We watch a lot on Netflix and Amazon Prime and expanded the Amazon channels to include MHz Choice, Acorn, BritBox and Topic.  We discovered a treasure trove of European police procedurals, mysteries, thrillers and comedies of sorts on MHz for $7.99 a month. It became our go-to-channel in 2020. And that was one of the good things that made isolating more durable in the annus horribilis. 

Here’s what we enjoyed the most that you might have overlooked.

MHz Choice

From France 

 

Spiral or Engrenages

The French police procedural takes a case a season and you visit Paris as cops, judges, lawyers and the French justice system grapple with complexities and contradictions. It begins its eighth and final season in 2021, but it’s worth catching from the beginning.  Caroline Proust, Audrey Fleurot, Thierry Godard, and Philippe Duclos star throughout.

 

The Art of Crime 

A phobic art historian and a cop make an unlikely duo to solve art world crimes in Paris. The stories are good and the scenics are wonderful.  Eléonore Bernheim and Nicholas Gob play the likable antagonists.

 

Détectives

Detectives offers up a multi-generational family detective agency for a romp that mixes comedy and crime without being annoying. The Roche family brings in an outsider, a former French intelligence officer Nora Abadie, played by Sara Martins, to shore up the sagging business. A romance develops slowly between Nora and Phillipe Roche (Phillipe Levebre) the son of the retired founder. When big problems need solving the team meets on the houseboat where the patriarch Max Roche (Jean-Luc Bideau lives.  The acting is excellent and the stories are engaging.

Nicholas Le Floch

This confection brings you into the world of a Parisian police commissioner during Louis XV’s rein in the eighteenth century. The charming Commissaire Nicholas Le Floch (Jérôme Robart) fights crime, court intrigue and becomes a favorite of the king. He reports to Versailles regularly with sword fights, skirmishes on horseback, bordello liaisons and wild carriage rides in between. The stories are good and don’t make you feel like an idiot for watching, so it’s unfortunate there’s only one season.

Murder In . . .

The scenics alone make Murder In . . . worth watching, especially since we’re all stuck at home during the pandemic.  Each episode features a local detective and a visiting prosecutor trying to crack a murder in a different part of France. You feel like you have dropped into towns and regions like Aigues Mortes, Lozère, the Sommes, Colliure, Aveyron and more. The crime-solvers are usually a male and female with different ways of approaching a problem, and these mismatches produce romantic tension.  It is almost always beautiful and while the scripts are uneven, the acting and atmosphere make up for it. 

Blood of the Vine 

Blood of the Vine, like Murder In . . . , takes you on a tour of France. But instead of a police detective, you travel with Benjamin Lebel (Pierre Arditi), an oenologist who also solves crimes. The stories are uneven but the visits to different wine regions are spectacular. Lebel is aided in his wine consultations and sleuthing by young assistants Mathilde (Catherine Demaiffe) and Silvère (Yoann Denaive). Despite the murders, it’s mostly fun.

Netflix 

Call My Agent or Dix pour Cent

This funny French series comes back for a fourth season on January 21, 2021.  Talent agencies compete with each other for clients, romance and try to keep their famous clients happy and employed. It’s worth starting at the beginning of the series. You’ll laugh a lot and enjoy the cameo performances by French stars including Isabelle Huppert, Isabelle Adjani and Jean Dujardin.  In the upcoming season, we’ll see American actor Sigourney Weaver at the agency.

 

The Bonfire of Destiny or Le Bazar de la Charité

This soap opera set in 1897 Paris is a rich woman, poor woman story that twists, turns and is full of romance, intrigue and deception. It’s a good story with terrific acting by Audrey Fleurot, Camille Lou and Julie de Bona whose lives are upended by a fire at a charity bazaar. 

Denmark

Seaside Hotel 

We’ve had a lot of fun with a Danish series, Seaside Hotel, from Walter Presents, on the PBS Amazon Prime Masterpiece Channel. It brings you into the lives of the owners and staff of a hotel on the Jutland coast and their guests who visit every summer from 1928 to 1933. They take a six-year break and we meet them again in 1939. The regulars include a businessman whose filmmaker daughter describes him as “a sheep in wolf’s clothing,” an egocentric actor with stage fright, a closeted gay count who travels with his mother, two very different older sisters, and a wife impatient to make more of her life. Their encounters with one another and the staff are hilarious and poignant.  The last year throws the shadow of war over the hotel, and the frivolity for the guests and all comes to an end. 

 

The New Nurses

Set in 1950s Denmark, The New Nurses takes on the experiment of training men to work as nurses alongside women.  There’s huffing and puffing from the social establishment, and also laughter and romance.  The scripts are good, the acting excellent and again you get to travel to Denmark. 

Dicte

It probably won’t surprise you that we like this series about an  investigative reporter who solves crimes in Aahrus on the Jutland Penisula. This isn’t Nordic noir, it’s a charming mix of procedural and family story that loses nothing to its darker counterparts.  After Dicte Svendson, played by Iben Hjejlea, gets divorced, she and her teen daughter return her hometown but the dad remains involved. The episodes features Dar Salim as a photographer and her love interest, and Lars Brygmann as a detective with whom she has a combative working relationship.  

Borgen

If politics is your thing, and even if it’s not, the (fictional) story of Birgitte Nyborg’s, played by Sidse Babet Knudsen rise from political obscurity to become Denmark’s first female prime minister will suck you in.  Nyborg is a great character with human flaws, and she shows you the toll the political life takes on family and friendships.  She’s surrounded by the usual suspects — a spin doctor who never gives straight answer; journalists both friend and foe; ambitious colleagues with knives out for their own opportunities.  Borgen, which means the Castle in Danish and is shorthand for the Christiansborg Castle that houses Danish government, covers three seasons of ten episodes each. All are good. 

You can find our recommendations for great Italian shows here. 

And Scandinavian Noir here.