What is Your Favorite Foreign Tv Series

Dark (German). Awesome series.

Dark was great. For anyone watching for the first time, Netflix made a great website that helps you keep up with who is who with no spoilers. Select the last episode you've finished and it only gives information to that point.
- Came here for this!
- I loved season 1, especially for the 80s look in Germany which I remember from my childhood (Gen X)
  
  Dark lost me with season 2
Dark was great, it reminded me a bit of Stranger Things in the first season. By the second season you almost need to take notes to keep up with the story line though
- I need to take notes only 3 episodes in. I want to like it but it feels like tuning in to a random episode of the X-Files with no knowledge of what is going on.

Taskmaster (UK)

As an American, this is 100% my favorite TV show. I'm so happy they got the rights to release every episode on YouTube the day after it airs.

Also, if you enjoy the UK panel show vibe, I really enjoy Would I Lie to You and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown
- Second "8 out of 10 cats died countdown", and also suggest "Would I lie to you?"
- I second Cats Countdown.
Many of the international versions are worth watching as well. The New Zealand and Australian versions are in English and so fairly easy to watch. Perhaps not unexpectedly, the US version is not good.
- I didn't like the NZ one, tbh.
That show is a balm for my soul.

Letterkenny, Trailer Park Boys....the Canadian loophole

Trailer Park boys is by far the best mockumentary created.

Fuckin way she goes boys
- It was fucking great until the last few seasons where they were older and trying to milk the name for some more money.
Love Shoresy. It's a Letterkenny spinoff, it's a comedy with an uptick of drama over the source material.

I love British comedy. Peep Show, Spaced, and People Just Do Nothing are some of my favorites.

Peep Show is my human litmus test. Seeing how people react to that show can tell you a lot about them.
The Phantom Menace was 18 months ago, Tim!
Ahh.. but have you tried This is Jinsy?!?

Maybe could have framed this "non-US TV shows". Now you're inviting the majority if users to just tell you their favorite US series 🤷

Life on Mars (UK)

Please tell me you watched the follow-on series, Ashes to Ashes, with Keeley Hawes. Same concept, but she goes back to the 80s, and also meets Gene Hunt. Great addition to the original series!
- Wow, did I hate the sequel series.

I'm in the US. I love the IT Crowd, and most other British comedies. I also really enjoyed Broadchurch, Sherlock (it fell off a bit at the end), and Dr Who, but I've fallen a few seasons back on that.

Bluey.

FUCK YEAH

Babylon Berlin (Germany)

I liked Game of Thrones actually! 👍 Currently going through Star Trek, starting with the original series that I also enjoy!

The premise was foreign tv series, by which I assume means from non- English speaking countries
- Yeah.. my post was mostly a joke on assumptions like yours. English is actually a foreign language to more people than I this native to

Dr Who, bar none.

Monty Python comes a close second, then The Young Ones.

I guess I just dig British TV a good bit because you have to get down the list a good ways before you find one from anywhere else.

The Young Ones so good.
- That's actually where I first heard motorhead
I love MPFC, but some of the sketches are "meh". For every "Battle of Pearl Harbor", there's a "Confuse-a-cat".

Fawlty Towers is great. Mildly racist against the Spanish and Irish.

I really liked La Casa de Papel. Netflix renamed it to ‘Money Heist,’ which is a terrible name. Still a good series though.

The Bridge (Sweden/Denmark, not the America/Mexico remake).

8oo10Cats and Graham Norton round out the top-three, but any procedural crime show will keep me. Even Midsummer Murders and especially Silent Witness.

The Bridge (Sweden/Denmark, not the America/Mexico remake).

I bailed on the America/Mexico one, but tne the UK/France version is worth watching for Clemence Poesy's performance.
"The bridge" is not foreign to me, but I agree. It's really good.

Breaking Bad

Not foreign for OP.
- The question was what my favourite foreign TV series is, not what my favourite one of their foreign TV series is

Do anime count?

