Set in the immediate aftermath of an appalling, notorious sexual assault on a New Delhi bus, Delhi Crime follows the efforts of police officers working under enormous public pressure and with few resources other than their own ingenuity to find and arrest the suspects. At once a visceral police procedural, a tense character-driven drama, and a sweeping, nuanced portrait of India’s bustling capital, Delhi Crime is never burdened by the tropes of any of these genres: it tells its own story on its own terms, horrifying and captivating in equal measure.
Set in the Northern Irish city of Derry (or Londonderry, depending on your persuasion), this boisterous comedy follows the misadventures of a raucous, profane, self-involved set of four schoolgirls and one schoolboy. As the Troubles rage inconveniently around them, Erin, Orla, Clare, Michelle, and James try their worst to get out of exams, weather detention, and earn money for the school trip to Paris. Like the best Irish and British comedies, each episode sees the characters make more and more inane and selfish choices until they reach an uproarious climax—at one point, they try to fake an IRA kidnapping to avoid being banned from the chip shop. Come for the sendups of religious tensions, stay for Siobhan McSweeney as the deliciously sardonic nun who runs the school.
Why would anyone ever need a cheesy soap? That's what I used to say until I encountered the recent trend in (Spain) Spanish historical fiction soaps, from which Velvet stands out as the origin series. In Velvet, we're transported to a department store in Madrid in the 1940s, where the main character, Ana, works as a seamstress. She and the store's owner are in love, and have been since they were children, but pesky societal and class boundaries won't let them be together. This is exactly what one needs to watch when the world is a little too much, and you need to believe love will prevail above all else.
This gorgeous German period piece revels in the joys and turmoil of Berlin's "Golden Twenties"—the brief, raucous years between the horrors of the Great War and the Great Depression. Police commissioner Gereon Rath, a veteran with a morphine problem, is sent from sleepy Kōln to Berlin to find his father's blackmailers. The investigation leads him through slums, nightclubs, train yards, Communist hideouts, and fine restaurants on the trail of an ever-expanding conspiracy.
In the dystopian India of the miniseries Ghoul, Muslims and other groups live under the heel of a hyperviolent state. Young security officer Nidu is posted to an underground interrogation facility, shut in with a small band of torturers and ragged prisoners. Then a strange, ancient force arrives among them, stirring the jailers' dark terrors, hunting them through the concrete maze. Not for the faint of heart, Ghoul crafts a riveting series from the all-too-real horrors of state violence, terrorism, and atrocity.
Dark is a Netflix original thriller focuses on a small German town shaken by the disappearance of two boys. But when a body finally turns up in the woods, it is the perfectly preserved body of another boy who went missing in the eighties, who's case was never solved. Almost frustratingly slowly, the show unravels the interconnected trauma of three generations of three families forced to reconcile with the hurt they've dealt each other and themselves. This is Stranger Things' sinister German cousin, and if you're anything like us here on the Xeno team, you'll find yourself on the other side of it in three days, reeling and demanding more. The good news is, the second season *just* came out. But a warning—it may be a good idea to grab a notepad and a pen to keep track of who is who and what is what in this fantastic, twisty show.
This week, Dominique binge-watched a Brazilian TV Show available on Netflix called 3%. 3% is mildly like The Hunger Games, in that the show’s conceit consists of a test that allows citizens to become part of the 3% (or the elites). But what makes this show so fascinating is that it is much more complex than “good” and “bad” or “elites” and “the 97%.” The budding resistance movement fighting for more equality is not clearly all good, and the founding principles of the 3% are not all evil. It’s a deeply intriguing show.
Call My Agent, or Dix Pour Cent in the French, is a TV show comedy about a talent agency in Paris. It's a joy to watch the main characters (all high-powered, fast-speaking Parisian agents) juggle the egos of a similarly eclectic cast of actors and actresses.
French Netflix production Osmosis is the latest in a line of gripping and brainy Western European sci-fi shows. Siblings Esther and Paul are the founders and leaders of a tech startup promising to revolutionize the way we fall in love. Using a system of “implants” and mind mapping, they promise patients total emotional consummation with their “soul mate.” (We know: what could possibly go wrong?) On the eve of the company’s public launch, beset by treacherous test subjects, mutinous staff, and sinister backers, Paul and Esther begin to unravel the consequences of their own emotional needs. A deeply felt and deliciously tense story about what we feel and how we try—and usually fail—to control it.