5 Underappreciated International Streaming Gems

With the second season of Deadloch upon us, it’s a great time to remind those of you who haven’t seen it yet what a terrific series it is, and also recommend a few other under-the-radar international series.

Deadloch (Prime Video) — Deadloch nails the bleak crime drama aesthetic. A dim blue filter shades every scene, and the music is appropriately haunting. The community is full of the hidden crimes and tragedies familiar to anyone who grew up in a small town; unwanted pregnancies, domestic abuse, and folks who left without warning. Truly terrible men have spent decades controlling their women’s lives, and it appears their chickens are coming home to roost. And yet the show inspires more inappropriate laughter than a circus tent full of dead clowns. Viewers are never left in the position of feeling sorry for the victims, only those they’ve left behind, which makes discovering who the killer is more of a fun exercise than a tense one. — Nate Parker

Colin from Accounts (Paramount) — The two leads in Colin from Accounts, an Australian import, do not suffer from a lack of chemistry. They’re played by real-life husband and wife Patrick Brammall (Evil) and Harriet Dyer, the latter of whom American audiences may recognize from the short-lived American Auto and currently DMV. She is terrific. The worst thing about Colin from Accounts is its premise, but the best thing about Colin from Accounts is everything else. The premise is this: While Gordon (Brammall) is sitting in traffic, Ashley (Dyer), walks by and playfully flashes him — a stranger — because she’s feeling randy. A distracted Gordon runs over a dog (that they later amusingly name Colin from Accounts), and the two are forced to live together to take care of the ailing but adorable pup. Dyer, a medical student, can’t have dogs in her flat, and Gordon works too much (as a pub owner) to take care of the dog himself, so the dog is the excuse for the forced cohabitation of strangers. It’s basically You’re the Worst crossed with Collateral Damage, only there’s also a dog involved. There are two seasons available, and it’s been renewed for a third.

Good Cop Bad Cop (Prime Video) — In this new Canadian series, Leighton Meester plays Lou, a detective so skilled she can good-cop a confession out of anyone. Her dad, the sheriff — Big Hank Hickman (Clancy Brown) — ropes in her estranged brother Henry (Luke Cook) to be her partner. Henry is technically the bad cop, but only in the most Canadian way possible. He’s not mean so much as awkward and mildly impolite. The brother-sister dynamic shouldn’t work, but it does. Together, they solve oddball small-town murders while unpacking decades of family baggage. Even the criminals here tend to be decent people. The comedy is low-key and entertaining, with a standout Twin Peaks gag that lands late in the season. It’s a wholesome, cozy murder mystery comedy with a sort of Canadian Psych vibe, only more family-oriented.

Riot Women (Britbox) — My favorite new series of the year, so far, Riot Women is about a group of older women who form a makeshift punk band for a charity talent contest in Hebden Bridge. But that description barely scratches the surface. This is not a Full Monty-style crowd-pleaser where everything neatly snaps into place. It is a messy, dark, and real Sally Wainwright series (Happy Valley, Gentleman Jack). It wrestles with the kinds of weighty issues women of a certain age actually face, and it does so without condescension or cutesy framing. These are women whose husbands have left them, who are lonely, navigating menopause, being steamrolled by their adult children, and watching their own parents decline … or worse. So they make a band. They write songs about it. They scream and laugh and exorcise their anger. More importantly, they find one another at a moment in life when the losses are piling up. The music and the friendships carry them through some of the hardest years they’ve known, because women do not stop living at 50 or 60, no matter how determined society is to pretend otherwise.

Collateral (Netflix) — This one is several years old but, despite starring Carey Mulligan, stayed relatively under the radar and is barely ever spoken of. This one is a properly dark British murder mystery. The series kicks off when a seemingly random pizza delivery guy is shot dead by an unknown figure. Turns out, the pizza delivery guy — who is Iraqi — delivered his last pizza to the mother (Billie Piper) of an MP’s child; the only witness to the shooting is a vicar’s lesbian girlfriend whose visa was renewed by the same MP; and the killing wasn’t that random, after all. This one goes all the way to … the middle rungs of government bureaucracy. Carey Mulligan plays DI Kip Glaspie who is heavily pregnant, but anxious to work a case. She is assigned this one, and she quickly works her way through the leads and up to the conspiracy but not before both she and John Simm’s MP character impart their feelings about the immigration situation in Britain. In fact, through the prism of this murder, the political system, the Church, law enforcement, and even the military all offer their barely veiled thoughts post-Brexit England, as well. It’s a smart and solid miniseries. Carey Mulligan is fantastic, even if it is a role she could do her in sleep. At four episodes, it’s quickly and efficiently told; there is an occasional twist; bits and bobs of tension; zero sense of humor; and everyone is at least a little unhappy. In other words: It’s very British.