Between grammars of transnationalism and hyper-localisation: Strategies of Netflix and Amazon in transnational streaming

Abstract

This article deals with the different strategies transnational streamers use to integrate programming in different markets, specifically looking at language and how it is couched within a wider network of strategies to formulate transnational appeal. The article will look specifically at German language programming on Netflix and Amazon, and the different strategies they use to appeal to viewers. Netflix relies on what I call a ‘grammar of transnationalism’ and the use of so-called ‘high German’ while Amazon relies on a strategy of localisation by relying on local stars. Further, localisation relies on the linking with local cultural histories of television. The comparison illuminates how platforms operate in the current streaming environment.

In episode 7 of Amazon’s German limited series Perfekt Verpasst (The Perfect Miss, Amazon, 2024), titled ‘Anita and Steve’, the main characters Maria (Anke Engelke) and Ralf (Bastian Pastewka) pretend to be other people. At a visit to an expensive restaurant, Ralf pretends not to understand German and only speaks English. However, he speaks with a pronounced German accent, and he sometimes doesn’t know the vocabulary, inserting German words instead. The waiter reacts confused, but tries to remain professional, contributing to the humour of the scene. The series is not available dubbed, only subtitled, emphasising that the series is geared towards a German-speaking audience, not a transnational one (which will be explored later). However, the scene is indicative of Amazon’s strategy of localisation, especially when viewed in comparison with another successful streaming platform, Netflix.

In comparison, the Netflix drama series Die Kaiserin (The Empress, Netflix, 2022-) has a different approach to engaging its audience. The series deals with the Austrian empress Elisabeth (Devrim Lingau), nicknamed Sissi, a figure of massive importance for German cinema, as explained below. In a scene in the episode ‘A Letter From the Emperess’ (02/03), Sissi and her husband, Emperor Franz Joseph (Philip Froissant) visit the family of a young man who tried to assassinate her, and was part of a terrorist group fighting for the independence of Lombardy, and died. The conversation happens both, in Italian and German, with Elisabeth making efforts to speak in Italian. She expresses her forgiveness, and at the end, shares an emotional moment with the mother of the family, who advises her to protect her own children. The scene incorporates different languages, the transcultural communication between mothers, and highlights the compassionate world view promoted by the series. The scene serves to show the formulation of transnational appeal of Netflix texts to highlight multilingualism and shared emotions.

I start out with these examples from series that couldn’t be more different, because their approach to localisation is exemplary of the two approaches Netflix and Amazon take to their transnational series: localisation, which emphasises a distinct culture on Amazon, and a search for the ‘universal’ values that unite us on Netflix. What I want to look at here is the way two streamers address localisation, especially in the German-speaking market. I will look at the Netflix series Die Kaiserin and the German limited series Perfekt Verpasst on Amazon as well as linkages with Amazon’s transnational streaming franchise LOL: Last One Laughing with a focus on LOL: Last One Laughing Germany (see Jenner, 2023). I am interested in the way these series link in with broader strategies by Netflix and Amazon to address a transnational audience via either linking in with a wider transnationalism of the platform or with local television traditions. Netflix and Amazon do not represent these strategies exclusively, but the way these two streamers are organised as platforms makes these strategies of investing in local content relevant. For the purposes of this article, I distinguish between the concept of grammars of transnationalism and what Amazon terms hyper-localisation (see Ramachandran, 2022 or Meir, 2025). The former refers to the concept I (2018) have developed to understand texts constructed to have almost universal appeal and are legible outside the specific source culture. The latter concept needs to be understood in relative terms. For national television, localisation can mean focus on specific regions within a country. For transnational streaming, I use the term to describe the focus on a country with culturally specific reference points, and legibility outside the source culture is not a major concern. In other words, where Netflix produces series that are transnational from the outset, Amazon produces texts that are localised.

What underlies this is the idea that the term streaming wars does not do justice to the fact that different platforms are structured differently and pursue different goals (Hunting and Gray, 2023). Similarly, strategies for transnational streaming integrate into different markets and cultural histories of television. The platforms approach this through self-produced Originals meaning ‘content commissioned and funded in part or whole by an SVOD service’ (Petruska and Woods, 2019, 51). This aligns with the structure of these platforms, as the comparison between Netflix and Amazon will show. Thus, strategies of transnationalisation and localisation show how these transnationally operating platforms function within a broader media system of streaming. This article explores different strategies Netflix and Amazon employ to integrate into transnational markets, specifically the German-language one. In doing this, it draws on a range of fields, including transnational television studies, industry studies, and cultural and ideological analyses.

This article starts by outlining how transnational television is defined and how streaming poses a problem to this understanding. It then looks specifically at the way the German Netflix series Die Kaiserin adopts a transnationalism typical for the platform. The article then looks at Amazon’s Perfekt Verpasst and its linkages with the German version of LOL, LOL: Laugh Out Loud Germany (Amazon, 2021-) as well as the way the platform draws on local television history. As such, Netflix and Amazon show different strategies of transnationalism which are closely linked with the structure of these platforms and their wider goals.

