This is yet another international murder mystery series that I watched (and reviewed) back when I thought that might become my beat. Once again, I remember very little about this Germany series, but according to my review, I liked it quite a bit. I should probably go back to that beat as I really enjoyed it..
My wife and I have recently been enjoying a British series called Crime Scene Cleaner. It stars and is written by Greg Davies (who we also enjoy in Taskmaster). It is based on this German show of the same name. Honestly, I barely remember the German show other than I liked it a lot, but reading my review, I see that the first season of the British show took a lot of the plot points directly from the original.
I definitely recommend both shows if you can find them.
There was a period of time, back around 2015, when I was reviewing a lot of International Mysteries. These were mostly put on DVD by a company called MHZ. They weren’t all good, but it was fun seeing how other countries handled their murder mysteries. Then I got busy, and the well ran dry.
I’ve recently subscribed to a streaming station run by MHZ and am once again enjoying my international mysteries.
I don’t really remember this French series, but you can read my review here.
There was a time back around 2013 when I was regularly reviewing DVDs of non-American crime dramas. They were released by companies like Acorn and MHZ. I was reviewing them so often that I seriously considered making it my beat, so to speak. Like I thought I could just be a reviewer of non-American television.
If I’m being honest I don’t really remember East West. I have the vaguest of memories of reviewing it, but reading my actual review doesn’t stir anything up. That’s not to say it is a bad show, as I did give it a good review, but at the time I was watching a lot of crime dramas and they do tend to blend together.
Anyway, you can read that review here.
My wife is a big fan of British crime stories and period dramas. I like them too but she likes to put them on while she’s crafting or sewing doll clothes (have I mentioned she’s a doll collector? and that she makes super cool costumes for them?). Which means she watches a lot of them.
We cut the cord years ago but try to limit our streaming choices down to one service per person in our family. Recently she was subscribed to BritBox, which like it sounds, contains lots of British programming. But she’s ready to switch to something else. I’ve been trying to talk her into giving MHZ a try of late. They have a lot of interesting shows from European countries that are not England.
I used to get a lot of DVDs from them and generally enjoyed what they sent. I’ve posted several of those reviews here lately and this is another one. Johan Falk was actually a pretty long-running Swedish series, but for whatever reason, MHZ packaged three of the films as a trilogy. It is pretty good. You can read my full review here.
For a brief period, I was reviewing a lot of international crime dramas from around the world, all released by a company called MHZ. The shows were usually good, the DVDs were pretty bare-boned, and the cover art was often terrible. I mean just look at this image. My daughter has better design skills, and she’s only 11. It looks like someone took a random screenshot and then added the most generic-looking text on top of it and called it a day.
The show, as you can read in this review, was pretty good.
I’m a sucker for crime shows. The plots can often be cliched, as is the case with Irene Huss, but the execution can be really great. Also the case with Inspector Irene Huss as I wrote in my review.
Over the last decade or so there have been some really great crime thrillers to come out of the Scandinavian countries, both in print and on the screen. Unfortunately, Annika Bengtzon was not one of them. At least according to my review. I don’t actually remember watching the series at this point.
I’m never entirely sure how I should title these posts where I’m just linking to reviews I did for Cinema Sentries. I suppose I should research the best possible SEO way to capture Google searches or something. But I never was good at that sort of thing. Beck is a Swedish detective series that I apparently thought was pretty good. I watched it and wrote the review back in 2013 so my memory is sketchy at best. I’ve since read one of the books in the series and felt basically the same about it – ’tis good but not great.
I love a good crime drama. There is something very satisfying about watching someone try to solve a murder or some other heinous crime. The conventions of the genre are somehow comforting as you more or less know what is going to happen (a crime will be committed, questions will be asked, and the criminal will be caught). The best stories find ways to subvert those conventions and do something interesting.
I also love that crime dramas work well all over the world. Just about every culture that makes movies and TV shows makes crime dramas. MHZ used to put out a lot of DVDs of crime dramas and mysteries from all across Europe and other countries. They might still do that, I’ve just lost touch with them. I know they do have a streaming service and I’ve been meaning to give it a try.
Detective de Luca is a cool little series of detective movies from Italy. I reviewed it several years ago and now you can read my thoughts here.
themidnightcafe.org 