Series Mania 2024: 7 essential series, to discover before anyone else

Since 2010, the Séries Mania Festival and its talented team – led by general director Laurence Herszberg and artistic director Frédéric Lavigne – have annually selected the crème de la crème of series discovered around the world. The event allows us to take the pulse of global trends. You will see through our selection, which will take you from Latvia to Australia, that there is no shortage of feminine and feminist themes.

1. After the party: Living with an abusive person in your family

Created by Diane Taylor and Robyn Malcolm, After the party is an eight-episode New Zealand family drama, which immerses us in the life of Penny, a mother and teacher whose life is turned upside down when she accuses her husband, Phil, of sexual assault on a minor. Nobody believes her. Five years later, Phil comes back into her life. He moves into the home of his daughter Grace, who has had a child, and takes a teaching job.

How do you experience the deep belief that someone in your family is a child molester? From the accuser’s point of view, After the party takes you to the heart with this very current post on the topic of Me Too. Penny finds herself in a situation where fighting for the truth causes her to lose everyone close to her, including her daughter. Robyn Malcolm impresses as Penny, a headstrong and endearing woman dealing with gaslighting. Oppositely, Peter Mullan is incredibly accurate as this “good father” who no one wants to believe is a sexual aggressor. After the party paints a powerful portrait of a woman and shows us how the lives of people who dare to speak out are destroyed. We hope that this excellent series finds a broadcaster in France.

2. Boarders: Welcome to the aristocrats

Following a scandal involving students at an elite private school, five black teenagers from disadvantaged neighborhoods are offered scholarships to study at St Gilbert’s High School. Jaheim, Leah, Omar, Toby and Femi will have to be very vigilant to integrate into one of the oldest and most prestigious English schools, which has clearly called them to improve their image. Caustic and joyful, Boarders plays cleverly with classist and racist clichés to subvert them as best as possible.

We must pay tribute to the cast of brilliant young actors, composed among others of the promising Jodie Campbell, Josh Tedeku and Aruna Jalloh. Less didactic than Sex education but equally funny and political, this six-episode comedy by Daniel Lawrence Taylor can be enjoyed without moderation.

3. Videoland: Being a Lesbian in the ’90s

This Australian short-form comedy (episodes are less than 10 minutes long) will delight those nostalgic for the nineties and choker necklaces! Written by Jessica Smith, Videoland follows the daily life of Hayley, a slightly lost teenager who works in a video store. She desperately tries to seduce the girl of her dreams, Jessica. But the young cinema enthusiast struggles to find satisfactory representations in the films she consumes. Luckily, her best friend is there to give him the… worst advice!

Videoland inevitably evokes the first season of the series Dawson, in which friends Pacey and Dawson work in a video store. Filled with cinematic references (until episode 2, which focuses on Titanic’s arrival for DVD rentals!) and carried by the goofy energy of its endearing heroine, played by Emmanuelle Mattana, Videoland is a pop culture delight, with a pastel aesthetic and a strong message about the importance of LGBTQ+ representation in an age, adolescence, when we build ourselves and look for role models.

4. Show Yourself: A delightful comedy about self-confidence

Created by Alvaro Carmona, whose short series People talking winner of an award at Séries Mania in 2019, this Spanish gem follows the existential crisis of Ana, assistant to a world-famous artist like Banksy. One fine day she realizes that she is literally starting to disappear! Faced with this worrying psychosomatic illness, Ana returns to the city of her childhood, finds her brother and pursues her dream of becoming a painter.

We love the offbeat humor of Show yourselfwhich makes fun of the business world (Ana finds herself for a time in a box at the The office) and contemporary art and its egos. The series is full of inventiveness but does not lose sight of its purpose: to show us how difficult it is to know who we are and how to relate to others, in our capitalist society where appearance is more important than being. Learning to trust herself and open up to others, Ana experiences an inspiring journey of empowerment.

5. Catch Me a Killer: The fascinating story of the first female profiler

In line with the a Mind hunterthe English series Get me a killer, created by Amy Jephta, centers on Micki Pistorius, the first woman to become a profiler and practice this profession in South Africa, where the series was filmed. You have worked on around thirty serial killer cases and trained around a hundred investigators. The series begins in the mid-1990s in South Africa as Micki works on her first case, “The Train Station Strangler.” This child molester kills and rapes young black boys, while the apartheid regime has just ended.

Signed by Rene van Rooyen, the inspired creation Get me a killer he has the good taste not to indulge in sensationalism. In the lead role, actress Charlotte Hope gives a superb performance. Micki’s mix of determination and vulnerability, as she faces the sexism of this very masculine world, is reminiscent of Jodie Foster’s performance in The silence of the lambs. By placing his action in South Africa, Get me a killer explores racial issues in the country, although we can regret that most of the important characters are white (at least in the first few episodes).

6. Soviet Jeans: Sex, Paranoia and Smuggling in the Former Soviet Union

Is a political romance possible? Yes, the Latvian series answers Soviet jeans ! Created by Stanislas Tokalovs, this unique drama takes us to the late 1970s, when Latvia was under the control of the USSR and KGB agents swarmed every street corner in Riga. A young costume designer, anarchist and rock enthusiast , finds himself in a mental hospital after upsetting a government official. While his lover, the new director of a theater, tries to free him, he develops a clandestine jeans production network.

Soviet jeans it immerses us in difficult times and wonderfully recreates a totally paranoid atmosphere, which could have made it austere. Not to mention the presence of its main characters – the duo Aamu Milonoff and Karlis Arnolds Avots – whose energy and chemistry transport everything. That is, how to tell us the complicated history of a country while maintaining a light tone, halfway between a romantic comedy and a romantic one One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest !

7. 30 Days of Lust: Sexuality in all its forms

Freddy and Zeno have been perfect lovers since they were teenagers, but they have never known anything other than their relationship. Zeno encourages Freddy, who is rather reluctant, to set himself a challenge: for 30 days they can sleep with whoever they want. Freddy and Zeno’s sexual adventures take unexpected turns. Will this month of non-exclusivity strengthen their love or on the contrary break their relationship? This is the question!

In the meantime, we’re here to follow their various encounters, such as Freddy learning more about prostate orgasm, while Zeno realizes that certain fantasies (like sleeping with his former teacher) would be better left alone! This sex positive German comedy, written by Bartosz Grudziecki, explores the challenges of modern couples and the concept of exclusivity with humor and accuracy.

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