Transnational television and domestication

Steven Vertovec defines transnationalism as follows:

When referring to sustained linkages and ongoing exchanges among non-state actors based across national borders – business, non-government organizations, and individuals sharing the same interests (by way of criteria such as religious beliefs, common cultural and geographic origins) – we can differentiate these as ‘transnational’ practices and groups (referring to their links functioning across nation states). (2009, Kindle location 187-93)

While much of streaming operates nationally or in a limited number of markets, companies like Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, and Apple compete transnationally. Competition, thus, takes different shapes in different markets. While Hulu and HBO Max, for example, are big competitors in the US, Sky TV’s platforms, usually more rooted in broadcast TV’s traditions, and those of Public Service Broadcasters (PSB), play a vital role elsewhere.

Transnational television has a long tradition and has been studied from a variety of directions. Various scholars have studied it from the industry perspective, observing economic flows (Bielby and Harrington, 2008; Chalaby, 2005, 2009, 2022). Others observe audiences and the way migrant communities use television (Aksoy and Robins, 2005). Perhaps most productively, Joseph Straubhaar managed to bring the perspectives together in World Television (2007) invoking concepts like cultural proximity to understand flows of programming. Adrian Athique (2016) grapples with audience research from a variety of fields within media studies to understand the complexity of a transnational media audience. A common concern for American programmes imported into other markets has been around questions of cultural imperialism. However, Milly Buonanno argues,

The domestic US market is not only enormous, but is very much a mixture of different ethnic groups from different geographic areas and with different cultural heritages: a population essentially of immigrants. (2008, 97).

As a way of bringing together this heterogenous audience,

it was necessary to develop a production capacity with a high degree of universalism; in other words, to pursue the ‘lowest common denominator’, as it is often scathingly called. The formulae, structures, themes, characters and values had to be accessible and recognizable to people from different cultures. (2008, 97)

As such, the dominance of American content becomes more complex than a simplistic label of cultural imperialism suggests. The streaming era brings different questions with it, though issues of cultural imperialism have remained salient, with big transnational streaming companies based in the US. However, local content remains popular and especially Netflix and Amazon have invested in local content in different ways, as explored below. Streaming and transnationalism have been important topics in academic discussion since Netflix’s transnational expansion in the mid-2010s. The discussion has focused on Netflix and both, industrial and thematic flows (for example Lobato, 2019; Stolz, 2021; Chalaby, 2022; Petruska, 2023). Transnational texts need to connect to different markets, but also domestically. Traditionally, imported television is integrated through various editing techniques into local television schedules. Examples of this can be dubbing or the editing out of scenes to adjust to local cultural conditions. Joanna Breidenbach and Ina Zukrigl (1998) mobilise the metaphor of the dance of cultures to theorise the various inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies in the way we make sense of our own and other cultures in a globalised world. Streaming and the way it deals with transnational television differs greatly from traditional broadcast television. The context, after all, is the streaming platform itself, not local schedules.

Transnational streamers have locally specific catalogues. As Roman Lobato points out in 2019, different media policies circumscribe media, specifically the balance between local or regional content and international imports. To grasp this, Lobato has proposed looking at catalogues within different national contexts. Cathrin Bengesser et al. (2024) define catalogue research as follows:

In studies of VoD catalogues, a distinction can be made between research that concerns catalogues as (structured) databases, and research that is concerned with the presentation of items within catalogues through publication strategies, algorithms, or interfaces. (2024, 3)

A central aspect is that, even though several streaming platforms are transnational, licensing territories are not, so catalogues of licensed content will differ in each country. This is particularly important for services like Netflix with one centralised access point (Netflix.com), where available content is primarily decided via IP address and the associated location. The focus here, however, is on self-produced Originals on these platforms, which are available in all the markets they operate in, rather than licenced content, though they can often work in tandem with each other, as shown below in relation to Amazon.

Categories like ‘imported’ and ‘exported’ seem to lose meaning when platforms offer a variety of self-produced Originals commissioned and shown in all the markets they operate in on the same day. Further, social media allows for an immediate transnational debate. As Rhiannon Bury (2021) explains, this allows for immediate transnational communication on platforms like Reddit. Industry scholar Jean K. Chalaby (2022) suggests that the theoretical frameworks to conceptualise transnational television become insufficient in the face of contemporary transnational streaming. Looking at the texts produced for the streaming platforms, it becomes clear how much the identities of the platforms influence what texts are produced and what strategies are used in the dissemination of texts. The discussion below focuses on Netflix and Amazon to explore this further.

