TVIs one of your resolutions for 2023 to learn a new language? What if we toldyou that you can both relax and at the same time stimulate the language centerin your brain just by watching TV in another language? From a Korean-Japaneseimmersion in ‘Pachinko’ on Apple TV+ to Interwar German in ‘Babylon Berlin’ onStreamz, it’s time to turn that binge into something useful!
‘Babylon Berlin’ (Streamz)
We turn back almost 100 years, to a time when the decadence of Berlin’snightlife stands in stark contrast to the rising poverty and threat ofviolence from the rising Nazis. This TV series about the Weimar Republic in1929 provides the ideal stage for brushing up on your German, while alsobrushing up on an important piece of inter-war history. Co-created by TomTykwer and based on the books by Volker Kutscher, the award-winning seriesfollows the roaring twenties through the eyes of a young Cologne commissionerand a young stenographer aspiring to become a police inspector. While thefourth season has only just been added on Streamz, the fifth is already indevelopment. And it may not stop there, because Tykwer has big plans tostretch Germany’s most expensive series for a few more years.
Pachinko (Apple TV+)
Speaking of budget, one of the most eye-catching series that saw the light ofday this year is undeniably ‘Pachinko’. In it, we follow Kim Sunja from herbirth against the backdrop of a Japanese-occupied Korea at the turn of thelast century to her old age in prosperous Japan in the 1980s. The series showshow one family endured some tough moments in history and how they shaped them,while the term ‘pachinko’ refers to the popular Japanese slot machinesoperated by Koreans to escape poverty. The series may have a confusingtimeline at times – and unlike the book – but in terms of language it doeslend a hand by subtitling the Japanese dialogues in blue and highlighting theKorean ones in yellow.
‘Clark’ (Netflix)
None other than Clark Olofsson is your Swedish teacher for today. Not only didthis controversial criminal turn the well-known stockholm syndrome into athing, Sweden’s most notorious gangster actually has a Belgian connection. Inbetween the bank robberies, he fell in love with a Flemish beauty, went intohiding in our country for years and became the father of three sons here. Theseries presents the truths and lies of Olofsson in a flashy fun package of sixepisodes. Because the series takes place between the 1960s and the 1980s, itis a guaranteed wardrobe spectacle and visually distorted fast in nature.
‘Tehran’ (Apple TV+)
If Glenn Close can learn Farsi, so can you. Her role as a CIA agent in thesecond season of this Emmy-winning Israeli spy thriller saw the ‘FatalAttraction’ star say she had to do some serious cleaning. Not only thelanguage was new, the multilingual cast and the many location recordings werealso quite a living for Close. Although this series, which brings the conflictbetween Israel and Iran to your living room in an exciting way, also featuresEnglish dialogue, most of it is spoken in Hebrew and Farsi. Striking: thescenes in Tehran were shot in Athens for creative and security reasons, wherethe Iranian capital was impressively recreated.
‘Los Espookys’ (Streamz)
By now you know how to set up a bank robbery in Spanish courtesy of ‘La casade papel’, but if you want to run a business in fake ghost parties, fakeexorcisms and staged monster attacks, ‘Los Espookys’ is your handbook. Co-created by actor, comedian and “Saturday Night Live” star Fred Armisen, thisSpanish-language HBO comedy series centers on a group of friends in an unnamedLatin American country who seek to turn their love of horror into a successfulbusiness. Their job is to stage horror-like situations for customers who paythem handsomely for it. This bizarre yet brilliant series received criticalacclaim for its first season and returned this year after a three-year hiatusdue to the pandemic, for part two.