No
- But they are foreign, are played on TV and split up into episodes :(

I remember once, on a random Sunday I was channel surfing at my parents house and found this old British show called "keeping up appearances", it looked like a shitty show for old people, till it watched it and couldn't stop laughing at it.

Is that with Mrs Bucket? It's classic brit comedy and it's very good.
My grandmother was essentially Hyacinth Bucket, right down to leaning over to watch what speed my grandfather was doing, and telling him to watch out for random things well off the side of the road.

South Korea is really uping their tv game. I really enjoy many of their shows.

A couple I've enjoyed recently:

Kleo - an ex Stasi assassin adjusts to the fall of the Berlin wall and takes revenge for her betrayal by the state (German)

Extraordinary Attorney Woo - a legal procedural following the autistic Woo as she navigates the law and life. You wouldn't think it was my thing but I found it very charming (Korean)

Taskmaster, got into it during Covid because all of their episodes are free on Youtube.

The Chestnut Man

Lupin

Wallander

Poirot with David Suchet

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Return of Sherlock Holmes

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Sign of Four

Yes, I have a type and I am unashamed.

have you seen Forbrydelsen / The Killing?
- I saw the US remake and it's where I fell absolutely in love with the Joel Kinnaman / Marielle Enos duo. Could.not.stop ... except I hated the last season. I started watching Hanna only because those two actors were in it.

Wallander is a really good Swedish crime show, if you like being depressed.

The last season hits extra deep.

Corner Gas

Ahhhh the ol' Canadian loop hole.

"3%" (2016-2020), hands down !!

A neat Brazilian production; I loved the characters and world-building. Barely, if ever, it's mentioned.

Recently came across the pilot for the webseries that evolved into the Netflix production. It's cool to see how early ideas morphed into whole storylines.

ETA:

"Dirk Gently" (UK, 2010)

This perfectly scratches the itch for randomness!

"Totenfrau" (Germany, 2022)
"Tabula Rasa" (Belgium, 2017)
"Utopia" (UK, 2013)

...and there must be some thrillers.

I loved Luther, although wasn't impressed by the recent movie.

I believe the movie was, unfortunately, a rushed conclusion to what was an amazing series, because they just couldn't get enough of Idris Elba's time in between Hollywood flicks. His star had simply risen too far by that point.

It's a real shame, too - we waited so long for that movie.

I scrolled this far to say Squid Game.

Sooo good

I love Korean paranormal crime dramas and I loved Signal. It's about two detectives trying to solve the same case from two different points in time. Another season is on hold until after the strokes but what there is is really great.

Gogglebox (AU, UK, IE) in that order.
Eat Well For Less (NZ)
Vera (UK) Sometimes on PBS in (US)
Magpie Murders (UK)
Professor T (UK)
Question Everything (AU)
Sort Your Life Out (UK, NZ)
We Interrupt This Broadcast (AU)
WTFAQ (AU)
Mock The Week (UK) this show ended in 2023.

This Country (UK) is so charming and painful at the same time. Even if you don't like Welcome to Flatch, you might still love This Country.

Mr. Inbetween from Australia is pretty good

Sahsiyet. It's like Breaking Bad, but Turkish. Really well produced and binge worthy.

Extraordinary attorney wu

I was studying Mandarin a few years ago and I was suggested to watch Taiwanese dramas since they tend to speak Mandarin and to also speak at a conversational level.

There's a lot of romantic comedies, so you can watch meteor garden, substitute princess, my queen, fated to love you, and I have found that all of these are very accessible to me as an American audience but I never got to the point where I could watch them without subtitles.

Another mostly Mandarin show that is definitely worth the watch is called nirvana in fire, and it is legitimately an amazing 40-hour long epic show that has sword fighting and wuxia and political intrigue and romantic subplots and a massive character list of all sorts of different people who all have their own thing going on all woven together into this amazing storytelling tapestry that rivals and in many ways bests anything that you can get in America or Western media.

