{"id":306541,"date":"2026-02-19T18:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T18:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/306541\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T18:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T18:00:10","slug":"could-grand-hotel-by-the-sea-be-the-netherlands-downton-abbey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/306541\/","title":{"rendered":"Could ‘Grand Hotel by the Sea’ Be the Netherlands\u2019 ‘Downton Abbey’?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: The Netherlands is TV hotspot for formats as the home of shows including The Traitors and Big Brother. It has not, however, ever had a rep for period drama. Grand Hotel by the Sea<\/a> is attempting to change that, and ZDF Studios<\/a> has boarded it for international sales, with presales on the agenda at the London TV Screenings<\/a> next week.<\/p>\n

\n\tBilled as the first romantic period drama produced in the Netherlands, Grand Hotel by the Sea was created by Fleur Winters, whose credits include The Crash and vampire series\u00a0Heirs of the Night, which sold to the BBC in the UK among others.<\/p>\n

\n\tWinters\u2019 prodco Big Blue is making Grand Hotel by the Sea as a co-production with Dutch pubcaster KRO\u2011NCRV and Belgian broadcaster VRT. Filming has wrapped and the series will be a big launch at the end of the year. With Winters serving as showrunner, Astrid van Keulen\u00a0(The Club) the writer, and Ani\u00eblle Webster (Nemesis) directing, it is a female-led show.<\/p>\n

\n\tSet between 1912 and 1919 against the backdrop of a grand seaside hotel on the North Sea, it follows Sandra, played by Thekla Reuten (In Bruges). She inherits the luxury seaside hotel from her late husband. Determined to transform it into a premier destination for Europe\u2019s elite, she faces both societal pressure and personal challenges as a woman in the early 20th century. As the hotel transforms, however, so do the women connected to it.<\/p>\n

\n\tWinters has been working on the show since she set up Big Blue almost seven years ago. \u201cI was inspired by so many Shondaland productions and other female creators, and also by the creators of Downton Abbey, who were really daring to use this genre as a vehicle to tell very important stories,\u201d she tells Deadline. \u201cYou can have\u00a0 a huge impact by making something very accessible and using romance and very universal love stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe hotel setting offers a ready-made precinct for a cast of characters to come and go, and the series also takes place at a moment when the role of women is changing. \u201cMost of the women had been fisherman\u2019s wives and now all of a sudden they could start working in a hotel, and then you have the national movements of the women\u2019s suffrage happening at the same time\u2026it just felt like a breeding ground for drama, a lot of things were shifting at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs showrunner, Winter was across the production and creative. \u201cI wanted to do a period piece and in order to do it said that we need to build a large studio set, I wanted to [build] this hotel set, which had never been done like this before,\u201d she explains of the task in front of the team ahead of production. \u201cI said let\u2019s build the hotel and make sure that that 60% of the script is there, so that we can maximize its use.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe externals also take in the seafront and village settings, and the result is a sweeping eight-part Dutch period drama. ZDF Studios is shopping it to global buyers at the London Screenings. With romance in vogue and period shows always in fashion, we will be on the lookout for presales.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGrand Hotel by the Sea offers everything international audiences love: a richly detailed world, compelling characters, and a sweeping emotional narrative set during a fascinating period of European history,\u201d said Tim Gerhartz, Chief Commercial Officer, ZDF Studios. \u201cThe series delivers both cinematic quality and heartfelt storytelling, and we are proud to bring it to viewers worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: The Netherlands is TV hotspot for formats as the home of shows including The Traitors and Big…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,144307,61,60,140574,282,49897,49898],"class_list":{"0":"post-306541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-grand-hotel-by-the-sea","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-london-tv-screenings","13":"tag-tv","14":"tag-tv-markets","15":"tag-zdf-studios"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}