Recommended TV SHOWS & MOVIES (for other countries)

[Pauline]

In Britain we love mysteries and dramas set in Scandinavia - Scandi Dramas. I listed these in the UK forum but will keep track of them here too. Please post any more that you come across for any European countries other than Italy, France, Spain, UK, Switzerland/Austria (they all have their own forums).

2016
Trapped on BBC Four. Detective murder mystery set in northern Iceland in the winter. Snow! Very good.

Earlier
The Killing on BBC Four had 3 very good seasons. This is a detective murder mystery set in Denmark. It was very good and was a big hit here.

The Bridge on BBC Four is a joint Swedish/Danish production, with English subtitles. There have been two seasons, and season 3 started in 2015. This was my favorite of the Scandi Dramas.

Borgen on BBC Four is from Denmark and sounds boring but was not. A very good political drama. The main character is the female leader of Denmark. There were 3 seasons and it is finished now.

The Legacy on Sky. A new Scandi Drama showed in the UK in 2014. There have been two seasons of this. Very good.

 

[Pauline]

The Guardian - Trapped review: stuck in a stormy, moody fjord with a killer on the loose? Yes please by Sam Wollaston, 15 Feb 2016
This sophisticated new Icelandic drama has all the dark, chilly beauty of Borgen and The Killing, but is more claustrophobic and intense

We are enjoying this series, but you don't get much of an idea of Iceland because it takes place on the northern part of the island which is almost at the Arctic Circle, in the winter! Snow and very short days.

 

[Roz]

We just started watching, on Netflix streaming, a series from Norway called Occupied. Here's a writeup on the show from the Washington Post. After two episodes, we are definitely hooked! It's interesting that although most of the dialog is in Norwegian, a lot of it is actually in English, since there are quite a few simulated BBC broadcasts, and when the Russians, for example, and the Norwegians have to talk to each other, it's usually in English.

That government building in the show is fascinating. I found out that it's ironically, given the subject of the show, the offices of the Statoil Company.

 

[PatrickLondon]

TV channels in the UK have leapt on the bandwagon, once BBC4 had proved there was an audience for subtitled shows.

So far we have had, in addition to those listed above:

Engrenages (Spiral), a Paris-based cop series, complete with the mandatory cops-with-a-heart-but-problems, careerist senior officers and lawyers whose ideals are rapidly confronted with all sorts of temptations from the dark side.

Les Hommes de l'Ombre (Spin), another Paris-based series, about political spin doctors coping with all sorts of issues that are more than slightly reminiscent of actual French political scandals of the past

Deutschland 83, in which an East German soldier is infiltrated undercover into NATO military HQ in the West, at the time of a (real) military exercise that was very nearly miscalculated into World War III.

Blue Eyes, a Swedish political thriller, in which the mysterious intrigues of intragovernmental politics interplay with neo-Nazi nastinesses

Montalbano and The Young Montalbano, Italian series based on the novels of Andrea Camilleri.

Inspector de Luca, another Italian cop series, this time set in the Mussolini era

 

[Jim Zurer]

Not sure if this web site has been mentioned before but it provides a good assortment of "Scandi dramas" or "Nordic Noirs"

http://nordicnoir.tv/