Netflix and Grammars of transnationalism

Netflix uses the strategy of developing texts with a more or less universal appeal by invoking certain textual characteristics, or what B. G.-Stolz (2021) stipulates is Least Offensive Programming (LOP) on a global scale. I have been working on a list of what elements constitute what I call a grammar of transnationalism for Netflix texts since 2018. This list includes (1) genres that allow for a relatively apolitical engagement with the subject matter, for example through the building of alternate diegetic universes. (2) An adoption of a value system in line with supranational institutions, like the UN. Evan Elkins (2021) argues that these values are specifically tied to the American centre-left political ideologies of the Obama era. (3) Linguistic diversity, which has since been replaced by the platform’s investment in dubbing and subtitles, which Netflix uses to tie franchises together (Jenner, 2023). Further points are the investment in (4) nostalgia to invoke primarily American transnationally successful popular culture products (see Jenner 2021a). And (5) the tagging system, which de-emphasises language and other elements that establish local specificity to highlight themes and genre frameworks to enable the Netflix algorithm (Jenner 2021b). Resulting from these points comes (6) a specific approach to diversity, which emphasises visual diversity over narrative, and the quantifiable over qualitative changes to storytelling (Jenner 2024). This grammar of transnationalism is specific to Netflix, in the sense that other streamers develop their own ways to appeal transnationally. Not every characteristic is applicable to all the texts Netflix produces and strategies can shift. For example, Netflix increasingly invests in localised reality TV, such as different reality TV transnational streaming franchises (see Jenner, 2023) like Love is Blind or Kaulitz & Kaulitz (Netflix, 2024-), which follows two German popstars in the US and also features international star Heidi Klum.

The level of localisation that can be found here is still relatively transnational, as representation of regions or national debates remains subordinate to the transnational LOP television that highlights commonalities over differences. Timothy Havens (2018) identifies this as what he terms conspicuous localism,

All of this production money leads to a second significantly different feature on contemporary transnational television drama, what I would call ‘conspicuous localism’. A major part of the expense of these series comes from the variety of locations in which they are shot and the extensive use of HD cinematography to create a strong sense of place, unlike most co-productions in television’s past. (2018, online)

Benjamin M. Han et al. (2024) further identify a formulation of authenticity to articulate what they term a speculative Koreanness in the platform’s Korean texts: a transnationally palatable, more or less monolithic South Korean identity. The call to cultural authenticity is, for example, formulated through language, or signifiers of local culture (like post boxes, food culture, or other ‘ordinary’ objects). As they argue,

Speculative Koreanness is a mode of representation that desires to remain faithful to the specificities of Korean national culture while also revealing how culturally diverse representations of Korea are challenged by the platform’s desire for global market expansion at the cost of a more nuanced mode of cultural diversity. (Han et al., 2024, 2)

The authors argue,

the shift toward cultural authenticity which embodies markers of local particularities in international content makes it more appealing to the global audience. (Han et al., 2024, 9)

Thus, a transnational monolithic audience responds to more or less ‘universal’ themes (as explored below), but this is invested with local particularities. In Korean dramas, perhaps more than for other transnational series, genre plays an important role, as the country’s most successful exports are graphic horror films. Authenticity is, thus, defined narrowly, often viewed through principles that organise American culture.

An example of this is the German series Die Kaiserin, a biography based on the Austrian empress Elisabeth, who married the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I in 1854 and was assassinated in 1898. She was particularly renowned for bringing compassion to the stiff Austrian empire, uniting various competing factions within 19^th century Europe. Within post-World War II German popular culture, the story of empress Elisabeth, nicknamed Sissi, is central, because of a trilogy of films by the Austrian director Ernst Marischka between 1955 and 1957 (Sissi, Marischka, 1955, Sissi: Die junge Kaiserin, Marischka, 1956; Sissi: Schicksalsjahre einer Kaiserin, Marischka, 1957). ¹ Maria Fritsche argues that post-WW II Austria, which had voluntarily annexed itself to Nazi Germany during WWII, aimed to re-establish a sense of cultural identity and ‘cultural elites ransacked the Austro-Hungarian Empire for symbols and clichés to provide the disoriented Austrian people with a positive historical identity’ (2013, 71). In this, nostalgia for the Habsburg empire became dominant:

The film directors Ernst Marischka and Franz Antel were at the forefront in creating an idyllic image of ‘Austria’s last happy time’, as one advertisement called it. Their films portrayed the last decades of the Habsburg Empire as a glorious time, with a fatherly emperor presiding over a multi-ethnic society living in harmony. (2013, 71)

Germany was, of course, equally disoriented as Austria and eagerly accepted the image of German-language heroism provided here. The Sissi trilogy remains a staple of German-language popular culture and is shown every year around Christmas on broadcast television. Though other films and television shows based on the historical period and the figure of Sissi exist, the cultural impact of the 1950s films remains the dominant force all newer, often more historically accurate versions, are compared against. The Netflix series, with frequent nudity and sex scenes stands in stark contrast to the 1950s films, which promote a clean image of the nuclear family. The Netflix series is in many respects a deliberate provocation, though this is expressed more through the shock-value of nudity and sex scenes than an in-depth contemplation of European politics and its reverberance through time.

To apply the grammar of transnationalism here, the first point to explore is genre. I term the genre descriptor costume drama here, though I use it synonymously with period drama. German exports are hardly associated with the genre to the same degree Korean exports are aligned with horror films. As argued above, however, the Sissi films are central to German popular culture, also signalling a conspicuous localism that highlights more the fictionalised historical figure than the real-life historical one. Faye Woods, using the term period drama, defines it as follows:

Period Drama reconstructs a past we can never truly know, whose documentation and preservation has itself been highly selective and political, so it needs to be understood as a blend of realism and fantasy (2022, 1).

