International TV

An archive of blog entries about international TV programmes and production, including co-productions and shows from countries other than usual

No Activity Christmas Special
News

Counterpart, No Activity acquired; Emmy Rossum quits Shameless; Alex renewed; + more

3 September 2018 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Every weekday, TMINE brings you the latest TV news from around the world

Hello, everyone. How y’all doing? The Daily News is back!

Internet TV

German TV

Scandinavian TV

UK TV

US TV

  • Epix green lights: series of dangerous pastor modern con noir drama Our Lady, Ltd, with Ben Kingsley and Jimmi Simpson

US TV show casting

  • Trailer for season 2 of ABC’s The Good Doctor, featuring Lisa Edelstein
  • Emmy Rossum to leave Showtime’s Shameless
  • Jaleel White to guest on ABC’s Fresh off the Boat

New US TV shows

New US TV show casting

Alibi
Streaming TV

What have you been watching? Including Ghoul, The Innocents and Karppi (Deadwind)

31 August 2018 Rob Buckley 13 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week

September’s just around the corner and TMINE will be resuming normal(ish) service on Monday with the return of the Daily News – although there have been all kinds of exciting developments over August, such as the return of Patrick Stewart to the role of Jean-Luc Picard, which you could have heard about via TMINE’s Twitter feed and Facebook page, if you’d been so inclined. I mean are there other news sources? I don’t think so.

As I mentioned last week, although it’s been very quiet for new TV in both July and August (RIP the summer season), the schedules are about to kick in again. The US networks have already started putting out big clips from their new shows, including Manifest:

Meanwhile, today, Netflix released season two of Ozark and Amazon gave us the return of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan in the imaginatively titled Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, except now he’s played by that bloke from the US version of The Office. I doubt I’ll be able to boxset either of them over the weekend, but I’ll give it a whirl, although it might be next Monday before I can get through one/both of them.

I did promise last week, though, to try to boxset my way through at least one of various new releases last week: Netflix’s Ghoul, The Innocents and Karppi (Deadwind). After all, what were the chances of there being three duffs? Well… We can talk about that after jump.

Also after the jump, I’ll be chatting about the latest episode of Shooter, as well as the rest of the first season of Au service de la France (A Very Secret Service).

I’ll just mention in passing before we pass into that nether-realm that TVNZ has just released the first few episodes of an experimental non-linear show called Alibi. The innovation? You can watch the episodes in any order.

The way we view drama shows is about to change as a new non-linear TVNZ OnDemand series Alibi is about to arrive.

The show will call into question all your preconceived ideas as viewers navigate their way through six suspects’ witness statements given to a detective over the death of a young schoolgirl in Awatahi.

Just like a choose your own ending book, viewers get six episodes to watch and you draw your own conclusions.

The list of suspects includes a gang member, teacher, the local handyman and perhaps the creepiest of all – Father Sebastien, the leader of the local cult.

Who was playing the role of the murderer was even kept from the actors during production.

The final episode will be released on 13 September and that will reveal whodunnit. I imagine you have to watch that one last.

I’ll try to sneak that one in if I can, as I imagine it’ll end up on either Netflix or Amazon at some point. Plus it’s got Joel Tobeck (Xena, Westlife, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, Ash vs Evil Dead). I like him.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Ghoul, The Innocents and Karppi (Deadwind)”

Au service de la France
Streaming TV

What have you been watching? Including Au service de la France, Dead Lucky, Stargate: Origins and You Are Wanted

24 August 2018 Rob Buckley 21 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week/month

I’m calling it – summer season is dead. It has ceased to be. It is an ex-season.

Before TMINE went away on its holidays, I pointed out how quiet July had been worldwide, but while I was away, the number of new shows has been small. Very small. Castle Rock (US: Hulu) and Dead Lucky (Australia: ABC) were released and Netflix gave us Insatiable, but that was basically it.

Sure, there have been returning shows, but new shows haven’t had a look-in and a lot of shows that used to air over July and August have postponed their returns until the end of the month or September. That even includes the final season of The Lost Ship, which was filmed a year ago, so production concerns clearly weren’t stopping it from being aired in its usual slot.

I’m guessing that ratings haven’t held up for any TV shows. Probably because everyone’s been on holiday. Or maybe it’s because of my fearsome “if it starts in August, I won’t review it rule.” That’s probably it, isn’t it? Still, it does make my life easier.

Thankfully, new shows have already started coming online. Netflix has this very day given us Ghoul, The Innocents and Deadwind, while Amazon has woken up again and is giving us Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan next week. I’ll try to watch some, if not all of them, and give you at least one Boxset next week. After that, I’ll be struggling to catch up with the release schedule, with new Iron Fist coming, The Last Ship back, and season two of Ozark due on 31st.

In the meantime, I’ve been continuing with the usual viewing queue, although that’s now down to just Shooter, given Condor and Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger finished their runs while I was on holiday. All of them I’ll discuss after the jump.

