Synopsis

In the 1930s, three women leave the U.S and move to Paris. Their backgrounds are dissimilar, their desires and fears are different, and they’re separated by age and arrondissements.

But Florence, Ellen and Mimi share a love for Paris and all it offers: an opportunity to chase their dreams, to gain status and success, to explore love and sex and life and art and everything in between. What they want most of all is the freedom to become themselves and choose their own futures.

And as their dreams draw closer to reality, the Nazis march into Paris and destroy everything. Yankee is a story about who you become when Fascism comes to town.

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How it Begins

After the Great War ended, thousands of Americans streamed into Paris from the U.S, escaping its bitter clampdown against anyone deemed an outsider - even homegrown ones. In Paris, these outsiders could live on the cheap with like-minded ex-pats and refugees, including Black Americans, gay men and women, political revolutionaries, and of course artists, writers and anyone who enjoyed a nice pastis with a heaping side of personal freedom. Seemingly overnight, a small American town of 10,000 established itself within Paris.

The Yankee ex-pats were a vibrant community, in love with Paris but drawn to connecting with other American Francophiles; our three lead characters have crossed paths more than once. As their population is whittled in half by new social restrictions and rumors of war, their acquaintanceship becomes more intimate. They are the ones brave enough to stay - or embedded so deeply they can’t leave.

In June 1940, rumors of war become reality. The French government pulls up stakes and moves to Vichy, and four days later the Nazis march down the Champs-Élysée and the business of starving France moves into high gear.

This is the moment when our series begins.

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Characters

Florence Howard, 44, grew up poor, dominated by a mother bent on exploiting Florence’s beauty and talents to make them rich. Marriage #1 didn’t deliver, but then Florence married Lucky #2, Frank Howard. He was rich, he agreed with Florence that monogamy was for saps, and he was mesmerized by his new bride; she had beauty, brio, and a burning ambition that easily outpaced his own.

As the Nazis draw closer, Florence fears that their burgeoning hotel and casino business will be lost to them. The Gestapo are renowned for confiscating whatever the Fuhrer needs, even when the Fuhrer doesn’t know he needs it. Florence’s strong suit is her money, her open-minded sexuality and charm, and her social connections, but she fears they won’t be enough in the new regime. She may be in danger of losing everything.

Chemist Ellen Adams, 32, is the proud owner of a fledgling cosmetic company which specializes in home hair-colouring kits. Her business is a year old, doing well, and all her attention is there. She’s off-loaded most of the domestic chores to an au pair for the twins, and her writer husband can handle the rest.

Ellen knows that French vanity won’t disappear just because of war and rationing - les Parisiennes will sacrifice eggs or butter to maintain their beauty regimes - and she intends to maintain production and continue to grow. But with the Germans in control, supply chains are compromised, chemicals impossible to find… she’ll have to work with the black market, and that comes with real danger.

Mimi Glass, 22, has no such singular purpose. She’s in her 20s! She’s here to dance, to pose nude for artists, to explore one career and then another… to explore one lover and then another… she can’t imagine that her life needs to change at all. And she’s mostly right. Her U.S citizenship means she’s not an enemy combatant. Her passport is a shield. Despite all signs to the contrary, she believes the party will go on,

Recurring (and real-life) characters: Josephine Baker, Sylvia Beach, Dr Sumner Jackson, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, new American citizen and Nazi sympathizer Charles Bedaux, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus and others.

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The Show

Yankee begins with three American women on the precipice of loss and determined to keep what they have, Nazis be damned.

But as small liberties are whittled away, each realizes they must pivot and find their own way through the flood of fascism devastating Paris. Like every French citizen, the Americans face a question that grows more dangerous daily:

Do you resist? Betray? Or look away?

This question is the super-charged emotional fuel of each season, as our three main characters explore potential answers and discover both who they really are, how far they’ll go to protect what they have… and what they’ll do to attain even more.

Put plainly, this show examines how to become a fascist, and how to survive if you don’t.

It couldn’t be more modern.

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The Engine

The abiding question of the series is simple: Who am I?

That answer is revealed in the actions each character takes.

And should they avoid answering the question, someone will certainly answer it for them. Mimi, Florence and Ellen begin the series certain of who they are, largely defined by their ambitions - public and otherwise. But that self-knowledge is rattled when the first season’s arcing mystery presents them with a dangerous challenge, courtesy of a man each knows and loves.

Thomas Burnham is an international banker. A talented landscape painter. An art collector. A patron to many. A Brit by birth with an American passport. The son of a Jewish father. He is also one of the only financiers with a complete picture of what Hitler requires to finance his war….which means he is quite possibly one of the few people who understands how to ruin Hitler’s dream of the Third Reich.

And he disappears three days after the German occupation begins.

Florence, Ellen and Mimi - each connected to Thomas for different, even secret reasons - decide, as a group, that they must find him. Their separate social circles become their shared strength - between them they know people from every part of Paris, and it’s clear they are more likely to find Thomas together than separately.

Naturally this leads to a deeper friendship, which in turn requires compromise, vulnerability, loyalty. They have the opportunity to become their best selves, but as threats against them surface, as their sleuthing becomes more dangerous, they are presented with an equal opportunity: To become their worst selves.

Which would certainly answer the question, “Who Am I?”

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First Season Arc

In the first season, the three women do their best to work around their occupiers - and work together to find a Jewish friend gone missing.

Florence’s famous salons immediately attract the top brass of the German military - which threatens her fame among (and access to) the best and brightest of French intellectuals and artists. She threads that particular needle by taking a lover from the SS and another from the U.S diplomatic corps. It’s a dangerous game, and she’s pressured by each man for assistance beyond the pillow. Playing one against the other, she seeks a guarantee from each that her hotels and casinos can continue operations, while she continues to keep her American financial woes secret, and pursues any clues that might lead her to Thomas Burnham.

