Series Mania Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

MipTV Online Plus ends on April 2. Series Mania’s Digital Forum on April 7. As virtual marketplace presentations foreseeably wind down, here area few first takes on the world’s first, and one hopes last, totally online business. More will be added shortly.

Produced by Paris-based outfit Mother Productions and sold internationally by eOne, the six-part limited series “La Garçonne” offers a playful, gender-bending spin on the period potboiler. Set during the roar of the early 1920s, the show follows a one-time war medic forced to take on not one, but two new identities after she witnesses a murder performed by a pair of government officials.

Produced by Paris-based outfit Mother Productions and sold internationally by eOne, the six-part limited series “La Garçonne” offers a playful, gender-bending spin on the period potboiler. Set during the roar of the early 1920s, the show follows a one-time war medic forced to take on not one, but two new identities after she witnesses a murder performed by a pair of government officials.

Presented as part of Series Mania’s Coming Next from France showcase, the youth-skewing series “Derby Girl” offers a fast-paced, darkly comic portrait of a disgraced former-figure skater named Lola Bouvier (Chloé Jouannet), who is offered a shot at redemption when she joins a local roller derby league, the Cannibal Unicorns.

“Operation Buffalo” is a high-end series set in Australia in 1956, at the height of the Cold War. The action mainly takes place on a top-secret military base at Maralinga, in the Australian Outback, where the British are conducting atomic bomb tests, with the connivance of the Australian government.

Contrasting human paradoxes and complexities against the cold rationality of Scandinavian civic institutions, the Danish series “Cry Wolf” presents a searing social drama built from an initially ambiguous premise.

With the world taking a seemingly dystopian turn due to the Cover-19 pandemic, “My First Family,” a high-concept series project set in an alternate world created by Maya Zaydman (“Our Boys”) and Ori Sivan (“In Treatment”), will likely strike a chord with audiences.

Twice Oscar-nominated producer Alexander Rodnyansky is to present the Russian crime drama “Frozen Land” at the Co-Pro Pitching Sessions at Series Mania (March 25 to April 7), which is an all-digital affair this year. Rodnyansky spoke to Variety about the show.

Wild Bunch TV-sold “Albatros,” Turner Latin America’s banner title “Amarres” and REInvent Studios’ globe-trotting “Peacemaker” will feature at a 54 series-strong Buyers Showcase, which launches today March 25 as a backbone of Series Mania’s online Digital Forum, Europe’s first big festival experiment in a virtual marketplace.

Four upcoming premium drama series from German production companies—“Deutschland89,” “Wild Republic,” “Algiers Confidential” and “MaPa”—have been selected for Coming Next, a section that forms part of Series Mania’s Forum program. German Films, an agency that promotes Teutonic film and TV productions, compiled the selection.

Italy’s Indigo Film, the production company behind Oscar-winner “The Great Beauty,” is in advanced stages on a TV series for the global marketplace titled “A Marriage” that intends to put the narrative of a painful divorce involving custody of a child under a microscope.

MADRID — Never has a TV Festival re-launched in such extraordinary circumstances, or using such novel means.

Streaming online via video presentations from March 25, Series Mania’s experimental Digital Forum will make or break on the quality of its centerpiece, its Co-Pro Pitching Sessions.  This year’s lineup, at least on paper, looks particularly strong.

On Wednesday, Series Mania hosts digital presentations of drama series projects developed during a writing residency attended by 12 writers from France and Israel, whose credits include leading shows like “The Bureau,” “Fauda” and “Braquo.”

In one of the first concrete instances of a new virtual TV marketplace building in Europe as a response to the COVID-19 crisis, Series Mania, which cancelled its 2020 edition in Lille, is instead launching Series Mania Digital Platform.

In one of the first concrete instances of a new virtual TV marketplace building in Europe as a response to the COVID-19 crisis, Series Mania, which cancelled its 2020 edition in Lille, is instead launching Series Mania Digital Platform.

YouTube on Stage, a live event showcasing artists on the streaming platform, has been canceled several hours before it was scheduled to take place Wednesday night in London, amid signs that growing fears over the spread of the coronavirus in the U.K. will take a toll on large public gatherings.

France’s Series Mania, one of Europe’s biggest TV festivals, has been canceled following new French government coronavirus health restrictions.

France’s Series Mania, one of Europe’s biggest TV Festivals, has been canceled following new French government coronavirus health restrictions.

German Films, the agency that promotes German cinema around the world, has unveiled the participants of the fifth edition of its Face to Face With German Films campaign, which this year is dedicated to screenwriters.

German Films, the agency that promotes German cinema around the world, has unveiled the participants of the fifth edition of its Face to Face With German Films campaign, which this year is dedicated to screenwriters.

The organizers of Series Mania have said the international TV drama event will go ahead in France this month, despite the coronavirus threat.

Margrethe Vestager, European Commission EVP for a Europe fit for the Digital Age, will open Series Mania’s Lille Dialogues, a one-day summit which this year debates regulation and commercial practice in a streaming platform age.