Still: Máxima Season 2

Máxima producer Rachel van Bommel of Millstreet Films says the success of Máxima won’t be a one-off. “I really feel like it opens doors, and other producers have said this to me. Our shows 10 years ago were good, but 10 years ago they might get a remake but wouldn’t sell as originals. I think the success of a show like Máxima can leave people thinking, ‘Oh, Dutch drama can travel!’”

Roeland Oude Nijhuis, Film Commissioner for The Netherlands, agrees: “I think the series sector really developed so much over the past 10 years, in terms of development budgets, professionalism and international exposure. I think Máxima was the first big result.”

The first season of the drama, about Máxima’s early life and her budding romance with the future king Willem-Alexander, was successful in territories as varied as Japan, Spain, Latin America and Italy. Now, season two has already shot and will launch in 2026; season three could follow.

Recent SEE NL Dutch drama showcases at major TV international markets and the global success of Máxima are just two signs that Dutch drama is growing. In 2023, Netherlands Public Broadcasting NPO became a founding member of the Northwestern Europe broadcasters’ collaboration New8, which supports co-production and distribution across The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway.

Dutch projects in New8 include Elixir, a drama about a complicated family running a large pharmaceutical company, which also performed well in its home market for NPO. New8 shows coming up are The Machine (produced by Hollands Licht), a character-driven story about the rise of Booking.com, which most people even locally don’t realise is a Dutch company; and Red Light Empire (produced by Lemming Film), a crime saga about a Jewish war refugee whose family spends decades building an empire of sex and drugs in Amsterdam’s world-famous red light district.

Sebastiaan Leeman, fiction manager at Dutch public broadcaster NPO, explains, “We make some shows that are so strong that it was a pity that only a Dutch audience sees them. In the last few we’ve made progress on production value and quality I really think those shows could have a large international reach and collaborating with the seven other public broadcasters is a great way to reach those goals.”

Producer Laurette Schillings of Topkapi Films, which created Elixir, says “It was fantastic for us, because otherwise we never could have made Elixir at that scale.”

New8 isn’t the only reason Dutch drama is booming abroad. van Bommel says that if we look at the industry compared to a decade ago, there are several improvements. Higher budgets lead to increased production values. Also, the whole global industry has also been evolving to embrace more non-English language content. “It’s also a change in how people watch content. The streamers have opened up people watching drama not only in the English language,” she adds.

It shouldn’t be ignored that Dutch reality TV formats in the past have been a huge export as well for hundreds of local remakes -- The Traitors, Deal or No Deal, Big Brother and The Voice are leading examples.

An ecosystem of support

"At NPO, they started a new strategy a few years ago to “focus on quality over quantity. We want fewer, bigger, better shows. That fuelled the possibilities of what stories people can tell,” says Leeman. Five-part aviation disaster investigation drama The Crash, backed by NPO and also now available on several international platforms, was one hit that showed such scaling up.

Leeman notes that Dutch audiences are also increasingly flocking to its digital offerings of its own VOD platform, NPO Start. Hits on the platform have included feminist tragicomedy Messed Up (now in early development for its third season) and action series The Golden Hour (which recently aired its second season).

“On-demand performance is a very strategic goal of ours, similar to the Nordics with a VOD-first approach, and it’s working well for us on the fiction side,” Leeman says. A digital push helps give a boost to a wider variety of shows, as “the linear audience is getting older, but the younger audience has an on-demand mindset,” he adds. 

NPO is also impressed by the originality of the projects coming in from Dutch creative teams – for instance Grand Hotel by the Sea, produced by Big Blue. Leeman says “We love British costume dramas, but there has never been a truly romantic costume drama in the Netherlands that aspires to match this international level. It’s told from a strong female perspective and looking at the suffrage movement at that time. That’s also important for us as a public broadcaster telling stories that reflect public values.” 

NPO is the central governing body of the Public Broadcasting System, comprised of 13 different public broadcasters which each has its own priorities. NPO tries to be a consistent industry supporter. “We as NPO are strong supporters of the Dutch creative community, we want to work together with Dutch producers, with talent. We want to support that creative community.”