Of course, as Woods implies, this means that the dramatisation of history serves an ideological agenda in the way history is interpreted. In this regard, however, transnationalism is difficult. The Austrian empire once covered large parts of Europe, after all, and protest movements in Austria itself, Italy, or Hungary developed. As such, the emperor’s drive for power and domination is hardly politically ‘neutral’. The Austrian empire doesn’t exist anymore and it was not a colonial empire, so its influence was limited to Europe, making it less controversial than others, which makes it easier to connect beyond German-speaking markets. Nahuel Ribke and Wayne (2024) however, point out that it remains elusive how well the series does connect beyond home market. In terms of genre, it is important to highlight that most self-produced originals on Netflix are dramas. Even more light-hearted content like the German series How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast) (Netflix, 2019-) is a dramedy or, more specifically, teen series, mixing melodramatic elements with scenes of comedy, rather than a straightforward comedy.

In terms of values, the emphasis is on the former Bavarian princess Sissi, who was known for compassion in the stiff environment of the 19^th century Viennese court. This already signals an ideological outlook, which highlights compassion over logical, at times cold-hearted, rationality, and authoritarianism. This emphasis on emotion furthers domestic storylines, like the relationship between the main character and her children, and more public shows of compassion. Elkins (2021) argues when he ties Netflix series specifically to the Obama White House that an emphasis lies on a compassionate form of neoliberal capitalism. While this version of capitalism criticises extreme class stratification and exploitation, it does not criticise wealth per se or propose different economic systems. As such, the critique at the heart of Netflix programming is a compassionate capitalism over class exploitation and almost sociopathic versions of capitalism. These capitalist critiques are visible in a range of the streamer’s self-produced Originals, such as Ojing-eo geim (Squid Game, Netflix, 2021-5), which criticises unchecked power and exploitation of poverty.

The third point of the grammar of transnationalism is linguistic diversity, and Die Kaiserin, in particular, requires some discussion in this regard. Here, it is important to acknowledge different strategies Netflix has adopted to language and translation in its short history of self-producing original series. Its first few original productions from Orange is the New Black (Netflix, 2013-19) onwards featured linguistic diversity, with the platform especially trying to attract a Latin American audience with Spanish-language content. Large parts of Orange is the New Black or Narcos (Netflix, 2015-17) are in Spanish. First transnational series were often Spanish-language, in line with the streamer’s dominance in Latin America, like the Mexican Club de Cuervos (Club of Crows, Netflix, 2015-19). Die Kaiserin features passages in French and Italian, which reflects this strategy. In 2017, Netflix launched the Hermes translation programme, investing heavily in subtitling and dubbing, including English-language dubbing, a practice uncommon for the market. This included some experimentation with strategies to dubbing, such as the English-language dubbing by casts for the German series How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast) or the French series Plan Coer (The Hook-Up Plan) (Netflix, 2018-22) (see Jenner, 2021a). However, this has now changed to dubbing with different accents, mostly generically American or British, though, for example Call My Agent: Bollywood (Netflix, 2021-) is dubbed with generic Indian accents. However, Tessa Dwyer (2018) explains the prominence of English in subtitling and the relevance of the adoption of English as a second language, which likely only increased with the relevance of English as the language of the internet. Summarising research by Phillipe Meers (2004) she argues that, in Belgium,

local audiences consider American English the film language par excellence and tend to attach notions of otherness to domestic productions, considered conspicuously national and geographically bound in comparison to the fluid, transnational ‘core’ symbolised by US screen culture. (Dwyer 2018, 42)

Since the US market is massive and diverse, its transnational appeal seems somewhat obvious. This embodies what Breidenbach and Zukrigl (1998) conceptualise via the metaphor of the dance and the various idiosyncrasies of defining an ‘other’ in a globalised world. However, English-language dubbing on Netflix usually does not go beyond generic American, British, or Indian accents. This is an ideological choice in itself, as Irene Ranzanto (2010) points out when arguing that translation choices regarding accents can eradicate differences between local cultures or reinforce stereotypes. Francesca Chiara Ferrari offers the concept of cultural ventriloquism to conceptualise dubbing in her study of Italian translation choices (2011). Ferrari argues that, in the 1990s, general tendencies for whitewashing also manifested themselves in dubbing ‘in the modification or complete erasure of ethnic differences, which are usually domesticated or reconstructed according to stereotypical and familiar national narratives’ (2011, 19).

