itt: non-english-language netflix series you recommend (or not) and commentary thereon

SUBURRA is a riot of unlikely youth-gangster haircuts so far

mark, do you recommend everything on that list? In trying to improve/maintain my French I will watch virtually anything en français that is available in Canada, but I haven't gotten to MARSEILLE or THE BREAK yet. I also have HOTEL BEAU SÉJOUR, DEEP, and THE CHURCHMEN in my queue, though not sure about the last one in particular.

I did just watch CANNABIS, which wasn't great but I found it compelling enough to get through its relatively short run (there's also lots of Spanish and Arabic if you're in it for the linguistic diversity). There's an American actress in it who never speaks English, and her accent gave me heart though I think she might have been kind of crummy at the acting part.

This morning I started the second series of WITNESSES. The first series was a fairly generic rip of Scandinavian detective stuff (lead female detective even has uncommented upon OCD), filmed in the Normandy winter to make it as grey as possible but also providing enough local flavor to sustain interest. Second series seems somewhat more promising though I've only watched one ep.

Definitely not in the vein of anything else listed here, but I think the best French-language thing I've watched on Netflix was THE LONG LONG HOLIDAY, an animated miniseries about children in Normandy during the Nazi occupation.

I think my mum watched Hamish Macbeth - it's much older than midsomer in my head

Sorry I'm just talking about English language stuff lol

marseilles i liked a lot, the break was perhaps a bit run-of-the-mill (or anyway i don't remember much about it)

caveat: i will on the whole watch any old rubbish* and most of them are somewhat flawed, some wildly pulpy (reina del sur), some over-involved and garish esp.at the end (probably estcolmo), some an acquired taste (filinta), some just a bit silly (hinterland)

*eg this is amazingly bad and unmissable: the netflix series GUILT

wins it is a continuum: ppl who think that brits don't do this well are idiots (we kind of invented it, don't get me started on MARPLE)

oh I forgot about CALL MY AGENT, which was a very French and quite delightful show about talent agents. Lots of French actors who I don't know play themselves

some over-involved and garish esp.at the end

Cannabis was mostly even-keeled throughout but there is a shoot-out in the final ep that was grafted in from a John Woo movie or something

wins it is a continuum: ppl who think that brits don't do this well are idiots (we kind of invented it, don't get me started on MARPLE)

Just to clarify I totally agree, my initial point was just that I get the sense there are a lot of these idiots and they make up a significant % of the audience for this stuff

*fistbump*

(restarting SUBURRA ep1 from the beginning as i spent most of the last 10 mins rereading the GUILT thread and hence not paying attention)

(apparently it means slums rather than suburbs)

I don't really make time in my life for a lot of tv so often the only time I see this stuff is when I'm visiting my 90yo granny, it's perfect for her as a seasoned viewer of itv crime dramas who doesn't want to admit her hearing's failing to watch basically the same thing but with subs

yes i got into my midsomer/lewis habit sitting w/my invalid dad: he wouldn't have been averse to non-english language, his hearing was excellent and he spoke -several tho not danish -- but his eyesight was poor and anyway the noirs didn't start till after he died

(replay allows me to notice, as i didn't before, that the backdrop to the orgy is a rather amazing film of or possibly aquarium full of undulating jellyfish, good work there a.n. designer)

he'd have loved hinterland despite its annoying lead: he too adored that part of wales :(

love that so many euro corruption thrillers -- esp.southern europe but not exclusivly -- are abt (a) drugs and (b) ZONING

(ie where the real money is)

in this SUBURRA overlaps with MARSEILLE

shd probably give SUBURRA its own thread actually (since i'm liking it and will doubtless post lots): but one thing i enjoy the (non-UK) ones for is gorgeous filming of cities i know a little bit (marseile) or have never seen (copenhagen, rome)

https://typeset-beta.imgix.net/rehost%2F2016%2F9%2F13%2F6b92d25d-b10d-4614-a148-9b4c73688f7d.jpg?w=1200&h=630&fit=crop&crop=faces&auto=format&q=70
Naples looks amazing in Gommorah, probably the true star of the show really.

a belgian, the belgian abt the robbery of a small bank? -- that arrived via the bbc's noir slot but i can't bring their names to mind

Salamander?