Public broadcasting is not the only support mechanism -- There is no specific TV funding pot for Dutch series at the Netherlands Film Fund, but series can take advantage of the Dutch production incentive, which offers 35% rebate to qualifying high-end TV productions on their eligible Dutch spend. The cash rebate started in 2014 and opened to series in 2017.

The Netherlands also welcomes foreign shoots for series that can tap into the incentive, such as Germany’s popular Tatort as well as past shoots for episodes of Atlanta, Ted Lasso and Sense8.

Film Commissioner Oude Nijhuis says “the incentive draws in interesting projects from abroad, but the national production has really ramped up, and we see a lot of increase in quality. We get a lot of series now that do well internationally – like Máxima, Safe Harbor and more. It really feels like there is a new wave of filmmakers and series makers that are on the rise.”

Ilke Vernooij, team leader for the Series Incentive programme at the Netherlands Film Fund, adds: “I think there's also a new mindset, because we in the Netherlands are really good in making films and series, but there was something missing to really compete with the international content. After some soul searching, I think we really realized that development is such an important part of creating better, more in-depth content. The upcoming projects we see are just better developed.”

Schilling agrees- she praises NPO for giving Messed Up’s showrunner so much support. “They gave creator Eva Crutzen so much freedom on Messed Up. They also give you a lot of time for development.”

It’s not just adult fiction that’s working well. Vernooij points out that documentary series are faring well such as The Art Swindle and Fortuyn: On-Hollands as well as children’s programmes such as Hein and Saïd & Anna.

Bright futures

Maral Mohsenin wears two hats in relation to Dutch TV – she adds Dutch shows to the archive as Director Collection & Knowledge Sharing at Eye Filmmuseum, and she also frequently curates Dutch TV series for Geneva International Film Festival (GIFF) in Switzerland[NM1] . In 2025, GIFF had a Dutch focus that screened XR works and two Dutch series, Messed Up as well as light-hearted comedy This is Gonna Be Great. A 30-strong Dutch delegation attended the festival.

 “The landscape is so rich because of the tradition of filmmaking in The Netherlands,” she says. “A lot of those experienced  film production companies have been moving into series for the past few years. Some of these series they produce are receiving more and more recognition at international festivals and are being shown more globally.” She adds that those producers are well versed in co-productions from films, with Belgium being the most frequent partner country and Germany growing in recent years.

Schillings is the perfect example -- Topkapi Films, the company founded in 1994 with Frans van Gestel and Arnold Heslenfeld, had worked on hugely successful film co-productions like Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, Halina Reijn’s Instinct and Lukas Dhont’s Girl. 

About seven years ago, Topkapi started also exploring series. “In terms of co-production, we almost have to start all over again – the experience with film co-production is totally different than for TV, because it’s new people, it’s broadcasters and different funding,” Schillings says. They have very successfully learned how to navigate this landscape, working on Elixir (New8) followed by a big minority co-production of Etty, Hagai Levi’s German and Dutch-language mini-series set in Amsterdam between 1941-1943 during the Nazi occupation. The company also has two series in development at Netflix.

Creative evolution on the horizon

Whether series are commissioned by public or private broadcasters or streamers, Mohsenin is encouraged by the great diversity in TV topics emerging and creative ways showrunners are finding to present them: “Dutch cinema has a very specific identity mostly in social drama and arthouse film but for series there’s not just one format -- it’s much freer,” she says. “We see lot of innovation and creators can tell their stories in different genres.”

Van Bommel thinks one reason Máxima has been a hit is its tone – “The world is on fire, and everybody is watching the news all day. People are longing for something uplifting or hopeful to engage in and not anything that is too dark.”

Millstreet is also planning another show to shoot in 2026 that she thinks will share this lighter tone, La Vida Barcelona, about a Dutch girl who moves to Barcelona.

Schillings is also encouraged by TV audiences in the Netherlands and abroad being open to take more chances: “People are willing to watch something confronting and funny like Messed Up, because it was original. Some formulas weren’t working, so people want to have something new.”

International co-productions, and collaborations such as New8, will only help spread the love for Dutch series abroad. Oude Nijhuis sums it up: “the more we collaborate across borders, the more cultural perspectives you can get into the project. That’s always a benefit.”

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Wendy Mitchell is a contributing editor at Screen International, where she hosts The Screen Podcast; she also consults for festivals including San Sebastian, Cannes and Berlinale.