The German-speaking market, in as far as it is geographically bound, consists of Germany, Austria and parts of Switzerland. Yet, Netflix generally doesn’t work with demographic data and doesn’t share geographical data (Wayne and Uribe Sandoval 2021). Ribke and Wayne (2024) argue that, given the lack of published geographical data, it ultimately remains unknown where viewers are located, though they highlight that the data underlying public-facing records like Global Top 10 ratings is messy. This means that we cannot assume transnational content is transnationally watched, though Netflix furthers the narrative by highlighting ‘success’ (Wayne and Sandoval 2021). Further, Ribke and Wayne find that the unequal investment by the platform in American and what Netflix calls ‘local language’ content creates false equivalences in the system.

While there are regional accents and national dialects in Germany, there is also high German, which is the Hanoverian accent in Niedersachsen in North-West Germany. The language of German TV, film, and dubbing is high German, though this is not spoken in Austria and Switzerland, which have distinct dialects. This is a problem when it comes to Die Kaiserin. While the empress Sissi is central to German popular culture and Elisabeth herself was a princess of Bavaria (before German kingdoms united into a country) in one of the many ways German and Austrian culture are merged, she is a figure of the Austrian empire. As such, the absence of spoken Austrian, even by Austrian revolution leaders, is notable, even conspicuous. Die Kaiserin’s choice of language is an ideological choice that integrates it with the grammar of transnationalism. The problem that emerges is less demands for historical accuracy, and more the overwriting of regional, even national dialects. This is important insofar as it reiterates a ‘dominance’ of specific accents and dialects over others, which implies power hierarchies. It needs to be noted that another German-Austrian Netflix-produced limited series, Freud (Netflix, ORF, 2020), exists which features Austrian dialect, creating a much more varied picture of the use of regional dialects in transnational content. Yet, this series was co-produced with Austrian PSB ORF, framing it within a public service mandate.

Within the grammar of transnationalism, the series embodies nostalgia. Nostalgia is not inherent to costume drama, but within the confines of the LOP programming allows for the depiction of the past without offering an interpretation. Die Kaiserin plays on nostalgia for several things: First, in times of right-wing electoral gains in Austria and Germany, the series invokes the times of the Austrian empire and of the power and strength thereof. As a second point, the series invokes nostalgia for the Sissi films and the clean-cut image projected in post-War German and Austrian cinema, which relied heavily on the emotional register of nostalgia. Thirdly, the image presented of the Austrian empire puts an emphasis on style, with a focus on clothes, hair or architecture. Die Kaiserin, admittedly, focuses on the darker political realities of Austrian history and, in line with centre-left political ideologies of the Obama era, lands on diplomacy over war as a central strategy, which aligns well with the main characters’ insistence on compassion and compassionate politics.

While the series engages in colourblind casting, its focus is more on cultural and ethnic diversity. In this regard, the diversity is often more than visual signifier and also shows narrative engagement. This is hardly common for the streamer’s series and deserves to be highlighted.

Amazon and localisation

Netflix’s strategy is compared here with Amazon’s streaming platform Amazon Prime Video (APV). The focus here is on APV and how it draws on cultural history, though the platform’s relationship with the broader company always needs to be kept in mind. The streaming platform is framed as a ‘benefit’ of Amazon Prime subscriptions. Originally conceived as an annual subscription that offers shipping at no extra cost no matter how many items are ordered, Prime now includes a variety of digital services, including a limited library for Amazon Music, and streaming films and series. Karen Petruska notes that the system of ‘benefits’ resembles the system of commercial broadcast TV,

For Amazon, content and distribution are interdependent, with television broadcasting, retail product, and other service lines creating multiple points of engagements for Prime members, increasing their own dependence upon Amazon as a vendor (2018, 432).

Thus, it is not possible to argue that subscribers are attracted by its streaming service over other benefits of Prime and the company is as tight-lipped about viewing figures as other streamers. Of course, viewing figures can tell us about the cultural significance of a programme, but since the primary goal of the platform is binding customers to the Amazon ecosystem, data on viewings may be subordinate to data on what else subscribers buy on the platform.

In the literature, Amazon is often discussed as a whole company, rather than individual parts. Emily West (2022) identifies a system of convenience for cultural products but doesn’t put the individual platforms in relation to other platforms within that industry. Swiatek (2021) emphasises the way the company creates dependency through products like the Kindle and eBooks for it. In these analyses, APV is often understood in economic terms and as part of a massive global company. Of course, Amazon as streaming platform cannot be understood independent from Amazon in its various iterations and company branches, especially as company goals and ambitions shape how the streaming platform is structured. As important as it is to understand the platform as part of the Amazon ecosystem, it also exists in relation to other streaming platforms, as it adopts many of their company strategies, while also exploring its own, distinct path. Petruska makes clear that ‘TV is not a hobby for Amazon, nor is it a side hustle. Instead, it is a thoroughly integrated piece of a much larger commercial structure’ (2023, 426). Her industry studies analysis understands the company specifically via Amazon video but highlights that streaming is integrated within the larger company, or rather, an entire universe of commerce. Hence, competition with other streamers is not the primary concern, but rather binding customers to the Amazon ecosystem of products and services. It is this tension between the whole of Amazon and the way company branches relate to different cultural industries that needs to frame our understanding of it.