(which I started to watch but never finished, so no commentary here, but I will report that my parents v much love Montalbano with the excuse of practising their Italian; I am looking forward to German-language shows being mentioned here for similar reasons, although I admit I never got round to watching Deutschland 83 even though everyone said it was v good and it's right up my street of historical interest, so who am I kidding)

Salamander is the one I was thinking of

(Didn't amount to much when all was said & done, wouldn't bother finishing it)

I am only one ep deep into Suburra but I'm liking it. I read the book a few weeks ago so I'm still trying to sort out who is who/what has been changed or removed or altered. But I like it. The haircuts are terrible but maybe that's what roman club kids looked like in 2008. On the Italian tip, highly recommend Romanzo Criminale, though it's on Filmstruck and not Netflix. Set in the seventies-into-the-eighties, also in Rome. It tells the story of the Magliana gang, who at that time scrapped their way up from armed robbery to the major drug/sex traffickers in Rome. I would like to watch Gommorah; I liked the film and I'm on a bit of an Italian crime kick it seems.

Still lots upthread that I need to check out. I liked the Lava Field & Wallander. Been wanting to watch Spiral for ages but never got around to it. I do like the Annika Bengtzon telefilms abt the lady reporter. Her home life in those sorta reminds me of one of the things I liked abt (US tv series) Medium.

xxp

Deutschland 83 looked very nice, but was hampered with some awful expositional dialogue iirc. The one clunker too far for me was something like: This Cold War is getting Hot!

also just finished suburra e1: will start a thread for it shortly, after i finish handwashing my jumper

(it's a nice plain black jumper but i totally covet the fabulous tentacular octopus-pattern jumper worn by giacomo ferrara as alberto: no pix on the internet yet which is a sorry state of affairs)

SUBURRA: BLOOD OF ROME aka sex, drugs, violence and ZONING (and the wickedest of these is zoning, my son)

love that so many euro corruption thrillers -- esp.southern europe but not exclusivly -- are abt (a) drugs and (b) ZONING

also The Wire!

one day i shall watch the wire

I have a fair tolerance for this stuff (e.g. watched the entirety of the very mediocre Black Lake on iPlayer) but could not get through more than half of Salamander or Witnesses - be warned.

The bbc4 phenom always makes me think that there must be tv snobs in Denmark or wherever going fucking nuts for midsomer murders & lewis

― "The" Blink-182 (wins), 15. oktober 2017 17:42 (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They're on almost every saturday night. I'm not sure that many snobs watch it, though. I used to watch so much Rebus growing up, I picked up an awful fake scottish accent.

They're on almost every saturday night

this is bizarrely pleasing to me

Tonight it was Inspector George Gently, followed by Murder City and The Honorable Woman. Then a couple of episodes of Upstairs Downstairs to end the night.

Actually my ex-girlfriend was watching all this, when she wasn't busy writing queer analyses of ancient greek tragedies. She was kinda snobbish, and so so cool :(

There are 3 worthwhile Japanese shows

MIDNIGHT DINER - endearing and heartwarming story about the people who frequent a late night diner in a working class Tokyo neighborhood. This is a phenomenon across Asia with a (good) Korean version and a (bad) Chinese version and a bunch of movie spinoffs. Heartwarming in the best possible way.

SAMURAI GOURMET - not as good as midnight diner but it’s the story of a salaryman who deals with retirement by exploring local restaurants.

JAPAN STYLE ORIGINATOR - possibly the only lifestyle magazine show on Netflix but it’s great for the insight into Japanese culture and features such informative episodes as the 50 cheapest things to eat with rice, 25 ways to eat your New Years mochi and a goat of ‘how it’s made’ type segments where they look at how various Japanese crafts are made. Very relaxing TV.

A goat?

I loved OCCUPIED and very much want the second series (basically, fossil-fuel-rich Norway goes completely green and shuts down its oil/gas industry, and Russia stages a "soft" invasion to take over)

More soapie-ish but very well done: 30 DEGREES IN FEBRUARY: various Swedes head off to Thailand to escape their troubled lives, discover that unfortunately they are still themselves

finished SUBURRA (italian), began MAR DE PLÁSTICO (spanish)

Salamander is the one I was thinking of

oh, that was quite good!

I have a few of these Euro-tv streaming subscriptions, so I forget which series are on Netflix vs. the other ones.

Spiral/Engrenage (might be on Netflix?) is French, and was billed as France's answer to The Wire. It isn't quite as intricate, but it is really good in other ways.

