15 International Series to Binge-Watch Over the Holiday Season

The closing act of a modern Italian mafia classic, a look at the lives of Jewish people in 1950s Turkey and a few Korean series to help you and your loved ones suffering from a case of Squid Game withdrawal.

As it has done in recent years, The Hollywood Reporter has looked far and wide for international shows to cram into your downtime over this holiday season.

GOMORRAH

With the fifth and final season of this ground-breaking Italian mafia drama set to bow in early 2022, now is the time to catch up on the show critics have compared favorably to The Wire, The Sopranos and Breaking Bad. But while those shows occasionally featured an exemplary member of law enforcement or a criminal with an ethical code of honor, Gomorrah focuses entirely on the very not-nice gangsters who run the Neapolitan crime syndicate known as the Camorra. Epic in scope and relentlessly authentic (most of the dialog is in Neapolitan, meaning that even most Italian viewers need subtitles to watch), Gomorrah hits the system like a shot of strong espresso. (Streaming on: HBO Max)

THE CLUB

The stand-out in Netflix’s new slate of Turkish-language originals, The Club is part family drama, part crime mystery, part history lesson and a full-on deep dive into a world — the cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic society of 1950s Istanbul — never before seen on TV. Gökce Bahadir plays Matilda, a member of Turkey’s Sephardic Jewish community, who is released from prison for a murder she committed as a teenager. Struggling to reconnect with her estranged daughter, she begins work at a new, taboo-breaking nightclub in the city. An intoxicating mix of genres, cultures and languages (including Ladino, the historical language of Sephardic Jewry), The Club is the perfect gateway drug to Turkish TV.
(Streaming on: Netflix)

DR. BRAIN

Coming hot off Netflix’s mega-success with Squid Game, Apple’s Korean series premiere is similarly high-concept and dives deep into genre storytelling with a horror twist. The plot sees the titular Dr. Brain, a neuroscientist with autism (played by Parasite’s Lee Sun-kyun) who invents a machine that can sync brain waves, enabling a recipient to absorb the memories of a deceased donor. Struggling to cope with the death of his young son, and already perplexed by the world of emotion, Dr. Brain tries his invention out on himself, setting off a Frankenstein-style noir horror story in which Dr. Brain is both scientist and monster.
(Streaming on: AppleTV+)

KAMIKAZE

HBO Max knocks it out of the park with its first-ever Danish original series: a drama about Julie, a rich, privileged 18-year-old Instagram influencer whose life is torn asunder when her family dies in a plane crash. Next big thing Marie Reuther plays Julie with searing, full-on intensity in a story that leans into the extremes, but still manages to be a thoughtful personal exploration.
(Streaming on: HBO Max)

D.P.

Another socially aware Korean series from Netflix, D.P. focuses on the country’s system of compulsory military service. South Korean males have to perform at least 18 months of military service between the ages of 18 and 28, enduring spartan living conditions, poverty-level wages and frequent violent hazing. Jung Hae-in stars as a soldier assigned to track down and bring back military deserters (the D.P. of the show’s title is short for “Deserter Pursuit”). While the action can be over-the-top and the emotional scenes tipping into the sentimental, the show, an adaptation of a popular Korean webtoon, is a forthright and realistic look at the country’s problematic military culture.
(Streaming on: Netflix)

WE CHILDREN FROM BAHNHOF ZOO

This series-length take on the groundbreaking, and truly horrifying, memoirs of Christiane F., a teenage heroin addict in 1980s West Berlin whose story was the basis of Uli Edel’s 1981 feature classic, We Children From Bahnhof Zoo expands the story to take in the journey of Christiane’s fellow travelers. Packed with period style and music cues that span the past 30 years — David Bowie mixes with tracks from Santigold and De La Soul — the series provides an intoxicating high before addiction and abuse bring the whole thing crashing down.
(Streaming on: Amazon Prime)

SPIRAL

Fans of gritty crime procedurals should check out this French series, which ended its eight-season, 15-year run this year. Some have called the show a French Law & Order, but a more apt comparison is The Wire, as the show’s two central cops, Gilou and Laure (Thierry Godard and Caroline Proust) bend and break the rules to catch the bad guys. What The Wire did for Baltimore, Spiral does for Paris, taking the viewer beyond the tourist postcards to the city’s working-class neighborhoods and their residents, those who often find themselves on the sharp end of the criminal justice system.
(Streaming on: MHz Choice)