The strategy of domestication, or what the company calls ‘hyper-localisation’ (Ramachandran, 2022) of Amazon series is in line with the overall structure of Amazon. Unlike with Netflix, there is no central site users navigate to which then reroutes them to local catalogues. Instead, users navigate to national versions of the site, such as amazon.it, amazon.es or amazon.br. There is a central version of the app, but accounts are tied to a specific country. As such, localisation is inherent in the structure of the platform. Because of that, it is, perhaps, not surprising that Amazon has invested in franchises, or what I call transnational streaming franchises (Jenner, 2023). Netflix has several franchises interested in showing similarities between cultures, such as the reality TV franchises Love is Blind or Love on the Spectrum or the European series Criminal (Criminal: France, Criminal: Germany, Criminal: Spain (all Netflix, 2019) and Criminal: UK (Netflix, 2019-20)). Amazon, however, capitalises on the localisation of its own websites, producing local versions of programmes, such as the Modern Love franchise or the reality competition show LOL: Last One Laughing. These franchises draw on local stars and broadcast histories and thus serve to highlight differences.

Amazon’s transnational streaming franchises span a range of different texts, though the concept is relatively new for the platform. What stands out are the Modern Love franchise, which started out as an anthology series based on stories about love published in the New York Times, set in New York, which had two seasons between 2019 and 2021. In 2022, the platform added Modern Love Tokyo (Amazon, 2022-), Modern Love Mumbai (Amazon, 2022), Modern Love Hyderabad (Amazon, 2022-), and Modern Love Amsterdam (Amazon, 2022-) and Modern Love Chennai in 2023. The fact that three Indian versions exist is testament to Amazon’s localised approach, especially in large countries, representing regions more than a supposedly monolithic nation state. LOL: Last One Laughing is another example with different versions in countries from Brazil to India to France to Indonesia. The programme features well-known comedians and other entertainment figures in a competition show where they are not allowed to laugh at each other’s jokes while they try to make each other do just that.

The comedy is localised, but apolitical, which makes puns and wordplay the most obvious strategies and very few of the comedians featured have explicitly political acts. On the German version, some comedians have their own programmes on PSB, where they engage more closely with politics, or are featured on programmes that centre on political satire, but any political edge is removed for LOL. The algorithmic recommendations do not link different versions of LOL, of which different national versions exist. In fact, these can be difficult to find, even though all are available on the platform. Amazon is more likely to privilege country of origin and language over other aspects, such as genre or being part of a franchise. Instead, Amazon recommends other German-language content (including series or comedy specials of participants in LOL), but not the French version LOL: qui rit, sort! (Amazon, 2021-) of the franchise. This is different from Netflix, where programmes are linked through themes and genre, but not necessarily country of origin. This sets the way Amazon structures franchises clearly apart, in many ways aligning it with traditional broadcasting and format trade.

This article focuses specifically on the Amazon self-produced Original Perfekt Verpasst and its linkages with the German version of LOL, which has (currently) five seasons as well as a Christmas and Halloween Special. In its selection of stars for these series, Amazon builds on a tradition of the German commercial channel Sat.1 and networks of comedy stars it established as far back as the 1990s. While all of streaming builds on habits and cultural forms familiar from broadcast television, Amazon shows how the traditions of local television matter in the way it employs comedy collectives and even loose networks of comedians. Denise Bielby and C. Lee Harrington (2008) argue that comedy is more culturally specific than other genres.

… the premise of situation comedy often resides in the temporary social rupturing of those bonds. Because cultures vary in their tolerance of the social contrasts exposed by humor and in solution to these contrasts, the resolution proposed in comedic narrative itself is very localized. (2008, 53–54)

The international success of sitcoms like Friends (NBC, 1994-2004) or The Big Bang Theory (CBS, 2007-19) belies this, though few non-American sitcoms can claim as far of a reach as those series. Further, other subgenres of comedy, such as sketch comedy or standup formats, can appear more localised, often relying on puns, wordplay or parody of important cultural figures. The national adaptations of The Office (BBC, 2001-03) are a good example in the sense that while the format is adapted, the humour remains local. As Alexandra Beedn and Joost De Bruin (2010) argue in their article that compares the British and US versions of the series that ‘humor is a locally based phenomenon’ and that ‘the trade of television formats, whilst international in structure […] enables the creation of national belonging and identity within “nationalized” programs’. (2010, 6). When looking at the texts, it is not just ideological lines of the construction of masculinity or class stratification, as discussed by Beedn and De Bruin, but the British version also carries an edgy, almost pitiless humour, while the American version is much more sympathetic towards its main character. This softened perspective might also make the American series more palatable transnationally than its British counterpart.

