The Berlinale Series Market has quietly shifted from a business hub into a lively crossroads for TV projects that want to shape public conversation. This year’s slate showed that contemporary television can be both entertaining and civic-minded: a migrant-made superhero drama, a restrained eco-thriller and an 18th‑century tale led by women all used genre and spectacle to ask difficult questions about belonging, protest and power.
A common impulse runs through many of the projects on show: frustration with flat, stereotypical portrayals. Creators told stories of tiring pigeonholes and missed opportunities, and then set out to rewrite those narratives. Rather than surrender to caricature, they’re crafting richly drawn characters and plots that build empathy, complicate received wisdom and sometimes make audiences unsteady—in ways meant to provoke thought, not simply shock.
Genre is being reclaimed as a vehicle for representation. Esra and Patrick Phul’s All Heroes Are Bastards flips the superhero template: its immigrant protagonists are neither props nor background color but the emotional and moral core of an action-driven story. Choosing a familiar, adrenaline-pumped form does a few things at once — it hooks viewers, it opens space to probe identity and it quietly challenges who gets to be heroic on screen. Local production roots in Cologne-Porz and support from ARD Degeto helped the Phuls keep the series anchored in the community it depicts, an authenticity they insist matters as much as the spectacle.
That authenticity needs an audience strategy to matter. Makers stressed that sharp pacing, clear stakes and memorable characters help underrepresented stories travel beyond niche circles. Thoughtful marketing and release strategies — targeting younger viewers, using festival buzz, leveraging public-broadcaster platforms — are the practical gears that turn ambition into reach.
Anger crops up frequently in origin stories, but speakers reframed it as creative fuel rather than theatrical rant. Many projects begin with indignation at exclusion, then translate that feeling into craft: complex protagonists with agency, narratives that avoid reducing people to their marginality. At the same time, they don’t romanticize resistance. Teams deploy sensitivity readers, external advisors and careful research to ensure depictions of militancy or protest keep context and consequence in view.
Maze Pictures’ Phoenix exemplifies that balance. Four years in development and built on interviews with activists, lawyers and negotiators, the series charts how committed citizens sometimes drift toward illegal tactics without glamorizing the slide. By following protesters and the legal apparatus that responds to them, Phoenix aims to explain the currents that lead to radicalization while showing its costs. The producers track impact closely — engagement, sentiment and referral paths — to see whether the drama spurs constructive debate or risks inflaming audiences.
Not all the market’s stories turn toward the present. Pandora da Cunha Telles’ The Marquise uses the 18th century as a mirror for contemporary questions about agency and power. Set largely in a convent, it foregrounds small, domestic rebellions alongside overt political acts, offering textured female characters whose resistance is as intimate as it is public.
Across conversations at the market, a throughline emerged: good intentions need infrastructure. Public broadcasters, co-production forums, development labs and festivals are more than prestige points; they’re the practical openings that get diverse voices into writers’ rooms and onto screens. When craft, institutional support and strategic thinking meet, television can do more than entertain — it can shift what audiences see and, sometimes, how they think.