Every Friday, TMINE lets you know when the latest TV shows from around the world will air in the UK
A great big splurge of acquisitions this week, with Sky Witness picking up ABC (US)’s The Rookie, Universal picking up CBC (Canada)’s The Coroner, and Fox UK picking up TBS (US)’s People of Earth. Only the last of those came with a premiere date, which you’ll learn in just a mo.
Otherwise, a bumper crop of premiere dates for you this week for previous week’s acquisitions.
Premiere dates
Gladbeck (54 Hours: The Gladbeck Hostage Crisis) (Germany: ARD; UK: BBC Four)
Premiere date: Saturday, October 20, 9pm
As life slows down on a hot summer’s day in 1988, an armed bank robbery goes awry. While fleeing from the police, the two gangsters take an entire busload hostage. The ensuing manhunt, however, turns into a disaster. The police make fools of themselves with their amateurish operations and, above all, are obstructed by the nation’s media who swoop down on the events in their rat race for the juiciest pictures and live interviews with the kidnappers. As Rösner, the driving force of the duo, orchestrates their 54 hours of fame in cold blood, his accomplice Degowski derives sinister pleasure from manipulating the media. But Degowski is also unpredictable and violent. When he loses his nerve and kills a teenage passenger in the bus, the two men choose two young women as their hostages while leaping into another getaway vehicle. Thus begins an odyssey that goes completely out of control…
Berlin Station (US: Epix; UK: More4)
Premiere date: Thursday, October 25, 9pm
Slightly touristy, slightly ridiculous adaptation of Olen Steinhauer’s novel that sees American spy Richard Armitage (ho, ho) travelling to German to use his superior German skills (ho, ho) to sniff out a mole at the US embassy. Is it his American mentor Rhys Ifans (ho, ho), maybe?
It’s pure bobbins that’s somehow made it through to three seasons, thanks to the gloss of its European setting and starry cast. I wouldn’t advise watching.
Episode reviews: 1-2
People Of Earth (US: TBS; UK: FOX UK)
Premiere date: Tuesday, October 30, 10:30pm
Former Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac is a cynical magazine journalist, sent to cover an “alien abductees survivors group” where he soon begins to realise that those vivid hallucinations of talking deer might be a sign that he, too, has been abducted. So he decides to stay in town and see if he can work out what’s really happening and whether an alien invasion is really underway.
The show is a 50/50 split between two strands. The first strand is the desperately unfunny goings on at the support group, which reminds you of Go On but with Cenac’s deadpan instead of the jokes and Matthew Perry’s sardonic quips.
The second is with the aliens themselves – for they are real – where the show is actually a properly funny workplace comedy. Yes, that’s right – a workplace comedy. I mean have you ever considered how much effort goes into faking those cover-ups?
Unfortunately, the aliens begin to occur less and less as the season goes on, so the jokes become fewer and fewer. So I gave up.
Kriger (Warrior) (Denmark: TV2; UK: Netflix)
Premiere date: November 13 [via]
Six-part Danish drama about communities, loyalty and betrayal among war veterans, bikers and police officers, intertwined with a love story between war veteran CC (Dar Salim) and police officer Louise (Danica Curcic).
CC is back home in Denmark after active service in several war zones, and is haunted by his last mission which went horribly wrong when his best friend, Peter, was killed in action. CC is plagued by guilt and can’t find a place for himself in a society that prefers to forget about the war. To ease his conscience, he helps Peter’s widow, police investigator Louise, who has a particular interest in gang crime and, in particular, rocker king Tom (Lars Ranthe).
Das Boot (The Boat) (Germany: Sky Deutschland; UK: Sky Atlantic)
Premiere date: Friday, November 23 (I think)
Eight-hour miniseries sequel to Wolfgang Petersen’s Oscar-nominated 1981 anti-war classic movie of the same name. With the Allies having cracked the German military’s Enigma code and being able to track the movement of its submarine fleets, serving on a German U-boat has become little more than a suicide mission. The new series follows the crew of an ill-fated submarine that launches on its inaugural mission from Nazi-occupied France, as well as the stories of the family and friends they leave behind and that of French resistance fighters taking on the Nazi regime from the inside.