MY NAME

With a $500 million investment this year on original Korean TV content — a number certain to rise in 2022 thanks to the global success of Squid Game — Netflix already has a deep bench of series from the country. One of the best of the new crop is this martial arts crime drama about Ji-Woo (Han So-hee), a bullied high-school student turned vengeful angel after her drug-dealing father is gunned down before her eyes. Taking a page from the Infernal Affairs franchise (adapted by Martin Scorsese as The Departed), Ji-Woo joins her dad’s crime organization only to be placed as a mole in the local police force. Working as an undercover agent, she hopes to find out the truth about her father’s death. The main appeal of the series, however, is its general kickassery, with phenomenal action sequences and a full-on performance by Han So-hee as a boiling cauldron of barely-contained rage.
(Streaming on: Netflix)

NO FUE MI CULPA: MEXICO

A harrowing look at the crisis of femicide in Mexico adapted from some of the hundreds of real-life cases of Mexican women killed by their partners, male family members and strangers, this series focuses on the victims and their loved ones left behind, as well as diving into the system that facilitates and supports gender violence. Not an easy watch, but an essential one.
(Streaming on: Hulu)

COUNTRYMEN

Instead of trying to avoid Islamo-phobe stereotypes, this Norwegian comedy doubles down in order to subvert them. The set-up involves a terrorist sleeper cell that sets up a bomb-building plant on a picturesque farm in rural Norway. Their cover story: they are converting the goat farm to a Halal cheese factory. But when the cheese business takes off and they find themselves embraced by the local community, the would-be terrorists begin to question their career choices.
(Streaming on: Viaplay)

FORBYDELSEN (THE KILLING)

The original Nordic noir, the Danish series, which ran for three seasons from 2007 until 2012 launched a genre and created a rabid fan base for slow-paced, in-depth storytelling, influencing everything from Broadchurch to True Detective (as well as getting a U.S. remake, The Killing, courtesy of AMC.) It also made a star out of Sofie Grabol, who became a global TV icon for her performance as the doggedly persistent, if emotionally distant, detective Sarah Lund (and briefly launched a craze for her style of Nordic knitwear). Now that Topic has made all three seasons available, U.S. viewers can, for the first time, see what all the fuss was about.
(Streaming on: Topic)

PARA – WE ARE KING

From the makers of break-out German crime drama 4 Blocks comes this coming-of-age tale set in the mean streets of Berlin following four young women whose brand of you-go-girl feminism includes snatching a bag of drugs from a local dealer to make some “Para” (quick cash) for themselves. The charismatic quartet, played by sparkling newcomers Jeanne Goursaud, Jobel Mokonzi, Soma Pysall and Roxana Samadi, make this a compelling watch, and its depiction of a proudly multi-cultural Berlin is a revelation.
(Streaming on: HBO Max)

MALAYERBA

A welcome corrective to the much-propagated image of Colombia as a crime-and-coke fueled dystopia, this new series on Spanish-language service Pantaya focuses on the world of medical marijuana (the series title is popular Colombian slang for “wacky tobacky”), following a trio of start-up entrepreneurs determined to profit from the legalization of weed in the country. Less Narcos and more More Halt and Catch Fire for dope.
(Streaming on: Pantaya)

GOLDEN LIFE 

A Sopranos/Ozark-style family crime drama set in Hungary, this HBO Europe series has been a critical favorite since its 2015 debut. The show, which follows the misadventures of Attila Miklosi, a successful con man who tries to go straight — against the objections of his demanding wife and family, who have become accustomed to the luxuries of their illicit lifestyle — wrapped its third, and final season in 2018, making it an ideal binge-watch over the holidays.
(Streaming on: HBO Max)

CALL MY AGENT!

Francophiles’ favorite insider tip went mainstream during lockdown as audiences checked out this comedic gem, a melodramatic comedy set at a Parisian talent agency, which combines the A-list self-parody cameos of Extras — Sigourney Weaver, Juliette Binoche, Monica Bellucci and Jean Reno are just some of the boldfaced names who gleefully tear into their public image — with a healthy dose of genuine sentiment. However conniving and self-serving the agents at ASK appear, in the end, they really do care. Now that the show has been extended for a fifth season, with a film spin-off on the way, there’s no better time to dive in.
(Streaming on: Netflix)