Where next for microdramas in Europe?

With titles such as Bedroom to Boardroom and Found a Homeless Billionaire Husband for Christmas, microdramas have not always been taken too seriously by some in Europe’s scripted industry.

The genre is seen as part of a broader encroachment on audience attention alongside gaming and social media, rather than as a direct rival to the production values and quality of storytelling that traditional drama aspires to.

However, a strand of panels at Series Mania Forum last week underlined that the vertical medium - made up of between 40 to 80 episodes lasting one to three minutes - is now being explored more deeply.

In 2025, Europe was responsible for consuming only 4% of output, according to figures presented by Beatrice Rossmanith, founder and director of Mothership Media, as part of the Forum’s Innovation & Digital-first Storytelling’ strand.

North America followed with 5%, Latin America was at 16% and China at 54%. The global market, meanwhile, is predicted to be worth $26bn by 2030 with China responsible for two thirds of this.

The tectonic plates of the industry are already shifting, though.

Designed to be highly addictive and using AI at the core of its production model, the industry has grown so fast some are wondering whether this scripted microcosm is perhaps about to experience its own peak TV moment.

In China alone, almost two million episodes a year are produced, with complaints relating to originality, quality, volume and repetitive storylines common.

Yet this familiarity can also be a positive for some viewers. “Audiences seek reassurance in an unpredictable world,” said Hasret Ozcan, president of Inter Medya, the Turkish production company behind Bedroom to Boardroom, explaining the emotional and psychological need that microdramas can satisy.

The seemingly similar narratives are exaggerated further by the mechanics of social media, she added during a panel on the genre in Lille.

”Repetitive patterns in storytelling drive algorithms,” Ozcan added. To address the criticisms of repetition and originality, Inter Medya uses a writers room (as traditional scripted does) to create narratives that are unique yet within the conventions of microdramas.

Steve Matthews, head of scripted and creative at Banijay Entertainment, summed up the challenge for producers by adding that creators need to “get just the right amount of predictability - but not too much.”

Red Flag moment

While consumption of microdramas in China and the US has soared, there was a sentiment amongst some in Lille that the genre’s potential in Europe - other than as a potential marketing tool for their traditional scripted shows (in the same way social media friendly clips are put on Instagram or TikTok or shared as extra content on YouTube) - is currently limited.

Issues such as lower production values and the aforementioned predictability of storylines might hamper demand, but Rossmanith highlighted two shows that have already broken the boundaries of the medium, suggesting further growth to come.

Red Flag is a ‘vertical thriller’ that was greenlit by Belgian public broadcaster VRT, with the show exploring the boundaries between personal freedom and surveillance.

South Korea’s My Characters Are In Love With Me, from Studio Target, takes an alternative tack by playing with the tropes of microdrama. The storyline follows an author of romantic novels who wakes up to find her most dangerous male characters living with her.

Such series are pushing the evolution of typical microdrama storylines, but in a later panel, Marianne Furevold-Boland, head of drama at NRK (and winner of this year’s Woman in Series Award) pointed to how the drama industry has historically always experimented with form.

She used the Norwegian PSB’s breakout hit Skam (2015-2017) - whose episodes were as short as 15 minutes - as an early example of this. With young audiences today more likely to consume vertically than horizontally, the possibilities of what creators can do within microdrama will no doubt be explored exhaustively.

Indeed, this exploration is already in evidence, with even major groups such as Banijay moving into the genre.

The company revealed ambitious microdrama projects from Germany, Finland and Iberia last week, underlining that some Europeans are already taking the medium more seriously as its potential continues to grow.