When The Returned (French: Les Revenants), a French drama with English subtitles, made its U.S. television debut on the Sundance Channel this past October, a small but vocal following formed around it. Through the eight-episode first season, fans were taken on a cerebral thrill ride, with heightened intrigue promised in seasons to come.
This has left American fans, accustomed to quick turnarounds on new episodes and seasons, wanting more, and soon. However, since The Returned follows a European model of production, there will be at least a year between seasons. Shooting just began in January for the season two, which will air in France on the premium pay channel Canal Plus prior to its U.S. release.
In the past, the trans-Atlantic journey of television shows has been one-sided — American shows move over to European markets, get subtitles and either make a splash or fizzle out. The Returned is just one example of a show trying to do the opposite. Borgia (Netflix), a papal historical drama, is produced by French company Atlantique Productions, but was shot in English and distributed in North America by Netflix.
And there are more to come, as French studios and television channels start producing shows in English, presumably to be packaged to an American audience. Not to mention that Canal Plus is fully owned by Vivendi, the European leader in digital entertainment and content (Vivendi also owns music giant Universal Music). Vivendi’s goal is clearly to become a global content producer.
All this begs the questions: Can the European model quench the thirst of a rabid U.S. audience? Will American audiences wait around from season to season?
Take a show like The Office, which should give an idea in the expectation gap between European and American audiences. The U.K. version lasted only 12 episodes split into two seasons 14 months apart. The U.S. version, pretty much a frame-for-frame adaptation, just finished a nine-season, 201-episode run. Every time you turned around, there seemed to be a new Office episode. Both were equally revered in their homeland.
While The Office is a cautionary tale, many other, more recent shows bode well for European crossovers. AMC’s Breaking Bad has set a new standard for television drama, and other current, popular shows like Mad Men (AMC), Game of Thrones (HBO) and the miniseries True Detective (HBO) take long gaps between seasons. Much of this popularity is due to the proliferation of secondary providers, like Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and iTunes, where audience members can catch up on (or discover) shows in between seasons.
This new market means programs and production houses can worry less about first-day sales and more about creating quality programming that will move the dial through word of mouth. For shows like The Returned, the year or so between seasons is not a negative; if anything, it will give the Canal Plus / Sundance Channel program a chance to groundswell an entirely new audience from the internet.
As a compulsively watchable show tailor-made for binge-viewing, The Returned should thrive, not fail, in the diverse, splintered American television market.