Determined to keep her business afloat, Ellen haggles with different industries to buy the basic chemicals required for her business. The best source for hydrogen peroxide and ammonia is the least likely provider: the explosives industry. It became apparent there’s no way to get those chemicals except through the black market, which is both terrifying and expensive. But it’s the black market that becomes Ellen’s first source of information regarding Thomas Burnham, and she needs financial backing from Florence to follow through on the intel… as well as purchase the supplies she so desperately needs.

As her black-market connections begin to deliver, Ellen realizes she has the chance, here and now, to dominate the hair care and cosmetic industry in France, though she’s literally playing with fire as she calibrates the worth of her business against the danger to her family.

Mimi starts the season convinced she’s both sophisticated and wild, but soon begins to suspect she is neither. The Germans are eager to wine and dine the beautiful women of Paris, and her American-ness makes her especially compelling. Mimi understands from patriotic French friends that she should turn down all her German suitors, but as basic necessities become basically MIA, an occasional “Oui” escapes her lips. After all, stockings are impossible to come by.

The German officers start out kind, and Mimi confides in Florence that mostly they want to talk. Mostly. All Mimi has offered is a kiss on the cheek… and hours upon hours of listening. Florence off-handedly confides in Mimi, mentioning her two lovers from the German and American sides, and how she’s using them to find their beloved Thomas. Mimi is impressed, and when she shares this intel with her intimate friend Laurent, it’s Laurent who suggests that Mimi learn more. Mimi’s startled: “Spy on a friend?” Spy on one of your fucking Germans, her lover tells her. Do something.

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Creator Statement

There is no series I’d rather be making than Yankee.

The seeds of the show were planted with my first viewing of The Conformist. That movie shook my world: Would I have become a fascist? Would I have joined the Resistance? Or - more likely, to my shame - would I have gone along to get along, hoping not to be noticed as I tried to survive?

Years later, I became obsessed with Occupied Paris, where I learned about the “American village” inside wartime Paris, and how the work of the war was conducted more by women than men (tens of thousands of men were killed in battle, and over two million were imprisoned in POW and work camps.)

With that I’d found a way to tell a different kind of story about war, driven by a female POV, and to tell it with American characters out front (quite practical for international sales.) With Yankee I knew I could create female characters as complex as Tony Soprano or Walter White, while exploring how an “ordinary person” embraces evil.

Part of what I want to see in this series is women in wartime, challenged and reacting and rationalizing their choices in a complicated and soul-threatening way - a journey that’s belonged, primarily, to male characters. I want to see women who become someone completely different because they convince themselves they must. Do they change because of fear? Is it desire? Or maybe it’s just a newly unleashed hatred that’s finally found a place to go.

And yes, one of these women will become a monster. Not because she lies and manipulates and steals… but because she makes decisions that chips away at her humanity. She goes frommostly-decent to a monstrosity, addicted to greed and dehumanizing others and seeking alliances with any soulless creature who can help her achieve her stupid goals.

As a series set in occupied Paris, of course Yankee is about the war. But we’re not going to battlegrounds, or to German headquarters, or to massive rallies (well, maybe one or two). The series explores the war through these three women struggling to stay alive, even thrive, as France turns away from liberté, égalité and fraternité towards the Vichy version of a New France: travail, famille, patrie. Not nearly as romantic or stirring, and that last word, patrie - fatherland… well, guess who gets to define that?

Seriously - could it be more timely?

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World and Tone

Here’s the thing. Paris during wartime was a city under duress, its inhabitants in daily danger. Survival became a full-time job.

But people don’t just stop becoming ambitious. People keep dreaming and plotting. Just like the “before” times, when an opportunity presents itself, you go for it - if you have the nerve. That’s when cutthroat becomes killthroat and compromise becomes the coin of the realm, trailing imprisonment, torture, and murder in its wake.

Despite the danger, maybe because of it, the mood throughout is exhilarating and chaotic. Every simple mission could result in death, so every minute you’re alive takes on huge importance.

And in this time Parisian women have more power than they’ve ever enjoyed, as they’re in the majority. The streets of Paris become truly feminine, controlled by the SS and the Vichy government. Ambition and fear and intense personal stakes create an urgent and dangerous air. Violence is in the air, despite no actual warfare in the city. That’s why the tone is more Succession than A French Village, more Peaky Blinders than Downtown Abbey. It’s thrilling, glamorous, sexy. The stakes are real and so is the dark humour. Though not quite as existentially absurd as Fargo, the characters are unique, shaped by their own history and obsessions, and each determined to bend their circumstances to their will in whatever form that takes.

By the way, all characters are based on real life characters and there’s specific and available IP.

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CinéTéléAction

PRODUCER'S NOTE OF INTENT

We are drawn to Yankee for its unique perspective and compelling story of three American women navigating the moral and practical challenges of wartime Paris. Anchored in real life characters, the series explores how survival often demands difficult choices, and how resilience, ambition, and community intersect under extraordinary circumstances.

We are thrilled to be working with Shelley Eriksen, an accomplished writer and showrunner with an excellent track record in long-form television. Shelley has crafted a story of exceptional emotional depth and characters whose courage and moral compromises make the series intimate and universally resonant, especially in these times.

Structured as a six-episode, one-hour series, Yankee balances character-driven drama with historical authenticity. Its focus on women’s experiences and entrepreneurial ingenuity provides a perspective that will engage international audiences.

We are actively seeking European co-production partners, broadcasters, distribution companies, and financiers to bring this story to life on a global stage.

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CONTACT

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