Best Of
Best International Shows: Thirteen Series Worth the Subtitles
By Jordan A. · · Updated · 5 min read
Every list like this eventually pads itself with Peaky Blinders and Fleabag, which are excellent and also in English. If you're here, you want subtitles. You want the thing that got made for an audience that wasn't you, and is better for it.
So the rule is strict: primary language is not English, and the show has to be findable in the US with subtitles. Thirteen of them, with what each does, who it suits, and the network or streamer it came from with dates you can check.
German
Dark is the one to start with if you only ever watch one. Three generations in a small German town, a missing child, a cave, and a time-travel structure so tightly plotted that the final season closes every loop it opened.
Netflix, December 2017 to June 2020, three seasons, ended.
Who it's for: anyone who likes a puzzle they can lose. Watch it in German with subtitles. The dub flattens the performances badly.
Babylon Berlin is Weimar-era crime on an enormous budget, following a police inspector and an ambitious typist through a city sliding toward catastrophe. It is the most expensive German series ever made and it looks it.
premiered October 2017, four seasons aired and a fifth arriving September 10, 2026, produced for German public broadcasting and available internationally.
Who it's for: people who want period detail and political dread in the same hour.
Korean and Japanese
Squid Game needs no introduction, but it needs a status update: it finished. Three seasons, September 2021 to June 2025, and the ending is far bleaker than the first season's word-of-mouth suggested.
Netflix, 2021 to 2025, three seasons, ended.
Who it's for: everyone who has been putting it off. You can now watch the whole thing.
Kingdom is a zombie story set in Korea's Joseon era, with a crown prince investigating a plague while the court plots against him. Created and written by Kim Eun-hee and adapted from her webtoon, it was Netflix's first original Korean series.
Who it's for: horror viewers who want period politics underneath. The difference from most zombie television is that the disease is a symptom of the corruption, not a break from it.
Alice in Borderland drops a group of young people into an emptied Tokyo where survival depends on winning games with lethal rules. It ran three seasons and finished in September 2025.
Netflix, December 2020 to September 2025, three seasons, ended.
Who it's for: Squid Game fans who want more science fiction and less social allegory.
Spanish
Money Heist, or La Casa de Papel, is the show that proved a non-English series could own the global conversation. A planner called the Professor runs a heist on the Royal Mint of Spain with a crew who use city names instead of their own.
ran 2017 to 2021, originally on Spanish television before Netflix took it worldwide.
Who it's for: people who want propulsion. It is far sillier than its reputation and much more fun for it.
Élite is the trashy one and it is very good at being the trashy one. A Spanish private school, scholarship students, a murder, and eight seasons of escalating chaos from 2018 to 2024.
Who it's for: anyone who wants soap plotting with much better direction than the genre usually gets.
French
Call My Agent, originally Dix pour cent, follows a Paris talent agency where each episode brings in a real French film star playing a nightmare version of themselves. It ran four seasons on France 2 between 2015 and 2020 and it's the most purely enjoyable show on this list.
Who it's for: viewers who want a workplace comedy with genuine warmth. No violence, no mystery, just people managing egos.
Lupin gives Omar Sy a gentleman-thief role built on the Arsène Lupin stories, wrapped around a revenge plot against the family that destroyed his father. Three parts have aired since January 2021 and a fourth is dated for October 23, 2026.
Who it's for: people who want a caper with a movie star at the center of it.
Italian
Gomorrah is the bleakest thing here. Five seasons of Neapolitan organized crime with no heroes and no relief, adapted from Roberto Saviano's book.
Sky Atlantic, May 2014 to December 2021, five seasons, 58 episodes.
Who it's for: The Wire viewers who want the version with the sociology removed and the dread doubled.
My Brilliant Friend adapts Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels across four seasons, following two women from childhood to middle age in postwar Naples. It recasts its leads as they age and it is quietly one of the great achievements of the last decade.
November 2018 to November 2024, four seasons, ended.
Nordic
The Bridge, Bron/Broen, opens with a body left exactly on the border between Sweden and Denmark and forces two police forces to work together. It ran four seasons between 2011 and 2018 and it created the template that a dozen remakes copied.
Who it's for: anyone who wants the original rather than the American or British version.
Borgen is Danish political drama about a woman who becomes prime minister more or less by accident, and it takes coalition arithmetic seriously enough to build tension out of it. Three seasons on DR1 between 2010 and 2013.
Who it's for: The West Wing viewers who want something less romantic about the job.
Where these stream
International rights are the most volatile category in streaming, and the non-Netflix titles here in particular move between services and rental. Where each show streams changes, so the title page on BingeNext shows current US options.
Start here
If you want the best single series, Dark. If you want the most fun, Call My Agent. If you want something finished this week, Alice in Borderland. If you want to be flattened, Gomorrah. If someone in the house resists subtitles, start with Lupin, which is the easiest sell on the list.
The hard part with subtitled television is that once you've watched the famous ones, the next tier is genuinely hard to find. Give BingeNext's TV mode two or three shows from this list, and it comes back with picks, a reason for each, and where they stream. Results take about a minute.
Topics covered: international, foreign-language, global, streaming, subtitled
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and is responsible for every guide published on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu. Dates, season counts and where-to-watch details in these guides are checked against official sources before publishing, and corrections are welcome at Jordan@Bingenext.com.