The 11 best foreign-language dramas to stream now

It’s been only 15 years since BBC Four screened the Danish thriller The Killing and opened many British eyes to the joys of foreign-language drama. Now, from Borgen to The Bureau, Shtisel to Squid Game, and Call My Agent to My Brilliant Friend, streaming services have opened a global cornucopia of subtitled or (if you have to) dubbed television productions. Here’s a selection of the best TV shows from around the world, available to stream without having to go near an airport. Lupin Omar Sy as Arsène Lupin AKA Assane Diop (Photo: Emmanuel Guimier/Netflix) The charismatic Omar Sy plays a super-suave Parisian professional thief, Assane Diop, who has taken to emulating his fictional Belle Époque counterpart – the gentleman thief and master of disguise Arsène Lupin. The first series of this seductively glossy Gallic heist show – tautly scripted by George Kay, creator of Sky Atlantic’s equally slick hit War – follows Assane’s struggle to clear his father’s name of theft, while the second is about the search for Assane’s kidnapped son, Raoul. The show – which hasn’t dropped in quality since its premiere in 2021 – recently released a fourth batch of episodes in which Assane is in prison while a copycat thief emulates his modus operandi. Sacré bleu! Streaming on Netflix Rage Cecilia Roth as Victoria (Photo: HBO Max) Or five women on the verge of a nervous breakdown – although “hell has no fury like a woman scorned” is the tagline for this visually vibrant and often gleefully violent Spanish dark comedy. The eight episodes follow a quintet of loosely connected, mostly older women in Madrid, who are each having a meltdown over various indignities (being sacked after 30 years of loyal service, for example, or left for a younger partner). We first meet them at a yoga retreat, where the teacher tells them that they’ve arrived at the “state of rage”, before revealing how they each reached boiling point.Streaming on HBO Max Sambre – Anatomy of a Crime Alix Poisson as Christine (Photo: BBC/What’s Up Films) A harrowing French true-crime drama with a marked difference. Fictionalising the real story of a notorious serial rapist who attacked more than 50 women across three decades, in mostly the same location (the River Sambre on the French-Belgian border), each episode focuses on a different (fictionalised) character. It starts with one of the victims, Christine (played by Alix Poisson), who regains consciousness on the riverbank in 1988 after having been assaulted, only for the inept, old-school local police to downgrade the attack. Other episodes focus on the judge, the town mayor, the pathologist and the police chief before we finally meet the rapist himself, Enzo, a popular factory worker. It’s a chilling dissection of how a serial rapist might avoid detection for so long. Streaming on BBC iPlayer Soviet Jeans Kārlis Arnolds Avots as Renārs (Photo: Walter Presents) No, not a retro-fashion documentary, but an award-winning Latvian comedy drama with a sharply rendered historical backdrop – a breakout hit for Baltic fiction. Set in Soviet-occupied 1979 Riga, it follows Renārs (Kārlis Arnolds Avots), a theatre costume designer and black-market smuggler of Western goods, who gets sent to a psychiatric asylum by the communist regime. While institutionalised, he runs an illegal underground operation to counterfeit US denim jeans. Blended with humour and romance (Renārs falls for a Finnish film director) is a trenchant look at Cold War paranoia and the mind-numbing absurdities of authoritarian bureaucracy. Streaming on Channel 4 Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole Ingrid Bolsø Berdal as Ellen Gjelten and Tobias Santelmann as Harry Hole (Photo: Ronald Plante/Netflix) With the nights well and truly drawn in, some classic Scandi-noir is surely a must – except this new series featuring Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø’s iconic protagonist is set during a sun-dappled Oslo summer. A 2017 US adaptation of the acclaimed Harry Hole books, The Snowman, was universally panned, but this new eight-part adaptation was written by Nesbø himself and is much more bearable. Tobias Santelmann is suitably grizzled as the tormented lead character, a recovering alcoholic and revered police officer, while Joel Kinnaman gives a standout performance as his corrupt colleague Tom Waaler. And this is Nordic noir, so of