30 Best Foreign Shows on Hulu Right Now

Look, Soundtrack #1 will not be the most outstanding, unique, heart-wrenching, tearjerking Korean drama you will ever get to watch. It’s full of tropes, with a childhood friends-to-lovers romance that blooms because they end up sharing the same house. Of course, they aren’t together because of miscommunication. But there’s a simplicity to the series that makes the romance work– the two friends have been written in a way that makes them understand each other’s aspirations, and so they would act to make sure the other person can go for their dreams, or at least, to make that journey a bit easier. Soundtrack #1 won’t have the melodrama plenty of K-dramas have, but there’s true love nonetheless, and it plays out in just four episodes.

Not to be mistaken with the American animated series, Big Mouth is titled the way it is not because of raunchy banter between its characters, but because the lawyer protagonist Park Chang-ho spouts big talk without having the means to back it up. It’s because of this unusual characterization that makes it such an unusual crime thriller, with wildly unpredictable turns that got so many viewers guessing and that the showrunners clearly had fun playing around with, with every terribly unlucky direction Park ends up taking. That being said, while its set-up was so exciting, Big Mouth is much like its protagonist in that the series promised a big story, but winded up with an underwhelming finale that didn’t meet expectations. Even so, Big Mouth is a hilariously intense, if a bit nonsensical, ride, especially for fans of the cast here.

Mind-bending, intense, and mysterious, it’s hard to put Tengoku Daimakyo into words. The anime might be a post-apocalyptic adventure series where two teenagers fight against man-eating monsters, but it also happens to be a sci-fi-based contemplation of genetic experimentation, AI, and interventionism. The structure of the series is strange too, with its two seemingly unconnected parallel storylines. At the start, it’s unclear why the show alternates between a futuristic utopian boarding school and the monster-filled ruins of Japan. However, there’s something very compelling about the way this show unveils itself. When a question about the premise is answered, even more questions pop up. When the kids’ wishes and predictions get fulfilled, it’s never in the way they expect it would be. When the show drops an unexpected revelation, sometimes a rewatch of previous episodes is required to understand the weight of that scene. But once things click, the brilliance of the show is undeniable. Tengoku Daimakyo is strange but downright fascinating.

Produced by ABC News Studios, there’s little frill and fanfare to be found in this documentary about a slain chiropractor and the person convicted for her death. The latter is Kaitlyn Conley, after whom the title is named since she insists she was framed by the victim’s son and/or husband. The series is intriguing not necessarily because it’s found inventive ways to tell a story, but because the Conley case is innately dramatic and divisive. The series takes its time to carefully present every party’s side, which can make it redundant and tiresome at times, but it’s an overall helpful resource as it helps fill the gaps in the still-blurry picture that is Mary Yoder’s death.

Likes for Sale, or Compro Likes in Portuguese, is as quirky and lighthearted as you’d expect from a half-hour sitcom. Its main premise, that of creating a fake persona in the age of online disinformation, also poses interesting questions. How ethical is it to buy likes to boost your career? And if you’re as desperate and rundown as Wagner, does the end justify the means? The ways in which Wagner and his team of frustrated artists navigate these dilemmas are what make the show relatable and interesting, but they’re also what make it frustrating at times. Some of their resolutions are questionable, and when they do tackle weighty matters, they seem too flippant to warrant serious thought. And the cast—as ebullient as they are—aren’t always convincing or charming enough to win you over. It’s admirable for the series to tackle such a novel concept (I’ve only ever seen it in the 2022 film Not Okay), but it looks like it’s something that needs to be lived in more to be fully fleshed out. 

In the previous centuries, people were born into and died without ever being able to change their status. Nobles remained nobles and peasants remained peasants. But around the Renaissance, the idea of commerce and education allowed some leeway for men to reach a higher station, and for the Florios of Sicily, they’re able to reach higher spaces through the sheer force of will. This is an interesting idea, and The Lions of Sicily by Stefania Auci is able to capture it, but its show counterpart falters in depicting this. The sets and costumes are up to par, but the screenplay is unable to balance between the backstories, with the episode slipping confusedly in and between timelines.

When live-action and animation meet, it can lead to interesting results. With each medium as a separate world, this choice can lead to awesome, mind-bending, genre-breaking stuff, but not all films or shows that mix media achieve this. One such show is Dragons of Wonderhatch, which at its core, has an interesting idea of two worlds, one mundane, one fantastical, colliding, but there’s just something off with the way the show just drops the audience in the land of Upananta. Rather than take the time to introduce Nagi to us first, and then let Tyme introduce himself in the real world, the show just shifts to the other world, which might cause some confusion for new viewers. As far as the plot goes, it’s not terrible, but there was more that could have helped Dragons of Wonderhatch in taking flight.

Science fiction imagines new worlds we’ve never seen before, but the world of Synduality: Noir doesn’t feel that way. Noir feels like it presents a familiar world, except with an added touch of AI assistants called Maguses. The fighting piloted mecha robots are reminiscent of Gundam and Pacific Rim. At times, the action looks like automated 3D animation made to cut costs. However, even if the world-building was stronger, Synduality: Noir doesn’t feel like a show that wants to tell a story. There aren’t enough moments that we get to spend with the main characters Kanata and his Magus Noir to justify creating a whole series around it. We don’t even need to get into the icky slave-like dynamic between the (mostly) male Drifters and their (mostly) female Maguses.