DURING the largest television festival in the world Series Mania at Lille in northern France, everyone paid homage to the invasion in Ukraine, but what was often unstated was how to deal with another invasion, that of the US streamer conglomerates.

As money is now pouring into Europe, where production values are cheaper and where local production is being driven by the global and Western success of the Korean series Squid Game proving that audiences around the world are no longer adverse to watching native language series with subtitles.

Public television is everywhere threatened by these private monopolies. Typical is the case of Sally Riley, who heads the drama desk of ABC television in Australia where she is also in charge of an Indigenous branch of the network.