German humour is, of course, famous for not existing in the first place and thus, becomes a localised, sometimes regional occurrence. Perhaps because of this, there is sparse literature on it as a cultural phenomenon, especially post-1990 humour. Accents are fodder for German humour, and since reunification in 1990, especially East German accents. One element of reunification was always the ‘othering’ of East Germany. As the theorist Dirk Oschmann (2023) argues, this even goes so far that East German identity is wholly constructed by West German discourse. German humour has long relied on accents as a supposedly apolitical means to create humour, which reveals a class bias as high German, like posh accents in Britain, is associated with educational institutions, often located in cities. The GDR emphasised working class culture, so a distinct ‘other’ to the emphasis on education and the values of neoliberalism dominant in West Germany. Thus, German accent comedy reveals biases but is focused on sounds and analysing language, so hardly works as a piece of political humour. It exists as part of the ‘othering’ of East Germany, while carrying the veneer of being apolitical.

LOL follows the logic of format adaptations through its reliance on local stars and the associated comedy (see also Jenner 2023). But it also shows the reliance of Amazon to link with local culture by tapping into existing ‘networks’ of comedians. I focus here especially on one established by Sat.1 in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This is not the only network Amazon mobilises since many comedians featured on LOL (for several seasons) are younger or were more associated with other comedy networks (such as presenter Bully Herbig). In the case of actor Moritz Bleibtreu in season 4, he is more associated with dramatic fare, though he currently stars in a self-produced sitcom on Amazon. The audience base, thus, becomes vast. To conceptualise Perfekt Verpasst, however, it is necessary to look at the Sat.1 comedy network that includes both, Anke Engelke and Bastian Pastewka, stars of the Amazon series.

The first three seasons of the German version of LOL feature the German comedienne and actress Anke Engelke, who rose to stardom in the 1990s, largely on the commercial channel Sat.1. Other than PSB channels, commercial channels in Germany tend to focus on a largely apolitical middlebrow and entertainment, rather than an ambition to shape society. Engelke first appeared in the comedy sketch programme Wochenshow (Sat.1, 1996-2011), a weekly show loosely based on the apolitical early Daily Show (Comedy Central, 1996-). The show played a lot with language and rhymes and also featured Bastian Pastewka who co-stars with her in the series Perfekt Verpasst. Engelke later led the programme Ladykracher (Sat.1, 2002-13), a German version of the British feminist sketch comedy show Smack the Pony (Channel 4, 1999-2017), which relied heavily on the fact that its cast consisted largely of women. The ensemble spawned a range of careers, including that of Christoph Maria Herbst, who would later lead the cast in the German version of The Office (BBC, 2001-3), Stromberg (Pro7, 2004-12). Engelke is a draw for audiences, but also central to a grouping of comedians who can look back on long careers on German commercial television. Ladykracher is not licensed by Amazon, though a search for the programme brings up the German version of LOL, suggesting the actress is a major draw. However, the ten seasons of her Wochenshow co-star Bastian Pastewka’s sitcom Pastewka (Sat.1, 2006-14, Amazon, 2018-20) are. The latter seasons were also self-produced by Amazon. Engelke and Pastewka also recently starred in the German-language rom-com series Perfekt Verpasst. Like LOL, the series is available beyond the German-speaking market but is not heavily advertised beyond German-speaking markets and accounts. Pastewka, and the comedian’s performance function in the tradition of the popular comedian Loriot and is focused on the norms and habits of West German middle-class life. The humour is focused on often minor details of everyday life (such as how to boil an egg) and is often centred around oddities of language. Central is self-irony and willingness to make oneself the punchline of a joke. Hence, a central scene for Perfekt Verpasst occurs in the episode cited in the introduction when the couple finally meet, after they frequently miss each other, and bond over what different kinds of crying sound like and Maria making fun of Ralf for not knowing what a vodka soda entails. Both are an observational humour of everyday activities that never veers into the political.

Of course, this use of stars suggests the wider role of stardom in transnational streaming, especially considering that these stars are culturally bound, and built up via a national broadcaster. Sat.1 was one of the first German commercial channels, together with RTL. Both commercial channels became available in the later 1980s nationwide as competition to the existing PSB channels. Rob Burns (2004) points out that the German television system is divided into public/private, which refers to private and public funding models. Mandates of publicly funded television (PSB) were written into the German constitution, but private or commercial television only became available in the 1980s. As Knut Hickethier (1998) argues, German PSB had the ambition and mandate to shape society and social debate, while commercial channels were more focused on entertainment programming. Randall Halle (2023) argues for a kind os post wall television of consensus in the 1990s, though his description remains unspecific as I would argue that television is a consensus medium and PSB is as well. However, it can be argued that commercial television relied on entertainment that is less attuned to social debates, often appearing shallow. Further, unlike PSB schedules, the schedules are less a mixture of programmes that educate, inform and entertain and heavily emphasise the latter.

The brand of comedy Sat.1 promoted was focused more on apolitical comedy that highlighted wordplay, puns, slapstick, and observational humour that dissects everyday activities, rather than political satire. Even the feminist programme Ladykracher, couched in towards the end of the riot grrrl discourse, dealt less with feminism per se, than it showcased female comedians’ talents, working against the stereotype that women aren’t funny. As such, it is political but only becomes available once the discourse has already become part of the mainstream. Essentially, this can be framed via the middlebrow. The American researcher Victoria Johnson argues that the middlebrow is defined via a geographical and ideological axis,

The power of the middle (ideologically/politically and geographically), in fact, is its foundational American iconicity: ‘true’ Americans do not ally with ‘extremes’; ‘real’ Americans are presumed to gravitate toward a healthily neutral wherein the family and self are the basic self-reliant units by whom decisions are made on a case-by-case, not party-line basis. The political strength of popular artifacts of the ‘middle’ […] is, therefore, their very apoliticalness (2000, 45).

