The 12 Very Best Foreign Shows on Netflix

Fun, wholesome, and relatable, Haikyu!! celebrates the highs and lows of high school volleyball. The show starts off focused on two freshmen volleyball players from opposing middle school teams, who have to learn teamwork in order to be accepted into their high school club. While the team might initially come across as self-conscious, over-the-top, highly dramatic characters, it’s clear that they’re coming from a shared love for the competitive sport (and that they also just happen to be going through puberty). However, the show’s strategic storytelling makes us care about the team: explanations about volleyball tactics are taught just at the right moment in order to heighten the stakes of every player’s move. Simultaneously, every player moves into each new plot point as a natural consequence of their backstory and their perception of each event. Haikyu!!’s agile approach makes the show a compelling watch, and a great place to start if you’re new to anime.

With teen dramas crowding not just Netflix but all of TV, it’s easy to think that the Jordanian series AlRawabi School for Girls won’t be any different. But while it may share a lot of similarities with other coming-of-age stories, it stands out for its willingness to explore dark themes and cultural specificities without a pandering tone. It’s smart, mature, and complex enough to give us a feminist lead who weaponizes misogyny against other girls, for instance, or a fierce bully who eventually earns our sympathy. It’s hard to imagine the treatment being this sensitive, nuanced, and wholly engaging without the all-female cast and crew that AlRawabi thankfully has.

During adolescence, teenagers get to learn and discover themselves and the world, but for most people, this means going through puberty, maybe taking up a sport or hobby, and not the occult vs alien shenanigans of DAN DA DAN. The science fiction-fantasy mix is unhinged and chaotic, throwing Momo and Ken directly into the worlds they didn’t believe in, and with each crazy encounter, they gain insane powers that are rendered into (literally) out-of-this-world, kaleidoscopic animation. But it’s their comedic dynamic that makes the show work, as each absurd situation pushes them to share what makes them vulnerable and challenge each other on their beliefs. DAN DA DAN is spectacularly unpredictable, and is a standout from 2024’s anime fall lineup.

It’s a tall order to depict One Hundred Years of Solitude. Considered to be one of the world’s most important novels to read, expectations were high, the magic realism required a hefty budget, and the sprawling seven-generation plotline felt like it couldn’t fit within a feature film, or around 90-120 minutes. It’s because of this that author Gabriel García Márquez held out on selling the rights, and the family followed suit after his death. Luckily, more than half a century later, streaming television garnered enough prestige and profit to finally adapt the classic. Netflix thankfully stuck to the family’s wishes of having it filmed in Spanish, in Colombia, with Colombian actors, but it also expanded on the layered text in ways video can only do so– like fleshing out the story visually and aurally, having an omniscient narrator, and taking advantage of the medium through editing, direction, and excellent performances from the cast. Cien años de soledad doesn’t just work– it makes it so much easier to understand hype and the themes for people completely new to the text.

Think of Dix pour cent, or Call My Agent!, as it was so horribly translated, as a smart French version of Mark Wahlberg’s Entourage or, as the director once quipped, Desperate Housewives with actors and their agents. Ten percent (dix pour cent) is the fee that said French agents receive as compensation from the actor’s fee. It chronicles the life of an aspiring talent agent at a French casting agency. New to Paris, she lands her dream job, but now has to deal with a variety of very stressed-out, capricious characters on both sides of the bargain. It is one of those shows that finds hilarity in the fact that nobody actually talks to each other over sometimes simple issues. On the actor’s side, many of the appearing A-listers star as themselves. The countless cameos include the likes of Jean Reno, Monica Belucci, and Charlotte Gainsbourg. It’s basically a soap opera but so well-written and complex, you might refrain from binging it too hard just to make it last longer.

You might not have heard of it, but this show was huge in Denmark. I mean, one million people watching in a 5-million-people country huge. Far from being the tasteful Nordic Noir international audiences are used to, Rita revolves around a mid-40s, single mum of three older kids, leather jacket-clad private high school teacher with a big mouth and a heart to go with it. Mille Dinesen plays the titular female lead, who smokes in the school bathrooms and, well, bangs the school principal. But in addition to the rule-bending rebel facing off overprotective parents, know-it-all students, and her growing kids, Rita also deals with serious topics like balancing work and family, being a role model, and abortion, albeit in a hilarious and, well, delightfully Danish way.

