7 underrated streaming imports
Our favorite international streaming originals on Netflix, Prime Video, and HBO Max
TV Features Remi Weekes
Clockwise from left: Rilakkuma And Kaoru, Elite, Crash Landing On You, His House, and Made In Heaven (Screenshots) Graphic: Natalie Peeples
So many streaming services, so little time. With this week’s AVQ&A, we are once again uncovering some hidden streaming gems that you (and we) might have missed:
What is your favorite hidden streaming gem from a country other than the United States?
Like the version we did back in January, this refers to a streaming original you came across and enjoyed, but hasn’t received a ton of coverage. This time around, the movie or TV show must be produced by a studio outside the U.S., though it can be distributed by an American streaming service.
39 Comments
Beforeigners on HBO. Does anyone else even know it exists? I loved it!
I hadn’t but after looking it up on Wikipedia it sounds fascinating, so thanks for the recommendation.
Enjoy! It really is fascinating. Hopefully they’ll make a second season.
I greatly enjoyed Beforeigners! Krista Kosonen is a delight.
I’m in Australia and I saw Beforeigners a few weeks back for free legally in Australia on one of our government station’s streaming services (SBS On Demand). Only one of two TV shows I’ve seen this year (the other is WandaVision) and I thought it was great! Recommended it to a few people, a couple of which have seen at least the first episode of and seemed to like it.
On Netflix
Came here for this. The most expensive non-English language show of all time, and it barely gets mentioned over Stateside!
Agreed. The first two seasons of Babylon Berlin are fantastic. The third, while still good, slips a bit too far into melodrama. Plus, much of the music is done by Bryan Ferry who even appears as a lounge singer in one episode!Highly recommended.
I’d also highly recommend The Kirlian Frequency. Kind of like an animated version of Welcome to Nightvale without all the pretension.
I’ve been watching BritBox over the last year and we’ve plowed through Chef!, Open All Hours, A Touch of Frost, Are You Being Served?, Fawlty Towers, Father Brown, Shetland, and a bunch of others. Been having a blast.
I know it’s a couple of years old now but I’m just getting in to Sion Sono’s Tokyo Vampire Hotel and admiring it’s all round insanity and weirdness.
Veneno and 30 Coins (30 Monedas) on HBO Max have been my favorite foreign language shows this year. And of course Elite is my favorite of all current Netflix shows.
I had a hard time with Elite, mainly because if the 2 leads that were in Casa de papel. Having 2 actors that I know are adults, playing teenagers in high school rubbed me the wrong way
30 Coins is awesome in how it swings for the fences, even if it’s not always successful. And that opening sequence! They squeezed an entire Passion in there!
Veneno was fantastic, and I would like for more people to be exposed to it please. I slept on the show until about a week ago, and….just what the fuck. Incredible writing and acting on top of an important story out of Spain’s LGBTQ history that needs to be more well-known. And there are some Almodóvar-adjacent threads on the production that are just…well, fucking fun. Really, it was a joy.
Number one for me has to be Korean Odyssey on Netflix. It’s a modern setting take on Journey to the West which is far better than it has any right to be. Not only does it manage to be more accurate to the book than I imagined, they clearly learned all the right lessons on how to structure a season of genre TV. And I can’t say enough about how much fun the love/hate relationship between Devil King Woo and Son Oh Gong (Wukong) is.My next choice isn’t on any of the major streamers in the US, but on Viki, which may not count. It’s Yanxi Palace, a revenge and palace intrigue drama with a fun, sniping, dysfunctional relationship thrown in for good measure. It is an escalating series of people trying to take the heroine out and learning the hard way that if you come at her, you best not miss. It’s turned me on to a whole world of revenge dramas where the suspense comes not from whether the hero/heroine will survive, but how they will take out the next person to get in their way. I feel like I’ve waited most of my life to find a genre that lets me root for a villain without guilt and I’m so happy I found it.
Netflix
Oh man! I thought I was the only person who watched this. I thought seasons 1 and 2 were solid. Once you got past some of the bigger holes in the initial premise, it was a pretty good examination of the political dynamic that it set up. I loved watching the machinations of the Norwegians and the Russians. …and then season three happened and, yikes.
