Hey you! Philistine! You can forget your "if I wanted to read I'd buy a book" nonsense and get yourself hooked on these five fantastic foreign shows...
What are you grumping about anyway? You've always been a fan of foreign TV shows, you just didn't realise is all. Here's the undeniable proof:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY_Yf4zz-yo
Father Ted, Love/Hate and, ahmm, Glenroe – here in Ireland we really have produced some excellent television shows over the years. We're not the only European nation to deliver some top quality entertainment, however, and so here at JOE HQ we've compiled a list of five of our favourite foreign-language television programs AKA Fancy Reading Telly.
Before you ask though, the answer is "no" – Robbie Coltrane's Cracker is not included as it is all spoken in Scottish which, we're reliably informed, is a form of the English language.
Takeshi's Castle has been excluded for the same reason...
Les Revenants – The Returned (France)
Like The Walking Dead only much sexier, French-ier and with a better soundtrack.
The ‘zombies’ in this are local people who died, some recently, some many years before, who start to return to the eerie French village they once lived in. The town, which is beside a massive dam, is spooky enough, but then these deceased loved ones start to turn up, reopening old wounds, old loves and old hates.
With a brilliantly haunting soundtrack by Mogwai, some fantastic acting performances (the little lad Victor, played by Swann Nambotin below, will give you nightmares) and some great set-pieces and plot twists, it really is a fresh take on the seriously tired ‘undead’ format.
Borgen – The Castle (Denmark)
A show about Danish coalition politics and how the media covers it doesn’t sound very promising but trust us, Borgen is great TV. The chief protagonist of the show is Birgitte Nyborg, who is the leader of the Moderates party. Beginning in the aftermath of a typically complex election and the spinning and media management that goes with it, the show has never let up for the entirety of its three-series run so far.
Backstabbing, affairs, double-deals, back room talk and gaffes are all regular features of the series, in both the political and media world and at the heart of it all is Nyborg, who is a bit like Jed Bartlett in The West Wing; a politician you wish was real as you would definitely vote for them.
Denmark’s small population, multi-party system and incestuous media/political realm is very much like the one we have here and we can see the show being a huge success when it starts to air on TG4 soon.
If you haven’t seen it, you are in for a treat.
Il commissario Montalbano – Inspector Montalbano (Italian)
If you like your police/detective programs set in Sicily and starring someone who looks a bit like BT Sport's James Richardson as the titular Inspector Montalbano (Luca Zingaretti), then boy howdy do we have the show for you.
Il commissario Montalbano, or Inspector Montalbano if you're not feeling so continental, is based on the works of Italian crime novelist Andrea Camilleri, and the imaginary town of Vigàta plays host to the criminal proceedings which range from murder and corruption to immigration and the Mafia's shady dealings.
There is plenty of meat to this programme with all of those issues, and you get to see a human side of the detective who often wrestles with the difficulties of small-town policing and politics, but also uses that to his advantage while seemingly keeping an eye on everything that goes on in the town so that he's never out of the loop. You also get to see how he balances his family life and his job, and through all of these insights you really connect with the character, perhaps more so than most standard detective series.
It's normally shown on BBC Four at some obscure hour on a Friday or Saturday night, but when you fancy a good night in, it's definitely worth the not inconsiderable feature-length running time of around 105 minutes. There's also a spin-off prequel about the young detective which we are yet to see, but if it's as good as the regular show, then count us in.
Forbrydelsen – The Killing (Denmark)
Our friends the great Danes deliver yet another deliciously dark Detective drama, as we follow Inspector Sarah Lund and her probing police team on three sprawling murder cases over the course of three terrific seasons.
Lund, played perfectly by Sofie Gråbøl, is the super sleuth who, as well as leading viewers on a journey of dangerous discovery across Copenhagen, was wearing hipster jumpers before hipsters even knew what a hipster was. Or a jumper for that matter.
Anybody know the Danish for ‘Red Herring?’
Packed to the brim with corrupt cover-ups, betrayals and lies, The Killing is full of ‘what-the-f*ck-just-happened’ plot twists, while all the time brilliantly focusing on the murdered victim’s family in addition to the police team assigned with tracking down the cruel killers responsible.
As producer Piv Bernth explains, The Killing tries to find out "what does a murder mean for a police investigator, what does it mean for the parents, what does it mean for the politicians? It's not just about finding the murderer. That's important, but it's not all."
Undeniably outstanding work from all concerned.
Broen/Bron – The Bridge (Denmark/Sweden)
You can forget about Starsky and Hutch, Tango and Cash and even Cagney and Lacey, because JOE’s new favourite buddy cop duo are Saga Norén (Sofia Helin) and Martin Rohde (Kim Bodnia). Catchy, right?
The Bridge may be the third super Scandanavian show on JOE’s short list of five foreign TV programs but it most certainly deserves its place.
The show’s ingenious premise kicks proceedings off, as an unidentified woman is found murdered on the titular Øresund Bridge. The perfect twist is that her deceased body has been precisely placed on the border between Denmark and Sweden, thereby forcing Norén, of the Malmö police force, and Rohde, of the Copenhagen police force, to work together in order to get to the bottom of the crackin’ case.
Hilarity inevitably ensues. Well, not really...
What does follow this gripping opening sequence is a bleak and beautiful show that has Scandanavian shades of David Fincher’s Se7en, as the body count on both sides of the border begins to pile up.
Much of what makes this show particularly brilliant is the characterisation and spot-on performances of the two lead actors, with the good cop/mad cop relationship between the charming, womanising Rohde and scarred, Spock-like Norén just as fascinating as any clue found in their thrilling cats-and-mouse hunt for the mysterious and terrifying ‘Truth Terrorist.’
Prepare to be well and truly 'hookillfookilldoopilled' (that's foreign language for 'hooked').
