Show of the Week: Grand Hotel By The Sea

This compelling scripted series is billed as the first romantic period drama produced in the Netherlands, making it an immediately unique proposition.

National broadcaster KRO NCRV greenlit the show last year and it is now being taken out to international buyers, tracking the story of two families who are diametrically opposed to each other yet deeply interconnected.

Set in 1912, the show explores the rapid social change of the time and revolves around Sandra von Wiegmann, a captivating, daring but vulnerable owner of the Grand Hotel by the Sea.

While romantic period dramas travel exceptionally well internationally, it is rare to find a Dutch series with such scale, ambition and universal appeal

Susanne Frank

Her dream is to turn the property into Europe’s most coveted haven for the elite, but the path she chooses is far from straightforward.

“Grand Hotel By The Sea combines everything audiences love about premium period drama with a perspective we have not seen before,” explains Susanne Frank, director of drama at distributor ZDF Studios.

“While romantic period dramas travel exceptionally well internationally, it is rare to find a Dutch series in the genre with such scale, ambition and universal appeal.”

While Dutch TV is not known for its period drama, Grand Hotel By The Sea marks the latest in a series of collaborations between ZDFS and Fleur Winters, who previously worked on BBC acquisition Heirs of the Night. Frank says that show’s success gave ZDFS the confidence to back Winters’ latest creative vision.

“Together with its strong female characters, beautiful seaside setting and themes of love, ambition and social change, Grand Hotel By The Sea immediately stood out as a title with significant international potential,” the distribution exec adds.

While Winters created the show, she was assisted by fellow writer Astrid van Keulen and Aniëlle Webster directed, making the drama a female-led show with a female perspective.

“My aim from the outset was to create not just one strong female protagonist, but a wide range of female characters with all different backgrounds, hopes, and dreams,” Winters explains. “Characters whose stories can continue to evolve over multiple seasons.

“Anielle and Astrid connected to the characters I had created and brought further nuance, detail and authenticity also sharing their perspective on them. Hopefully, this allows viewers to recognise something of themselves across different characters and generations.”

Just as importantly, the series explores the relationships between women: how they support each other, challenge and inspire one another rather than simply compete.

Winters grew up in Noordwijk, where the show is set, and it was partly this local knowledge that gave her the belief to persist with the show, which took almost seven years to get to screen.

Grand Hotel By The Sea is unmistakably Dutch in its setting, but universal in its emotions and created to entertain the broadest audience possible

Fleur Winters

“It is an exceptional seaside town that transformed from a fishing village into an international tourist destination at a time when the Netherlands itself was undergoing enormous social change, particularly for women. It felt like the perfect place and moment to begin our story.”

The hotel itself is inspired by a real location, but Winters admits production was “intense, ambitious and incredibly rewarding.”

She continues: “We had a very tight budget, and I knew from the outset that we had to find creative ways to make the scale and production value we wanted achievable. Together with production designer Florian Legters, we decided to build the hotel in a large industrial hangar rather than a traditional black-box studio.”

It was a risk because none of the usual studio infrastructure was there, but it gave the team time, space and flexibility to create and adapt the story.

“One of our biggest challenges was connecting the interior of the hotel seamlessly to the dunes, beach and North Sea outside,” Winters says. To this, the team installed a 3 x 30-metre LED wall in the studio and connected it visually to a staircase physically built on the beach.

“We shot the beach plates ourselves and, together with DOP Aage Hollander and gaffer Thomas Jeninga, worked very precisely on matching the light. Until we saw everything come together on camera, there was definitely a moment of wondering: is this actually going to work? Thankfully, it did.”

Winters believes the show will appeal to a broad adult female audience, with its younger characters pushing boundaries helping to engage the youth demo.

For international buyers, the appeal is clear: “It is a genre that is wildly popular offering escapism, romance, costumes, love affairs, and high production value in a rich visual world. Grand Hotel By The Sea delivers all, but from a fresh perspective.

“It is unmistakably Dutch in its setting, but universal in its emotions and created to entertain the broadest audience possible.”