Fallet (The Case) on Netflix is a delightful Swedish-British mystery spoof about mismatched detectives investigating a case that turns out to be surprisingly personal for both of them
“His House” is one of the smartest horror movie I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t call it satire though. It’s closer to social commentary; social commentary on the Sudanese refugee experience. “His House” is as real as a horror gets.
Dark on Netflix. Excellent show.
Yeah what a mindbender of a series. I wouldn’t call the ending wholly satisfactory – and really, how could it ever be? – but it is a fitting end nonetheless.
I’m still trying to come to grips with how Dark ended, because I thought the whole series was so thoroughly engrossing. Then it kind of fumbled at the goal line.
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I loved The Head so much that after I binged it in a day, I made my partner binge it with me the next day. It isn’t good, but it’s so perfect at being what it sets out to be.
Thanks for (double) binging! My brother and I created the show. It was fun to write, hell to shoot and hopefully fun to watch.
A lot of fun! I was shocked that it wasn’t promoted more heavily considering the quality of the production and the performances, I ended up finding it almost by accident (and was instantly sold by the premise).
Yes, HBO Max kinda just put it up on the international section of their platform and that was that. But rhat’s OK. It wasn’t an expensive show for them to acquire, probably, so there wasn’t an incentive for a big push. The show has been doing well all over the world, so it wasn’t really dependent on the US market.
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There are some really good Scandi dramas/Nordic noir on streaming services, and I’m surprised none got a mention here:Netflix: Bordertown (Finnish), Quicksand (Swedish), Deadwind (Finnish). Those three have been on Netflix a while and were generally well received by critics. I also enjoyed The Valhalla Murders and The Rain (Danish), although the latter’s final season could have been stronger. Newer Netflix offerings include Young Wallander, which I thought was engaging enough, and Snabba Cash, which is getting good buzz but I haven’t watched yet (but I really liked the original Snabba Cash film starring Joel Kinnaman, so I have high hopes for the series). Amazon: Trapped (Icelandic). Amazon also has a couple of other worthy series available through their add-on channel subscriptions, including Mammon, All the Sins, Those Who Kill, and Arctic Circle. Hulu: Midnight Sun (Swedish-French).Moving beyond just Nordic noir, I highly recommend Sundance Now if you’re looking for a change of pace with your streaming services. Not only does it have the outstanding Australian comedy series Upright, but it’s got The Bureau (French), and Wisting (Norwegian), both of which I liked. There are several other foreign-language shows on my Sundance Now list, including Shadow Lines (Finnish), Thin Ice (Swedish) and The Swell (Dutch). Also, if you’re ever looking for a foreign show and you can’t seem to find it on any of the main streaming channels, check to see if your local library has a Hoopla or a Kanopy subscription. Both are great streaming services for that kind of stuff.
Seconding the Crash Landing On You recommendation – it’s fucking great.
Crash Landing is great and all, but truly Vincenzo (also on Netflix) and Mr Queen (on Viki) for the kdrama win. Both are so well written and wildly funny.
No love for Amazon Prime’s Sion Sono’s Tokyo Vampire Hotel? Like a lot of the director’s work it features attractive young people dying a lot, but there’s also a bizarre plot around a supernatural hotel inside a demon’s body, and a plan to imprison some of the aforementioned attractive young people in it for 100 years to suck their blood. Plus the actual end of the world. Add some nice fights, striking performances, and great design, and you’ve got a lot of entertainment.
I would recommend Family Business on Netflix. It’s a french tv show about a family of butchers that wants to enter the legal pot business
Before We Die. (Sweden)The Day. (Belgium)
The Serbian series Black Sun. The roaring 20s, drugs, orgies, beheadings and a drunk cop trying to do his job. On Prime.The Method and Better Than Us two Russian series on Netflix with the same star. She’s better as a robot than a rookie cop but they are both interesting.
A Place Further Than The Universe. It’s an anime, sure, but it is not the run-of-the-mill action-packed show. Rather it’s a beautiful coming-of-age series about four high school girls planning a trip to Antarctica for their own personal reasons, including the loss of one girl’s mother on an expedition there. Sadly the lack of subtitles likely put potential viewers off. Nevertheless it’s a worthwhile watch, bound to put one in tears by the series’ end.
The 3% show sucks. Yeah, it’s a super cool premise. But there is just way, way, way too much endless posturing and discussions amongst the elites and next to no development of life for the 97%.