Oh, another Netflix one I watched recently -- Silver Spoon -- it's Russian. A bit silly and over the top in parts, and it would make for an interesting discussion whether it's implicitly/explicitly critical of Putin/oligarchs or not.

SPIRAL was on UK TV in the noir slot, and I liked the little bit I watched but I missed too much of the start to get properly embedded.

MAR DE PLÁSTICO is kind of boring, also the chiselled cop who's the lead is like a bland pierce brosnan mini-me

ok it just woke up a bit -- murder leads to nasty racial tension in a southern spanish town -- but the lead cop fights off 20 ppl like he's batman, that's the boring bit

seriously - just watch "Mafiosa" on CH4/Walter Presents ..
so good.
S1 was ok despite the presence of some over acting, but things really improved from S2 onwards.

season 2 of Okkupert and 3 of Gomorrah - hurry up!

where are you watching gomorrah?

from torrent sites, always. I work on the flawed presumption that if the torrents have subtitled versions of a Euro series, then it must be on Netflix.

haha yes it's available via amazon but not amazon prime (which i do pay for) so i guess that's why it's subtitled -- so i can stump up some more when i'm feeling flush

Spiral (S2 and S3 especially) is super good

Method is up now (at least in the UK). Based on the first episode it seems like the synthesis of every other loose-cannon-profiler-with-personal-demons cop show. I’ll stick with it though. Khabensky is usually good.

I just watched the first episode of the South Korean procedural Stranger. Some of the acting/exposition was way over the top (A string of surprise witnesses, each more surprising than the last!)but it was strangely compelling.

At the more serious end of the scale, the French sky show the Bureau on amazon prime was excellent, easily putting to shame the similar stuff I've seen from the BBC recently.

previously mentioned midnight diner + hibana: spark is decent too, from a novel by matayoshi naoki that won the akutagawa prize, about a struggling manzai duo who try to break into the world of japanese standup.

I finished Method and though it seals liberally from The Bridge, Sherlock, Dexter, Nikita, and pretty much every other crime show of the last two decades, it ends up being pretty great. The tone is all over the place at the start but it settles into an OTT nihilist bleakness that would be difficult to get away with without such good leads. It’s completely ludicrous, pitch-black and Problematic in a number of ways but Konstantin Khabensky and Paulina Andreeva pull it through somehow.

I think there must have been some legal action threatened wrt plagiarism as the producer of Dexter is credited as one of the creators. It’s vastly better though.

Terrace House: Boys and Girls is the only answer to this.

just started THE METHOD and also APACHES (which literally has *record scratch* "my name is miguel, you're wondering how i got here" as its kicker)

just finished WITNESSES s2 (on bb4 rather than netflix) -- which was colossally silly with a handful of half-realised ideas

think APACHES is going to be garbage, so far (6 minutes in) there's been a double flashback and then a flash forward

^ just reached the end of season 3 cliffhanger, noooooooo!

Marianne, the French horror series, is very silly and enjoyable half way through.

I only watched the first ep and it really was terribly silly. Is it worth continuing? Found it hard to take it seriously tbh.

i've started MYTHOMANIAC, abt a small-town french family who are likeable enough (if v neurotic) except they have webbed themselves into a net of mutual lies

3rd series of OCCUPIED is up

for some reason i didn't register FLAVORFUL ORIGINS with this thread last year: second series is now up, 15-min eps, a fabulously filmed and extremely addictive chinese-made guide to regional chinese cuisine and ingredients, with a weirdly written or translated english voice-over, so far set in chaoshan and yunnan provinces

I’ve started watching Gogol on Amazon Prime, which is a deeply silly, but entertaining, cross between Sleepy Hollow and Penny Dreadful.

The Platform (originally 'El Hoyo' in Spanish) is decent if you like dark, dystopian sci-fi/horror type things. Its social commentary may not be the most original, but it's pretty well executed all round and nicely shot and acted.

Spanish language read probably best for after you watch it: https://www.espinof.com/criticas/hoyo-que-alegoria-social-mordaz-satira-voracidad-humana

I was wondering about this. I put it on my list to watch but I hadn't heard anything about it. (watching new season of Money Heist.