The title of this romantic comedy series refers to the unusual meet-cute between its leads. As wealthy heiress Yoon Se-ri gets into a paragliding accident in the North Korean part of the DMZ, she meets KPA Captain Ri Jeong-hyeok. Considering the tension between the nations, this creates more life-or-death stakes than other non-fantastical romcoms. But rather than play it out in the most dour of ways, the series has fun with it, with a humor that riffs on the sheer awkwardness of the situation and the leads’ shared humanity. Crash Landing on You does take on some of the K-drama formula, but it brilliantly uses it to humanize both sides of a peninsula that once was united.

Meet Rilakkuma, a relaxed teddy bear (which is indeed what his name translates to in Japanese), and Kaoru, a Japanese office worker in her mid-thirties, who lives with said bear as well as a smaller white bear named Korilakkuma and a yellow chick by the name of Kiiroitori. As whimsical as all this may sound, the show offers up endearing and humane life lessons to go with all the heart-warming cuteness as Kaoru navigates being single, her apartment building being demolished, and her job stressing her out. It combines charming stop-motion characters with great writing, adorable animation, and a beautifully quiet tone. You might be surprised at the profundity of a show that, at the surface, is about a Japanese girl with cuddly toy roommates. It’s hard to compare it to anything else!

Copycat Killer is a gripping and unsettling crime thriller that takes its time to develop its characters and delve into a disturbing cat-and-mouse game between a relentless prosecutor and a manipulative serial killer. The show’s slow-burn approach keeps you invested in the characters’ journey, while the horrifying events remind you of the potential dangers lurking in the real world. With a mix of tension, manipulation, and grisly acts, Copycat Killer leaves you on edge, keeps you guessing at every turn, and serves as a reminder of the dark realities that exist in society.

Reimagining a children’s classic as a mature serial killer mystery, PLUTO already had high expectations for its anime adaptation. The limited series adds an additional challenge, with only hour-long episodes dedicated to each of the series’ eight volumes, which follows not only Gesicht’s own investigation, but also in-depth stories of each of the remaining Great Robots. However, the anime, now showing on Netflix, is able to meet this challenge with its deep understanding of the source material. It’s not just a straightforward police procedural, or just futuristic dream of how AI and humans can co-exist. PLUTO is a robot series that strikes at the heart of what it means to be human.

On the surface, The Makanai is a simple, slice-of-life show about food and friendship. While it is that, to be sure, it’s also a substantial drama that tackles questions about art vs. love, and love vs. companionship, and career vs. purpose. Under the gentle guidance of showrunner Hirokazu Kore-eda (Still Walking, Shoplifters, Broker), who generously allows up-and-coming directors to take the helm on certain episodes, The Makanai feels at once light and hefty, comforting and challenging. We’re seeing mundane events unfold before us as if we were bystanders, but we also understand that there is so much more happening than what meets the eye. A prolonged gaze, a lovingly prepped meal, an especially sharp wing-eye, all of these have much to say about the state of mind of these girls.

It’s a supremely gentle and culturally rich show with a tender heart; a truly great watch on all accounts.

Leya is a businesswoman and single mother in her 20s who is trying to get her struggling startup off the ground while working at a restaurant.

When she finds an investor who’s willing to help her realize her dreams, he requests that she first pays off her outstanding debts to her previous investors. For this, she borrows from her brother-in-law who is in a violent drug gang.

It’s such a stylish and fast-paced thriller, based on Jens Lapidus’s famous Stockholm Noir Trilogy, except the gender of the lead role is reversed.

Netflix’s resurrection of the hit Danish drama Borgen comes in the form of Borgen: Power & Glory, a miniseries that sees Birgitte Nyborg (played by powerhouse Sidse Babett Knudsen) step down as prime minister and take over the foreign minister position while wrangling over power, principle, and family. In this particular revival, Birgitte butts head with the new prime minister, who is all for drilling oil in the autonomous region of Greenland despite Birgitte’s firm stance against climate change. The event turns into a geopolitical crisis that tests Birgitte’s values.

The series is as whipsmart, relevant, and funny as ever, although if you haven’t seen previous seasons of the show yet, don’t fret. Borgen: Power & Glory efficiently catches you up on all you need to know in the first few minutes. It’s a standalone, engaging drama that’s a breeze to go through at just eight episodes.

From the mastermind behind Netflix’s Kingdom, Kim Eun-Hee’s Signal is an exhilarating series that seamlessly weaves together gripping crime thriller elements with an intriguing touch of supernatural. With its unique premise of a mysterious walkie-talkie that connects the past and the present, the show follows a team of detectives from different eras as they collaborate to solve cold cases and unravel the secrets behind unsolved crimes. The superb writing and exceptional performances by the cast, including Lee Je-hoon, Kim Hye-soo, and Cho Jin-Woong, have made Signal a major hit among K-Drama fans. 