Of course, the idea of ‘real’ or ‘true’ Americans is not applicable to other national contexts. The geographical argument does not apply to Germany, since the East-West divide that separated the country for much of the 20^th century and the German version of federalism complicates matters. However, the ideological argument holds. Ideologically, the middlebrow seeks the non-extreme mid-point between positions, ideally an apolitical mid-point of an idealised centrist ideology. The concept of a mid-point between different positions may be practically difficult, or even unattainable, but can be grasped. Since satire and political comedy tend to formulate political standpoints, it is not useful for channels or programmes seeking to entertain, rather than formulating an ideological viewpoint. Thus, the comedy of both, commercial television in Germany and streaming platforms, may very well parody politicians, but rather than their politics or policies, their mannerisms are the target of comedy. This is not to say that German PSB is not middlebrow, but its comedy branches are more likely to express political perspectives through satire, than commercial television. The ideological position of German commercial television comedy is more likely to address its audience through apolitical jokes that ignore ideological viewpoints altogether. Meanwhile, PSB allows for a stronger perspective by comedians.

In terms of language, Amazon’s self-produced Originals are only partially dubbed, depending on a desired level of localisation. For Perfekt Verpasst, no dubbing is available, but subtitles are, which also highlights the importance of language. Other series and films, such as the Spanish-language films Culpa Mia (González, 2023) and Culpa Tuya (González, 2024) are available dubbed and heavily advertised on the platform. The first film has also been adapted to My Fault: London (Fassler and Girdwood, 2025). Thus, Amazon embodies both, a transnational and a local-focused strategy, often carried via streaming franchises.

The middlebrow is typically a politically ‘neutral’ space that, precisely because it is apolitical, or is at least perceived as such, can attract a mass audience. In German TV, which is split into PSB and commercial channels, Amazon’s drawing on the tradition of commercial television is hardly ‘neutral’, but a choice. In licensing its programming, Amazon emulates the strategy of formulating the middlebrow in a similar manner to Sat.1. Thus, Amazon tapping into these networks, shows that it is relying on historical linkages and traditions of local television.

Conclusion: Language, nation, and transnational streaming

This article looked at strategies of transnationalism employed by streaming companies. It did so by looking at how texts are constructed. Netflix produces transnational texts that abide by a grammar of transnationalism that relies on domestication.

The article specifically looked at strategies pertaining to language and culture and its reliance on high German, rather than local dialects. Of course, Netflix also offers dubbing, but it is worth observing that, for Netflix, transnationalism includes the denial of local language traditions and nuances. Amazon, meanwhile, taps into local traditions, relying heavily on both, local language and local television traditions. Perhaps because of this, it manages to rely on comedy as a genre to frame its work, more so than Netflix, which mixes elements of comedy with melodrama in its more light-hearted series Achtsam Morden (Murder Mindfully, Netflix, 2024-) or How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast). Meanwhile, Amazon employs the strategy of localisation, by not just drawing on local stars and genres known for local cultures like comedy, but also German broadcast traditions, rooted in the 1980s. The use of local humour becomes particularly important in this regard, especially language-based, supposedly apolitical humour, that is virtually ‘untranslatable’ and hence, is only available subtitled, not dubbed. This is an important part of Amazon’s strategy of localisation versus Netflix’s grammar of transnationalism: language is also treated as localised whereas Netflix aims for a more transnational version of language that emphasise dominant cultures. I don’t necessarily think the strategies are oppositional or that there aren’t texts where both platforms act more similar. Various reality TV streaming franchises from Love on the Spectrum to Love is Blind are Netflix’s way to incorporate more local culture, and Amazon invests in American transnational ‘blockbuster’ series like Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Amazon, 2022-). Clearly, a spectrum exists between transnationalism and localisation, which becomes visible in streaming platforms in distinct ways. The way franchises are operationalised, how transnational texts are conceptualised, or texts are adapted all matter and are often linked to national television histories. Further, it is also important to consider Petruska’s (2023) argument that different streaming platforms pursue distinct goals and thus, are not necessarily in direct competition with each other. The strategies embody these goals, platform structures and the way they operate within national ecosystems.

This article has compared two strategies of transnationally operating streaming platforms in order to elucidate this spectrum. A focus was on language and the way it can serve to transnationalise by using dialects easier to understand for viewers (in the form of high German) or used to localise content, as when language is used as a vehicle for humour (with puns and wordplay). However, it is important to understand the various national and transnational streaming platforms as operating within their own structures, not directly competing for eyeballs in the way traditional broadcasting channels were. Instead, transnational platforms like Netflix and Amazon pursue viewers in their own ways for distinct purposes.