A friend suggested it, with a not for the squeamish proviso (which I'd reiterate), so my partner & I gave it a go last weekend and both enjoyed it. It's not spectacular, but worth its 90 minutes or so, if you're in the mood for that kind of darker thing.

yeah, i am not squeamish at all. But I don't want to be really disappointed by the ending which is what ends up happening with a lot of things that I have watched recently in that spirit (High-Rise, El Bar).

that weird cam-girl horror? thing on netflix.

i watch quite a lot of k drama but i'm always dubious about the translations. is "punk" really the go to insult in korea? lot of "you rascal" and "gosh" as well.

anyway the lead actress in 'My Love From Another Star' is really good at comedic scenes.

The Platform was pretty fun except for a few short scenes of ultra-violence. Social commentary was both far too on-the-nose and (by the end) confused, it's much more rewarding to just take this things literally, i.e. it's a film about a prison hundreds of storeys high where prisoners can only eat the leftovers from the cells above them - that's it. No other readings required.

Betaal, the new series from the makers of Ghoul / Blumhouse, seems pretty good so far. Fascist Indian police vs the zombie remnants of a imperial British battalion.

the first episode of 'It's Okay To Not Be Okay' really blew me away. beautifully shot, ridiculously stylish lead character, much more serious and i guess ambitious than I was expecting and a couple of lovely animated scenes. kinda bummed that i have to wait for new episodes weekly tbh.

okay episode two is good too. got even grittier and just how over the edge the lead female character is is open to even more question. also features the most incredible office chair I've ever seen plus an a + book signing outfit.

I'm enjoying 'Unit 42'. A belgian cybercrime police prodcedural thing.

i finally and extremely belatedly got round to bingeing ENGRENAGE/SPIRAL, all eight series

just three series if they edited out the words merde, putain and pute

Looks like I'll never get to watch a whole series on the platform

I don't think anyone's surprised by this, and pouring millions into transphobic comedy specials to court controversy was hardly a longterm solution, couple that with the price increases that offer no additional value, and the compounding cancellations that led to viewer apathy... https://t.co/XMHnHQui82

— Sleepy Sloth (@CaseyExplosion) April 20, 2022

be more interested in this off-the-cuff laziest of tweet-takes if it in any way addressed netflix as a platform for non-english-material

(or perhaps less parochially as a successful platform for cross-linguistic consumption)

this thread features a more interesting thesis (material non-english if you stretch a point lol)

from the replies it seems like the main thrust of this criticism is that that one viking show has a woman in it https://t.co/qjmaA7RwuR

— flglmn (@flglmn) April 20, 2022

Would subscribe.

Netflix should have a feature where if you are browsing the menu for more than 10 minutes it just starts showing RoboCop

— rubot (@rubot) April 20, 2022

heres how you fix netflix. if theres a movie that netflix doesnt have you put in a request on the forums and then if someone has the movie, they upload it so that now its available

— suncoast employee in button up flame shirt (@gun_toucher) April 20, 2022

not noticed this thread before.

watched all the bbc4 things except montalbano which never clicked with me.

More 4 has ok to good Walter Presents stuff every week too, currently Crimson Rivers (french)

would always laugh at spiral because they seemingly had one shot a week just designed to shock. dead prostitute in a skip, dead baby, head in fireplace and the scene with the drug mule they gave laxatives to...

Not series, but still.

80% of what I watch on Netflix is non-English-language action trash. I do not give the tiniest fuck about their original content; gimme 90 minutes of Indonesian dudes kicking, stabbing and shooting each other and you've earned my $15 for the month. https://t.co/kympWdiNCT

— burning ambulance (NOW A RECORD LABEL!) (@burn_amb) April 20, 2022

Quite an option interesting piece (though a bit long) on showrunning and how that's changing because of streaming.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/epxeze/television-is-in-a-showrunning-crisis

Though it's good that 20+ ep seasons are shortening, in the main..

Recently:
Dead Water: Finnish ... felt a bit like The Bridge and The Killing ...
Capitani: season 2 is quite different from season 1

Gloria -- Portuguese; set in 1968; I really am liking it (2 more episodes to go) ... it makes me want to ask Daniel_Rf a bunch of questions about politics!

Haven't seen! My Portuguese netflix knowledge revolves mainly about the upcoming series about that time a shipload of cocaine sunk near the island I lived on and everyone went coke crazy for a few years (my mum ran a club at the time and all the musicians turned insufferable).

