Riveting international shows that stood out in a crowd
Top Films
Among the top international films of 2022 is God’s Crooked Lines, a Spanish mystery thriller from Oriol Paulo, who gave us the fantastic Invisible Guest.
Argentina 1985, which is in the race for Oscars, shows a group of young lawyers and public prosecutors taking on the military dictators in Argentina and prosecuting them.
Cha Cha Real Smooth is a lovely coming of age film with a very heart-warming romance balanced nicely in the plot.
The Swimmers is a heartbreaking story about two sisters who have to get away from Syria because of political problems. The film deals with the refugee crisis and the sisters’ dream of making it to the Olympics.
Web series
Stranger Things (Season 4): The finale of one of the most popular series ever tops the list. The final episode was around two hours and 30 minutes. That’s a length of an average Indian feature film but it didn’t matter for fans as they binge-watched this gripping science-fiction horror drama.
House of Dragons: The series was kind of follow up to the epic Game of Thrones. Be it the time period, setting and the characters, everything was relatable. The only downside, perhaps, was that we got just one episode a week. Hence the wait for each episode felt longer than usual. The writing of this fantasy drama was impressive.
Peaky Blinders (Season 6): This period crime drama is known for its style and captivating storylines. The epic finale lived up to its expectations and it was as interesting as its previous five seasons.
Borgen: Three seasons of this series were released nine years back but they came to Netflix only last year and the fourth season was released this year. It is about the unlikely rise of politician Bridgette Nibor, about how she becomes the prime minister of Denmark. The fourth season mainly focused on the geopolitical crisis in Greenland. For hardcore fans of politics, this is a must watch.
Better Call Saul: It was a hit season. It was long, with more than ten episodes but the American crime and legal drama was brilliantly written, making it almost one of its kind.
Serial killer genre
Devil’s Hour, and Shining Girls were well-made serial killers. It’s lovely to see how these series don’t have conventional storylines. In Devils Hour, the serial killer comes through some kind of dreams, and hallucinations whereas in Shining Girls the serial killer is a time traveller.
Of course, one more in the same genre is Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. It is on one of the most notorious serial killers in America.
Interesting concepts
1899, which was written by the team who did the famous German series Dark, was innovative, and interesting. Some found it a tad confusing but overall, the period mystery-science fiction was a satisfying watch.
Drop Out talked about Elizabeth Holmes, the American convicted fraudster and a former biotechnology entrepreneur while Inventing Anna was on the Anna Delvey, who fooled New York elite’s by convincing them that she was a German heiress.
Super Pumped, which featured Joseph Gordon Levitt as Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber, was a fine watch on entrepreneurship. ‘We Crashed’ traces the story of ‘We Work’. It shows how co-working space was a new idea which became popular eventually.
True crime
The two quality true crime documentaries were The Tinder Swindler and Our Father.
K Dramas
K Dramas are growing in popularity in OTT platforms and they have a huge fan base in India. Some of the popular K Dramas this year were Extraordinary Attorney Woo, and Juvenile Justice. Both of them were engaging legal dramas. All of Us Are Dead was another popular Sci-Fi K Drama.
Disappointments
Rings of Power, which came from the Lord of the Rings family, didn’t have much to offer apart from top notch visuals. Shantaram, on the popular novel by the same name, was a let down. The upcoming seasons have been shelved.
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