100 Best Foreign Shows on Netflix Right Now

From Me to You: Kimi ni Todoke is a high school romance drama. It’s sweet, it’s wholesome, and it’s comfortingly familiar. It leans more on its romance than its comedy. It doesn’t have high stakes fantasy or action-packed battles, but it captures the high school experience in such a lovely way. Of course, the show would likely reach its romantic happy ending, but what makes the show compelling isn’t just the thrill of connecting with a crush– it’s the inspiration for Sawako to open up, and enable her to connect and have friends. The live action adaptation may not fully capture everything from the original and it speeds through the plot, but it retains the parts that make it work, even for viewers totally unfamiliar with the story.

With Sweet Home and Stranger Things, we weren’t surprised that Netflix opted to create a live-action Parasyte, but we were surprised it comes from the other side of the sea. Based on the iconic Japanese manga, Parasyte: The Grey is a Korean spin-off with different characters but the same titular aliens, with a more serious approach to the concept. The series alternates between the Grey Team, the leading government agency that aims to eradicate the alien parasites at all cost, and with Jeong Su-in, who, like the original Shinichi Izumi, co-exists with her parasite, as they try to figure out their strange existence. Fans of the original might be disappointed at the lack of humor, but some viewers might appreciate the unflinching, gruesome way The Grey deals with the parasitic nature of human society, as well as the gross and scary transformations these aliens make of their hosts.

At first glance, 1670 seems to be a historical drama, with the actors dressed in fairly historically accurate attire, and the show being set in the titular year, just around after the late Middle Ages. However, the first few scenes disabuse us of the notion, as the eccentric Jan Paweł routinely breaks the fourth wall in order to introduce us to the family. While the sets and the costumes are of its time, the approach and events are not, as 1670 plays out like a reality TV show, with candid shots and interviews introducing the weird and fame-obsessed village inhabitants, satirically depicting modern day scenarios with a historical flair. While some of the jokes seem Polish-specific and they rely on breaking the fourth wall a bit too often, 1670 is a funny reminder of how good things currently are, and how silly we remain, through resituating modern petty grievances in medieval times.

Reading the synopsis of this ten-episode comedy series might put you off at first. It follows four male friends who navigate a world where women now seem to have the upper hand, or at least that’s what it looks like from their point of view. Thankfully, that view is increasingly challenged and sometimes even deconstructed throughout the show’s run. Their female partners and counterparts flip the coin to reveal the other side of whatever they’re going through, so without ever feeling too preachy, Alpha Males presents the Battle of the Sexes in a surprisingly fair, insightful, and lighthearted way.

Raunchy without being too offensive (for the most part), Alpha Males is proof that you can still tackle sensitive topics without sacrificing comic fun and good humor.

The series follows three perspectives: a government official, a Tokyo Electric Power Company employee, and a worker at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, each with their respective teams tackling the aftermath of the March 11, 2001 earthquake and tsunami. From the reporting updates to the public to the dedication of first responders, ‘The Days’ excels at piecing together the macro- and micro-decisions that went into saving the residents of Fukushima. The series deepens the narrative to be more than a mere recollection with its scenes of the families of the victims and the residents as they evacuate their homes. Its steady pace, emotional close-ups, and suspenseful score capture the harrowing atmosphere of Japan’s worst natural disaster. 

Not fully a mystery and not entirely a thriller, yet on the cusp of both, the initial setup of Burn the House Down promises a definite answer and dismantles it in every episode. Sure that her mother was framed, Anzu infiltrates Makiko’s new lavish life to prove that the fire set to her home thirteen years ago was no accident. She knows the culprit but lacks evidence, but when she’s reacquainted with Makiko’s eldest son, his reclusive demeanour takes a sinister turn. The premise is straightforward, yet it’s hard to look away from Anzu skulking around as she finds remnants of her mother’s old life and sweet-talking the family that destroyed hers. Trying to piece together that fateful night isn’t simple but feels worth the unexpected detours three episodes in. 

More lush period piece than scary science fiction, Gyeongseong Creature promised a terrifying creature, but it starts slow, dedicating more of its time to its humans than immediately battling monsters. This helps establish the romance, especially as hardened private eye Yoon Chae-ok appeals to privileged pawn broker Jang Tae-sang’s sense of duty, as well as the historical context behind the story. In doing so, the show confronts the violence of the Japanese occupation of Korea through implication rather than directly recreating these horrors. It’s all the more satisfying when the action begins, as Chae-ok and Tae-sang shift their priorities from doing a job to actively undermining the evil hospital’s efforts. Gyeongseong Creature might not let its creature loose early, but its true horror lies not with the monster created, but with the abuses permitted by war.

Many in this docuseries acknowledge that the developments to this case feel very much “like a movie.” Maybe that’s why the filmmakers leaned into that presentation style with the twists, phone conversation voiceovers, and jumping timelines. It’s a decent storytelling choice, but it also feels like the shock factor and media hullabaloo is the focus of the film sometimes. Much of the runtime is dedicated to the role of the media, which served as a tremendously unhelpful distraction to the investigation; thus giving the series a sense of focus on the one hand, but also weighing the series down with too much details and fluff cinema.

It wants to be a big sleek show. It gives you lots of backstories to explain how things work and set up precedents, and a lot of its runtime is allotted to the process. There are tense and cathartic bits you may not expect, but once you realize it’s essentially a heist show albeit more refreshing and gritty than others, what more do you really expect? Character dynamics can feel like a bonus to what you’re really here for if you like the heist show format, so unless the hope for a grand ending is enough, it might be a tough sell to see it through the end.

When teens are superheroes, it can be tough to balance the regular teen drama along with saving the city (or maybe the world), but it’s a fairly common premise for a teen show. Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir may take some familiar super teen tropes, like the secret identities, awesome suit-up moments, and cool powers, but unlike most shows, the enemies they fight are teens just like them, trying to deal with regular teen problems… except they’ve been given power and bad influence from Hawk Moth, an overdramatic supervillain that somehow keeps up-to-date to the latest drama in Marinette and Adrien’s Parisian high school. Playing with new powers and switching up the tropes, Miraculous is a fun gem of a kid’s show, one that pays genuine attention to kid’s issues, even if they solve it with the most ludicrous of powers and catchiest of songs.