course there are some suitably lurid murders. Lots of them. Streaming on Netflix Pachinko Kim Min-ha as Sunja (Photo: Apple) In the mood for an epic saga spanning much of the 20th century – from Korea and Japan to the United States? The two seasons of this adaptation of Min Jee Lee’s bestselling novel follows one Korean family from their Japanese-occupied homeland in 1915 to the Second World War, Allied occupied Japan, the Korean War, Japan’s high-growth period and all the way to the Gordon Gekko era of 80s Wall Street. With rare emotional intelligence and powerful insight into the immigrant experience, Pachinko (a popular Japanese arcade game and here a metaphor for uncontrollable fate) is a modern TV classic. Streaming on Apple TV Bandi Djody Grimeau as Kylian (Photo: Lou Breton/Netflix) From Éric Rochant, the mastermind behind the hit French spy thriller The Bureau, comes this gritty and emotionally raw crime drama shot entirely on location in Martinique. The series follows a family of 11 orphaned siblings who are left to fend for themselves after the sudden death of their mother. Desperate to stay united and keep a roof over their heads, some of the siblings turn to the local drug trade and organised crime. The dialogue is primarily in French, with some local Martinican Creole mixed in, and there’s an authentic West Indian flavour to the eight-parter. Check it out and ask yourself why, despite healthy global viewing figures, Netflix opted not to renew Bandi for a second season. Streaming on Netflix Carmen Curlers Maria Rossing as Birthe Windfeld and Morten Hee Andersen as Axel Byvang (Photo: Walter Presents) DR, the excellent Danish state broadcaster behind such hits as Borgen and The Killing, like to mix it up with their dramas, and this upbeat character-driven series is certainly very different. It fictionalises the true story of 1960s Danish entrepreneur Arne Bybjerg Pedersen, who mass produced a revolutionary electric hair-curler and liberated women from long, expensive salon sessions. The fictionalised version of Pedersen, the charismatic Axel Byvang (Morten Hee Andersen), patents the device in 1963, teaming up with a weary farmer’s wife, Birthe (the excellent Maria Rossing), who will go on to become his formidable business partner. A period-flavourful charmer. Streaming on Channel 4 Where’s Wanda? Lea Drinda as Wanda Klatt (Photo: Frédéric Batier/Apple) A jaunty comedy drama about the search for a missing teenager? This beguiling streamer from Germany manages to balance the story’s tonal elements as it follows the increasingly Stasi-like efforts of 17-year-old Wanda Klatt’s parents as – frustrated by the police investigation – they install hidden cameras in the houses of their smalltown neighbours. A second series has recently dropped. What really makes the show is the lively, cheerful production and the performances from Heike Makatsch and Axel Stein as her increasingly deranged parents. Streaming on Apple TV The Law According to Lidia Poët Matilda De Angelis as Lidia Poët (Photo: Lucia Iuorio/Netflix) Lidia Poët, Italy’s first modern qualified female lawyer, is banned from practising law because she is a woman. While she appeals against disbarment, Lidia (Matilda De Angelis) works as an assistant to her lawyer brother Enrico and investigates murder. Set in 1880s Turin, this poignant and very bingeable mix of legal procedural, historical drama and feminist manifesto (the case of the real Lidia Poët sparked a major push for women’s rights in Italy), has gone to three seasons, the third and final one having been released in April. Streaming on Netflix Maxton Hall – The World Between Us Damian Hardung as James and Harriet Herbig-Matten as Ruby (Photo: Stephan Rabold) There’s plentiful guilty-pleasure potential in the two seasons of this cheesy but hugely popular German teen-drama romance set at an elite British boarding school. A warning though – if you don’t want it dubbed into English (the default setting on Prime Video’s foreign language shows), you’ll have to manually switch it back to the original German. Privileged James Beaufort (Damian Hardung) crosses the path of ambitious scholarship student Ruby Bell (Harriet Herbig-Motten) and sparks fly, although the path of true love naturally never runs smooth. For a rather more biting take on a similar premise of working-class kids at a posh school, try Netflix’s Spanish drama Elite. Streaming on Prime Video