” director Cédric Klapisch’s follow-up to his beloved “Spanish Apartment” trilogy that chose Athens as the setting for its portrait of contemporary Europe at a crossroads.
The Series Mania standout is among a raft of recent high-end Greek series to reach global audiences, among them “,” directed by and starring heartthrob Christoforos Papakaliatis, which was the first Greek TV show to bow on Netflix, and the abduction thriller “Silent Road,” written by Melina Tsampani and Petros Kalkovalis and directed by Vardis Marinakis. Repped internationally by Beta Film, the series has sold to the U.S. streaming platform Topic for North America.
Produced by powerhouse outfit J.K. Prods., the company behind the hit “Wild Bees,” the show’s first season carries a price tag of €10 million , making it the country’s most expensive TV production to date. Written by Melina Tsambani and Petros Kalkovalis and directed by Lefteris Charitos — the same creative team behind “Wild Bees” — the series is an example of what J.K. Prods. CEO Giannis Karagiannis describes as “storytelling [that] knows no boundaries.
The Greek TV industry was hit hard by the mid-2010s financial meltdown that almost pushed the country from the Eurozone. Public broadcaster ERT was shuttered for nearly two years as part of broader efforts to curb government spending, while Mega TV — the country’s first private network — narrowly escaped bankruptcy in 2018. It remained off the air for more than a year before returning in 2020.