Best Kept Secrets: The world’s hidden programming gems

My best kept secret is a six-part drama about power and sexual abuse in the highest circles of Israeli politics. Based on true events, Unsilenced is the story of a newly elected president with rumours of sexual assault and rape of a female staffer swirling around him, threatening to destroy not only his career but also those closest to him as more women step forward.

Each episode is brilliantly written from a different perspective – from two of his female victims, his chief-of-staff, his wife and the accused president himself. It’s a clever creative device that offers viewers the opportunity to really engage with the drama from every angle and to understand just how strong these women had to be to call out the president’s actions.

“I binged the whole series in one day. It’s one of those shows that everyone needs to watch”

The story is adapted from Odelia Karmon’s best-selling book, Eshet Hasod (The Woman Of Secrets), about her experiences working for former Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The script, from Avraham Shalom Levi and Tamar Marom, is on point and the actors are compelling. I binged the whole series in one day. It’s such a powerful drama – one of those shows that everyone needs to watch.

I especially loved the episode told from the point of view of the president’s wife. It’s the only one that is not based on evidence, because the real person has never spoken about what happened or been formally questioned. I found it fascinating to try to imagine what this horrible situation was like from her perspective.

At the time, nearly two decades ago, the news of what our president had been doing didn’t really generate the kind of outrage or shock it should have done – I believe the impact of his actions was misunderstood by many back then.

Only with the passing of time and the #MeToo revolution can we really begin to understand situations like this, and the courage required by the women involved to break the cycle of abuse and finally call out powerful men who abuse their positions.

As high-profile cases involving the likes of Harvey Weinstein prove, this situation is not unique to Israel – this pattern of behaviour is experienced by people (predominantly women) all over the globe. So this series is one I feel is relatable, particularly to women, and one that can stimulate debate and drive societal change.

In terms of specific territories, I think this could do well in France – they are big fans of Israeli drama – but it could travel anywhere.

It is often said that to be successful in TV, you need a simple pitch that can be summed up in a few lines and speaks to all audiences. Well, listen to this one: two women, one an investigating judge and the other a police captain, with diametrically opposed visions of justice, discover - when their father dies – that they are half-sisters. We follow their complicated relationship through their professional and private lives.

The synopsis may be simple, but the plot unfolds into twists, turns and comedy. The series, Face à Face, is based on a dual dynamic. First, the professional ties between the two heroines, and then their intimate ties.

These two women are linked by their investigations, but totally opposed in their methods. One is inflexible, the other eccentric. One enforces the law, while the other tries to circumvent it. This Face à Face (face-off) is the spice of this comedy.

“The central theme is a universal one, It’s about sisterhood and, more generally, family ties”

The central theme of the series is a universal one. It’s about sisterhood and, more generally, family ties: the story of two sisters who hold up a mirror to us all. That’s why I think it could appeal more widely. This is not a typically French theme, but one that can be transposed to many countries.

I love watching it with my family – it’s interesting to see how everyone prefers one or other of the two sisters. There’s the investigative aspect, which always makes for a strong narrative, and also the comedy, which keeps the whole thing moving.

In France, we are fortunate to have regulations that encourage the production of local dramas, so that viewers can watch new episodes (and not reruns) almost every night on TV.

For example, on TF1, we offer two major evenings of French drama per week, on Monday and Thursday evenings. It’s the most powerful genre, capable of attracting millions of viewers in primetime – like our blockbuster H.P.I. (three seasons to date on TF1 and adapted by ABC in the USA), each episode of which has been seen by an average of 8.5 million viewers.

French drama is popular around the world, and Face à Face could be the next big international hit. The first season was seen by an average of 3.7 million on France 3, with a market share of 17.5%.

I am passionate about good television from the perspective of the viewer – and can (almost always) disassociate myself from seeing things from a professional angle.

One of my personal favourites is Leif And Billy, a long- running comedy series about two hapless, skint brothers who live together in Sweden’s northern countryside. The show has probably never been seen outside of Sweden but has an 8.3 rating on IMDb.

“Even after seven seasons, the characters just get better and the comedy more eyewateringly absurd”

I have often thought it would make a perfect format overseas as the stories could easily translate – and even after seven seasons, the characters just get better and better and the comedy more eye-wateringly absurd.

The actors playing the two lead characters have written most of the scripts. The main thread is their constant lack of money, which forces them in to ever-more desperate situations.

One of my favourite episodes is when one brother, aiming to make some cash, poses as an online (female) model in one room while his brother, surfing in the kitchen, falls in love with a mysterious online model – borrowing money from his brother to pay for his new love.