I also scoured around for new shows to watch, as well. Of the shows I mentioned last time, I could never quite bring myself to watch the rest of Jongo but I made a brave stab at the properly subtitled second season of You Are Wanted. I also managed to catch the movie version of Stargate: Origins, and started a new French show: Au service de la France (A Very Secret Service). But we can talk about all of those after the jump.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Au service de la France, Dead Lucky, Stargate: Origins and You Are Wanted”

HBO's Succession
Airdates

When’s that show you mentioned starting, TMINE? Including Succession, Fangar and Carcereiros

20 July 2018 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Every Friday, TMINE lets you know when the latest TV shows from around the world will air in the UK

Only a couple of premiere-less acquisitions this week, with Walter Presents picking up Channel 2 (Iceland)’s Réttur (The Court) and C More (Sweden)’s Farang. The former will air in September, while the latter will air towards the end of the year.

Otherwise, everything’s got a date.

Premiere dates

Fangar

Fangar (Prisoners) (Iceland: RÚV; UK: Sundance)
Premiere date: Now

One of Sundance’s sneaky acquisitions, this Prix-Europa nominated drama sees 30 year-old Linda (Thora Bjorg Helga) accused of a deadly assault and sent to prison. She gets to know women of a different social class than her, from a broken environment. Slowly, a bond develops between her and the other women inmates and the series focuses on why things happen and how it affects the family and society as a whole.

Sounds a bit Orange is the New Black.

 Jailers

Carcereiros (Jailers) (Brazil: Globo Play; UK: Sundance)
Premiere date: Now

The second of Sundance’s new prison shows – what’s that all about then? – is from Brazil. The difference here is that as well as being about blokes, it’s from the jailers’ point of view. Based on Dráuzio Varela’s novel of the same name, it stars Rodrigo Lombardi as Adriano, a correctional officer who endures the difficulties of prison life – both his own and those of the inmates. Adriano is charged with keeping the peace inside the jail but also faces pressures in his home life, from his wife who wants a baby, to his teenage daughter and his father, a former jailer himself. Tested daily with ethical and moral dilemmas, he lives between walls and prison bars, weapons, threats and conflicts – both human and psychological.

Jeremy Strong in Succession

Succession (US: HBO; UK: Sky Atlantic)
Premiere date: Thursday, August 2, 9pm

Created by Peep Show‘s Jesse Armstrong and with support from some The Thick of It writers, Succession follows the Roy family – Logan Roy and his four children – which controls one of the biggest media and entertainment conglomerates in the world, tracking their lives as they contemplate what the future will hold for them once their ageing father begins to step back from the company.

Cough, cough, the Murdochs, cough, cough.

It’s already been renewed for a second season, and stars Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong, Hiam Abbass, Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin, Alan Ruck, Nicholas Braun, Matthew Macfadyen, Natalie Gold, Peter Friedman and Rob Yang. I found the first few episodes very funny, but it slowly switched from being a comedy with some drama to being a drama with the occasional comedy, which didn’t work for me.

Episode reviews: 1-2, 3, 4

Jongo
Streaming TV

What have you been watching? Including Jongo, Cobra Kai, Shooter and Condor

18 July 2018 Rob Buckley 12 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week

Gosh. Isn’t a quiet? I can’t remember when a July was this quiet for TV worldwide. I wonder what’s up?

There have been a least a few new shows for me to review in the past week. Elsewhere, I cast my eye over the first episode of What We Do In the Shadows spin-off Wellington Paranormal as well as the whole of Netflix’s first Indian original, Sacred Games.

But given the sparsity of viewing options, I had a look over Amazon to see what I could try to play catch up with. First stop was the second season of You Are Wanted. All was looking good for about a minute before I discovered that despite being an Amazon Original and despite the first season having been available with its original German dialogue, season two is only available dubbed in the UK.

FFS. No, thank you, Amazon.

Or so I thought until 10 seconds ago. Turns out that you have to specifically seek out the separate “English subtitled” version, rather than the normal version in order to get the German dialogue. Seriously, Amazon, could you not just have two audio tracks on your video?

You Are Wanted

I’ll probably watch the proper German one on holiday then.

While I was busily and inaccurately cursing Amazon, though, I did find something else to try, so after the jump, following on from TMINE’s first ever Indian show, I’ll be talking about the first African TV show TMINE’s tackled in rather a long time: Jongo. And on top of that, I finally got round to watching the rest of Cobra Kai.

However, that’s about it. I hope they’re not saving all the new shows for August when TMINE is on its holidays.

Upon which subject, this is going to be the last WHYBW for a good while, since TMINE’s holidays start next week! No reviews, no news, no slightly niche TV observations from next Monday for at least four weeks, I’m afraid. However, I’ll be back from mid-August, so although the Daily News probably won’t be back until September (on the general grounds there usually isn’t much news since everyone’s on holiday) and it’ll take me some time to play catch-up (although, thanks EU!), blogging could resume at any time from that point onwards. So stay tuned. At least from mid-August.

Normally at this point pre-holidays, I’d play my usual July game of “Can I be bothered catching up with this show when I get back?” However, all the usuals are now on the recommended list, so you can probably guess that I will definitely be catching up with Condor, Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger and Shooter when I get back. Oh well, so much for that fun. Maybe next year.

Anyway, I’ll be telling you about their latest episodes after the jump, too, so see you in a mo.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Jongo, Cobra Kai, Shooter and Condor”