Happy to answer any questions :)

oh, the show is a spy thriller where the main character is a KGB agent and son of a government minister. The main character Joao appears to have been "converted" after serving in the military in Angola ... so there are issues re colonialism, and Portuguese "independence" from American influence ... like there are KGB agents, CIA agents, and PICE (?) agents?

Salazar is the head of the government -- I think you mentioned something about him in another thread -- re the revolution?

as in I have questions about historical background lol, not the show!

There was a military coup in the 1920's and Portugal basically stayed a dictatorship from then until 1974. Salazar first made a name for himself as the finance minister and then rose to become head of state, ushering in the Estado Novo regime, initially very much aligned with Hitler and Mussolini but this aspect got phased out a bit in the regime's public presentation when WWII erupted and Portugal decided to stay neutral (many ppl will still bring this up as a point in Salzar's favour, though personally I think "yeah we're sitting this one out" is a morally indefensible stance to take on that particular conflict). Cultivated the image of an austere, frugal, religious man - his most famous quote is "if you knew how hard it is to lead, you'd be happier to obey".

He actually died a few years before the revolution - famously fell of a chair, which is awesome because any online interaction with a Portuguese facist can be concluded by just posting a chair. His successor, Marcelo Caetano, promised democratic reforms (primavera marcelista) but failed to follow through on that, ultimately leading to the Carnation Revolution (but that might be spoilers!).

The Portuguese Communist Party was for decades the only real resistance to Salazar. Very much aligned with the Soviet Union, as most communist parties in Europe were. They're still around, and a bigger party than you'd think, though their voter base is very much aged. I have...complicated feelings about them, they def fucked up on a lot of social issues for a long time and the fealty to Moscow was often indefensible. But anyone living in Portugal now owes them a debt, innumerable stories of bravery and intelligence in the face of an absolutely horrid regime.

The colonial war really kicked off in the early 60's, though before that Portugal had already lost colonies in India. But what's viewed as the Colonial War in Portuguese ppl's mindsets was the conflict against liberation movements in Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde and above all Angola. The many many lives lost in these were the defining factor in bringing about the revolution, so one could say without much exageration that Portugal also owes its freedom to the liberation movements of these African countries.

Relationship with the US is tricky...the US knew the main opponents of Salazar were the commies, and obv preferred a fascist to a communist. That being said around the same time the liberation movements sprung up there were motions from the US in the UN for Portugal to give up its colonies, which caused a lot of friction obv. This was of course not only due to postcolonial solidarity but also because the US wanted stronger access to those countries, Angola in particular being v rich in natural resources. Pretty much every liberation guerrila in any Portuguese colony was funded either by the CIA or the KGB, as these things go. Salazar reacted by trying to rebrand the colonies as not colonies at all but rather part of Portugal - thus the famous slogan "Portugal is not a small country".

thank you! this is the exact context I was hoping for! All of these things are alluded to or play a part in the plot of this series. ... In the previous episode I watched Salazar had had an "accident" (lol at the chair) and there was a new leader. The PICE, as represented in the show, are horrible and make the CIA people look humanitarian.

also watched: Unpermitted Living - Spanish - organized crime patriarch with alzheimers - and issues of succession. The first season is pretty compelling, lots of melodrama, no one is 100% horrible except for Freddy the upstart Colombian drug dealer, and then the relatives that show up near the end who were living in Mexico ... it made me interested in perceptions/biases of European Spain vs. Latin American Spanish ... I started watching the 2nd season and it started out with a few ridiculous things happening, so I stopped watching it.

The PIDE were the secret police, just basically the Gestapo of the regime. Very adept at torture, just the worst scum.

The only reason the Carnation Revolution had a death toll at all was the director of the PIDE saw a crowd outside and just fired into it at random.

Very adept at torture, just the worst scum.

so this show's version is a fairly accurate portrayal

I’ve been kinda wiped out on the feel-bad organized crime shows, I stopped watching Gomorrah which is objectively well-done but the characters are such abhorrent ppl that I feel like I get the point. Got to that point w ZeroZeroZero too which looked amazing and had some great acting but it lost me by the end.

Mostly been sticking w/Engrenages, Stranger, and Entrapped.

I fucking loved Au Service de la France, but it's not on netflix anymore.

I think I am 4 seasons behind on Engranages ...