Making series that travel: Arte’s ‘less French’ productions

With joint bases in France and Germany and the Europe-wide platform arte.tv, Arte bills itself as the ‘European Culture Channel’. Over the past decade Arte has reached an increasing audience across the continent through VOD (video-on-demand) and become an important if niche player in the French and European streaming markets. This article uses Arte’s ‘series that travel’ to examine the approaches the platform has used to diversify the appeal of its series and expand its audience both within and beyond France. The ‘series that travel’ label refers to processes at work behind the scenes such as funding and creative collaboration across national boundaries, narrative elements of mobility and travel, and a particular strand of ‘screen tourism’ cultivated by Arte. Arte’s series exemplify the cartographic function of series as they sketch out an evolving and expanding screen map of Europe. The article proposes travel as an optic through which to understand both the production strategies and the narrative and visual elements of these series. Even series that on the surface originate in one national industry are inflected with more nuanced creation and production backstories. Examples include Blackport (Arte/RUV, 2021), Countrymen (Arte/NRK, 2021), DNA/Kidnapping (Arte/TV2 Denmark, 2019–2023), Eden (Arte, 2019), Hierro (Arte/Moviestar+, 2019–2022) and No Man’s Land (Arte/Hulu, 2020–).