På Spåret

Production company: Varvet
Broadcaster: SVT (Sweden)

Sweden is known as an exporter of formats but has also been great at taking small, almost unknown ideas and transforming them into huge primetime hits. SVT’s winter gem, På Spåret, is based on an almost forgotten Irish idea but has been reimagined into must-see TV, drawing more than a 50% share of broadcast television every Friday.

Two teams are shown speeded-up footage en route to an international destination and, with the help of clues, try to work out where they are going. Throw in some banter from the show’s hosts and music from wellknown artists and this basic quiz has become a national treasure.

The same has happened on TV4, where a small Belgian format has been completely transformed and become the channel’s biggest hit. Så Mycket Bättre features a group of the country’s most-loved artists who spend a week on a holiday island performing versions of each other’s biggest hits but in the style of the performer, not the original. Many of the new versions have then gone on to be some of the country’s most played songs on Spotify.

Slasher is a show for daylight hours. The horror anthology, created by the iconoclastic and wonderful Aaron Martin, is too scary to watch when the sun is even a little low.

Each season explores a different horror trope. Season one, The Executioner, is about a small-town slasher; season three, Solstice, takes place over 24 hours. Flesh & Blood is about family, and then there’s Ripper. But my favourite is season two – Slasher: Guilty Party.

We meet a group of former counsellors who reunite at their camp, which has become an ‘intentional community’. We’re in the world of cabins in the woods, of revenge and ‘The Thing’: an unknown killer picking people off, one by one.

The cast includes an incredible array of Canadian talent, playing characters that are three-dimensional and carefully drawn. In any other series, intentional community would pay off as a creepy cult, but the morality of this show says ‘you should live as you want’ – until you get killed off, that is.

And killed off they are. Around 20 minutes into the first episode, there’s a moment so surprising and horrifying that I literally screamed the first time I saw it. But it’s also a delightful moment. It’s saying: “This is what you came for.”

Early in the same episode, there’s a flashback where the former counsellors are watching a horror movie and one character, played by Lovell Adams-Gray, says: “You know it’s all corn syrup. They’re not killing real people.” It’s ominous and witty.

“In Canada, we often work with lower budgets – and it’s inspiring to see this level of freedom within those constraints”

There are aspects of craft that I love in Slasher: Guilty Party – the clever and empathetic writing, the meticulous direction, photography and design, the maximalist prosthetics and SFX. There’s also the way the cabin geography is never explained but makes total sense, and the way winter is exploited as an atmospheric element.

But the thing I love most is the spirit of the show. In Canada, we often work with lower budgets – and it’s inspiring to see this level of freedom within those constraints. Slasher goes where it wants, creatively and emotionally. You feel the company of actors that populate the show bringing specificity and grace to the production. Amid the mayhem, you feel like everyone cares.

Sometimes the curiosity we have about other people, their interior lives, the distance between us and them, can feel unbridgeable. It’s a bit of a magic trick to get inside another person’s experience. Yet when that magic does happen, in those special books, movies, and art, it doesn’t feel strange or unusual. It feels like connecting to a part of yourself, like a coming home.

Little Bird, available on Crave and APTN in Canada, is a generous and patient act of storytelling that invites you in and closes that distance. This is a fictional story based on true events set within the Sixties Scoop in Canada, a time when Indigenous children were abducted and removed from their families and placed in foster care and adopted to white families. It takes place in two timelines approximately 20 years apart.

In Rezolution Pictures and OP Little Bird’s show we are invited into the experience of our lead, Esther Rosenblum/Bezhig Little Bird, played by the mesmerising Darla Contois, beautifully brought to life by directors Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Zoe Hopkins.

They create curiosity within the most intimate and relatable moments of Esther’s life: her love for her fiancé, overhearing a painful revelation at her own engagement party, her dream of becoming a lawyer in Montreal, the place she calls home. We are also immersed in fragments of memory – the way light reflects off prairie grass at sunrise, the smell of siblings sleeping next to her, the intimacies of a distant family life.

As the story progresses her discoveries begin to land with closer and closer power and proximity. She hears the way to pronounce her name, Bezhig, in Ojibway for the first time. She learns she has a twin. As the discoveries grow, so does the pain; how is it possible to not know these details of your own life?

Showrunner Jennifer Podemski and writers Hannah Moscovich and Zoe Hopkins don’t shield you from the truth, but they will guide you through it with tenderness. The return of identity, which has been fractured and interrupted in Little Bird, is connected to many heart-stopping moments, too many to describe. You must see this powerful series for yourself.

It recently sold to PBS in the United States, and would make an excellent programming choice for any country with a history of genocide or colonisation.