But unless you're already very fluent in I'm not going to say just Mandarin but in the Chinese languages, you have to watch it with subtitles and it's definitely worth it.

I really enjoyed “The Devil’s Plan” on Netflix. It’s a South Korean reality show with smart people solving puzzles. If you like math, you’ll like this show.

Red Dwarf?

Not sure if that counts. I'm from Australia so technically all US tv series are "foreign" to me.
Red Dwarf is pretty good. Fawlty Towers is great. Someone recommended "Yes Minister" and the first season is awesome. The Hallmark of great comedy writing is if it holds up, and Yes Minister still is hilarious 40 years later.

Dark is a German Netflix show. It unfolds into something akin to "Lost" over the first four episodes. The ending doesn't suck, and they set up the end to where it's almost impossible to get it right. It's not an amazing ending, but it's impressive that they managed to make it not terrible, since it builds up to a near-impossible ending.

Squid Game is pretty great but gory. Letterkenny and Trailer Park Boys are quirky comedies with some rough language throughout.

From Australia, there's Rake, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, and The Nowhere Boys, although for that last one only the first 2 seasons.

My current Australian obsession is Bluey.

Doc Martin, Merlin from the UK.

Murdoch Mysteries earlier seasons from Canada.

I also enjoyed a few Korean drama series like Misaeng.

And this is really old from Japan, but Bayside Shakedown drama was really fun.

Other Japanese dramas I liked include Proof of the Man, Aibou, and Shinzanmono. I love Japanese police dramas and mysteries.

Spooks
Torchwood
City Homicide
Life on Mars (UK)
Stan Lee's Lucky Man (I think this is british)
Hudson and Rex (early seasons anyway were fun)
Doctor Who through Peter Capaldi, though the Tenant years were the best IMO.

Probably many others I just don't recall

Der Tatortreiniger (German)

I haven't gotten very far, but I like the comedy and character interactions so far.

Utopia (AU) - similar vein to Parks & Rec but more bureaucracy. I love it.

It's a bit old now, but I really liked Summer Snow from Japan. Also Hungry from Japan (similarly dated).

Top Gear (UK), but uhm I got some bad news for u my man.
Taskmaster (UK)
Mock the Week (UK), also some bad news.
Te land, ter zee en in de lucht (NL), also some bad news.
Takeshi's castle (JP), but basically every country had their own commentary version. Endend, but a reboot is available on prime I think.

Basically I don't watch TV anymore.

Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams (joint UK and US production, premiered first on Channel 4)

great ones that never took off in the states

This TV series fits this description to a T because I reckon that most people, when thinking of a sci-fi TV anthology series, would bring to mind Black Mirror.

I watched Electric Dreams shortly after finishing the latest season of Black Mirror; I found the former more enjoyable and poignant than the latter.

We're on a UK/Irish police drama kick right now:

Line of Duty
Bloodlands
Blue Lights

If you don't mind a bit of war history, SAS Rogue Heroes is incredible. Great look at the unit that became the British SAS, with some really good comedy thrown in. In the same vein (British war/comedy), Bluestone 42 is great too.

Exit (Norwegian)

There a lot of great kdrama shows. And no, I’m not talking about Squid Game. I can recommend Beyond Evil, D.P., and Moving.

Klovn, the tv show (but also the three movies they made), is a Danish Curb Your Enthusiasm style show, often much more out there and including a lot of references to bodily humour.

It might take a little while to get into but it is riotously funny at times.

I think it was on Hulu for a bit, for all you Americans.

Slow Horses (UK/US) Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas? Yes, please!
Broadchurch (UK)
Glitch (AUS, first season only)
Chef! (UK, first two seasons only)

Forgetting many others but just having first cup of coffee

Kingdom (South Korea)

Derry Girls (Ireland)

Silent Witness, Waking the Dead, Hinterland, Inspector Morse, George Gently, Vera, Poirot (the David Suchet version).

We watch a lot of detective shows.

Danger 5 from Australia: It's hilarious.

A Very Secret Service is also funny (but it's in Fr*nch)