A Greek broadcaster is producing a local adaptation of Argentinian romantic comedy series Graduados (The Graduates) for primetime.

The Greek version will air on Antenna and has been titled I Symmathites (The Classmates). It will be a production of Antenna Group’s independent production company, ANTS.

The script has been written by Vicky Alexopoulou and the series will be directed by Vasilis Thomopoulos and Panos Koutras.

Graduados (178×45’) was first produced and aired by Argentina’s Telefe in 2012. The daily drama has also been sold into Italy, France, Poland, Spain, China, Panama, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua and the Netherlands.

Although Antenna has seen a significant rise in weekly shares in the 15-44 demo in 2013-14, leaving behind its rival Mega Channel, primetime viewing has not been as high.

“This is absolutely justified by the fact that we had not invested on our primetime zone,” said Antenna’s general director of programmes, Ioannis Latsios.

The Greek recession had caused a dramatic fall in advertising revenue in recent years. This forced leading national free-to-air TV stations such as Antenna to stop producing Greek fiction, a very popular genre, and replace it with foreign programmes, mainly Turkish dramas.

“Despite the fact that the conditions in the advertising market in Greece continue to be limited enough to not allow big investments, our main target for 2014-15 is to improve our ratings in the 21.00-23.00 primetime zone,” Latsios added.