Pernille is the kind of show that makes you feel simultaneously giddy and sad, and the kind that makes you skip the credits as soon as you can to play the next episode. Like a Norwegian Better Things, it follows the titular Pernille (Steenstrup) as she raises two difficult but loving daughters, an emotionally distant nephew, and a father who’s found a new lease in life after finally coming out of the closet. To top it all off, Pernille works in child welfare, earning the ire of many unfit parents as she thanklessly saves children from abuse. Pernille is sometimes fun to watch—the heroine is prickly and plucky as she navigates her duties while carving out time for herself (often sexually). But sometimes it’s also difficult to watch. Between being a social services agent and a mom, Pernille comes to learn she’s not always right. But she is relatable and real, and therefore ultra comforting to watch.

In the early 2000s, amid the rapid rise of online piracy and the consequent fall of paid music, tech genius Daniel Ek would find Spotify, a revolutionary streaming platform that served as a middle ground between user accessibility and artist rights. But even now, at its peak, Spotify’s success seems mystifying. How did they get away with providing free music to all? 

Enter The Playlist—an impressive attempt at answering that very question. In this fictionalized account, key players in Spotify’s success are given their own episode-long arc, starting with the visionary himself, Ek (played by Edvin Endre), followed by the artist, the coder, and the industry insider, to name a few. By employing multiple perspectives, each with its own cinematic style (a particular favorite is that of the lawyer’s, the most experimental out of all the episodes), The Playlist manages to spin the technical and complicated story of Spotify’s origins into something fresh, dynamic, and addictive. Despite utilizing the Rashomon effect—risky but rewarding in this case—The Playlist rarely strays from its main point and, the result is a lean, well-rounded story that’s just as credible as it is heightened. 

Asura is a very particular period piece about the typical, rule-following Japanese family in the 1970s, and yet it feels universal too in its tales of family, marriage, and above all else sisterhood. Based on a novel by Mukoda Kuniko, Asura captures the frustrating, odd, exhilarating, and reassuring specificity of having a sister. You could be in a severe argument one second but laugh about an accident in the next. You could get mad at your sister for staying in a toxic relationship while offering her a place to stay and promising not to judge her in the same breath. And as we witness the dynamics of these four sisters, we also get to see the relationships they pursue (or run away from) all while trying to stay afloat amid Japan’s rigid societal rules. “Is it happiness for women to not make waves?” their mother asks. The entire series sees the women try and fail and try again to answer that all-important and ever-relevant question.

If you liked Netflix’ Stranger Things gloomy suspense, sit tight because there is a lot more of where that came from in Dark. Here is what they have in common: the aesthetic, great music, and they’re both about the disappearance of a child. Other than that, it is very difficult to compare Dark to anything else I’ve seen before.

This German show is about a town with a long and dark history, which is brought to the forefront of the collective conscious when a child goes missing. The plot twists and turns through decades of history – and that’s as much as I will share without ruining the show for you. 

Dark uses beautiful aesthetic, both visually and musically, to be compelling and painfully tension-ridden. 

Season two has more bouncing between timelines and more dark and inexplicable events, as now six people are missing. 

At first glance, Monster doesn’t seem like the typical anime of the 2000s. With its muted colors, realistic action, and Eastern European setting, it seemed like a more subdued series compared to other thrillers. But because it feels so realistic, Monster is one of the most thrilling psychological series that happens to tackle the value of a human life, as the compassionate doctor Kenzo Tenma grapples with the weight of having saved a boy who grows up into a manipulative psychopath. Mangaka Naoki Urasawa and showrunner Masayuki Kojima directly challenges their respective philosophies through excellently paced investigations, well-developed characters, and the thorough examination of the different ways humanity has failed each other, and it’s downright beautiful to see how this anime adapts Urasawa’s complex, sophisticated story so faithfully.

This gorgeous drama-thriller is set in bustling Istanbul where different characters, mostly women, cross paths.

And when I say gorgeous, I mean of the drop-dead variety. The cinematography is reminiscent of the Japanese style of Kazuo Miyagawa or Columbus director Kogonada.

And it’s all matched by the dialogue. The first episode follows a woman who lays bare her life in a first session with a psychologist. The story then moves on to her psychologist seeing her own clinician, mostly discussing how she feels about seeing veiled patients.