Is ‘Alias’ A.K.A. a Trend?

“Alias,” the new prime-time action show that premieres this fall on ABC, follows a waifish graduate student whose friends and professors have no idea that she is trained to kill. She’s a spy who delivers chin-high kicks, snaps car antennas into the eyes of attackers and keeps her secrets even as an interrogator yanks out one of her molars with pliers.

Representatives of television networks in France, Spain, Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands already have purchased “Alias,” and buyers from Fiji, Latvia and Peru, who came here shopping for programs in May, could lay down cash as well. Executives at Buena Vista International Television, which is distributing “Alias,” are convinced it will be their most successful new property overseas.

It certainly has all the ingredients.

The main character, portrayed by Jennifer Garner, is hot. (That always sells.) She doesn’t talk too much. (Dubbing the lines will be easy.) And her enemies are scattered around the world. (It broadens the appeal.)

“A good rule of thumb for international buyers is more action,” said Brian Frons, head of acquisitions for SBS Broadcasting, one of the largest Pan-European broadcasting companies. “The better ones have female leads.” Frons has already purchased the show for two of his clients.

Either “Alias” is truly exceptional, or it’s a sign that show creators are beginning to anticipate the demands of the international market and design broader programs for an international audience. Increased competition in the past few years has noticeably sharpened the strategies behind each transaction. Sales used to be based on the gut feelings of buyers and loose trends they had noticed in the market, but the world of television has become a much bigger place in the past three years.

In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, state-owned networks have been transformed into private ones. Digital video cameras, VCRs, DVDs and DirecTV have permanently changed the way people watch the small screen. And the windfall of opportunity that has swept through Burbank in recent years also hit production cities in countries such as Holland, the United Kingdom and Germany.

For international media buyers, certain basic rules have emerged.

“U.S. drama is actually our first priority,” Frons said. “Action and female-oriented material travels best. Sci-fi is only of real interest in Eastern Europe, though it occasionally works in Netherlands and Belgium.”

Steve Kent, senior vice president of international production for Columbia Tri-Star International Television, said shows with “universal themes” of drama are solid investments. “It’s less a window into our culture than into human emotions.”

A show like “Dawson’s Creek” has found success overseas because it appeals to a universal wish among adolescents, Frons said.

“You get to be in an idyllic place. Your parents are absent or incredibly flawed,” he said. “And you get to speak intelligently and date.”

While soft dramas usually do well, buyers try to avoid those shows with what one executive called “hard-core Americana.”

“My all-time nightmare is something that focuses on U.S. sports in Kansas, because it’s incredibly specific to a very American experience,” said Simon Sutton, MGM’s senior vice president for international television. “It just won’t sell as well as a sci-fi program with an international star.”

“The Court,” a new drama starring Sally Field as a U.S. Supreme Court justice, is steeped in the misty-eyed patriotism that accompanies “The West Wing.” It’s tough to predict if media buyers will see it as an American story that won’t transfer to other cultures, or if they’ll see it as a soft drama with an international star as its lead.

“Will people in Italy watch a show about the Supreme Court in the United States?” asked the show’s producer, Ralph Scheidlinger. He’ll know this winter.

Field said returning to television after a 30-year absence has left her slack-jawed.

“It’s the difference between Mars and Earth,” she said, laughing outside a ballroom filled with buyers from every time zone. In the 1960s when she starred in “Gidget” and “The Flying Nun” producers fancied themselves quite sophisticated when they sent her on a press junket around the United States to open local supermarkets.

Even Field’s current choice of programming is more conducive to the demands of the current market. She is starring in a drama at a time when comedies have become shaky investments. For international buyers, they are difficult to translate, so only a few breakout hits, such as “Seinfeld” and “Friends,” have kept the overseas comedy genre afloat.

In addition, as situational comedies have moved toward culturally specific wordplay, they have left behind the easily understood, old-fashioned slapstick. That’s tepid news for program buyers trying to appeal to a wide range of viewers. As Frons put it, “Sophisticated comedy is hard to sell south of the Baltic.”

And even when the buyers in that ballroom follow the general rules of thumb--action over comedy, and soft drama over Americana--they still can’t avoid the problems that arise when televised fantasies run smack into realistic cultural norms.

Scandinavian viewers have proven they have a lower tolerance level for violent content. In Malaysia, the network buyers reject gay story lines. In Saudi Arabia, they refuse to run many story lines about drugs and alcohol.

So, instead of trying to sell U.S. culture to these countries, executives peddle the show’s concept so that foreign producers can make a cultural-friendly version of it. The foreign producers use actors and scenery that are familiar to their viewers.

“Globally, more and more people are watching the same formats, with different casts,” said Andi Sporkin of Columbia Tri-Star Pictures, who spent six years in the international division of CBS.

(U.S. buyers bought the concept of “Big Brother” from producers in Holland, and they bought the concept of “Survivor” from producers in Sweden.)

Sometimes, studios get lucky enough to sell their ability to reproduce a version of their concept. Columbia Tri-Star International Television is co-producing a show for Turkish television based on “The Nanny,” a sitcom that starred Fran Drescher and ran on CBS from 1993 to 1999. The show has been Turkey’s No. 1 program on the main network for the past three months.

“It may be one relationship that’s present around the world--household lord and servant,” said Michael Grindon, president of Columbia TriStar International Television. “The charming servant girl who attracts the wealthy lord is timeless. It’s funny.”

Producers from Columbia Tri-Star International Television just finished making a version of “Charlie’s Angels.” It was shot in Mandarin with an Asian cast for the People’s Republic of China and Thailand. It will air this fall.

The goal is no longer just to get good ratings here, executives say. Ideally, the show that hits a nerve among viewers in the United States is also designed to spread like wildfire across the globe, with a concept that resonates if it’s dubbed or remade by foreign producers.

“There’s a blending at the top and bottom levels. You can eat at Nobu, shop at Armani ... watch a reality show,” Sutton said. “The world is just becoming more similar.”