Domestic productions may still make up the majority of the American viewer’s media diet, but international productions are gaining ground, with Netflix reporting 13% of its U.S. viewing hours coming from non-English titles in 2023. Foreign-language television dramas in particular are becoming a more significant part of watercooler discussions, as streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+, Tubi, Viki, and iQiyi make international series like “Squid Game,” “Moving,” and “Maxton Hall” more accessible than ever across national borders, bringing more attention to the variety and depth of what global TV production has to offer.
In recognition of the increasingly global nature of TV watching and criticism, we have compiled a list of some of the best international TV drama shows in 2024. The entries are limited to one series per country, which makes selection from strong and prolific industries, such as Japan, Korea, and Germany, particularly difficult. To be considered, the series also had to be easily accessible to viewers in the U.S., which means distribution on a streaming service or TV channel available in the U.S.
With that in mind, here were 15 of the best international TV dramas of 2024…
In the last few years, Thailand has become a hub for the production of globally popular boys’ love (or BL) dramas, aka series that center queer love stories between two men. (Some credit the growth of the BL drama industry as aiding in the 2024 decision to legalize same-sex marriage in Thailand, a major victory for LGBTQ rights in the region.) While there were several excellent Thai BL dramas this year, including Thailand’s adaptation of Japanese IP “Cherry Magic,” 2024 was noteworthy for the increase in girls’ love (or GL) dramas produced by the Thai TV industry. “Affair” was one of the best.
Based on Cha Planoy’s novel of the same name, the GL drama follows Phleng (“Sonya” Saranphat Pedersen) and Wan (“Lookmhee” Punyapat Wangpongsathaporn) as two girls who grew up together in the same house—one as the daughter of the owner and one as the daughter of the maid. When they come of age and are forced to consider marriage, they fight to hide their burgeoning romantic relationship. “Affair” has its amateurish production elements, as is often the case for pieces of media pioneering a certain kind of representation, but the chemistry between the two leads and the solid direction elevates this GL drama to something special. While “Affair” didn’t totally stick its landing, the romantic melodrama of the journey speaks to the global potential of the GL drama genre in a TV landscape that so rarely centers queer women’s love.
While the Nordic countries are known internationally for their atmospheric TV noir series, Europe’s Scandinavian countries are capable of telling stories outside of that popular genre. “All and Eva,” a story about a 40-year-old Swede named Eva (Tuva Novotny) who decides to have a baby on her own, is one good example. Similar to “Fleabag” in both tone and its auteur-driven production, “All and Eva” is a dramedy that walks the delicate line between laugh-out-loud comedic moments and raw, realistic gut punches. The story follows Eva in her simultaneous fertility and dating quests that get tangled up with one another when she orchestrates a meet-cute with the man, Mads (Joachim Fjelstrup), who gave the sperm donation for her unborn child. When the two actually hit it off, she is in the awkward position of deciding if she should tell her new flame the truth.
When one of the major shareholders of one of the biggest fish-farming operations in the world dies, all loyalties are off in this “Succession”-esque tale of Norwegian salmon empires. Like that late, great tale of family dysfunction under capitalism, “Billionaire Island” balances dead-serious drama and comedic satire in its exploration of how corporate wheeling and dealing infiltrates even the most domestic of spaces. The heart of the duel lies in Gjert Meyers (Svein Roger Karlsen), the old-fashioned patriarch of Meyer Fjordbruk, and Julie Lange (Trine Wiggen), the cosmopolitan matriarch of Marlex. Neither family or corporation is presented as the good guys, giving more complexity to this soapy, six-episode series about the Norwegian uber rich. Fun fact: The series was created by Anne Bjørnstad and Eilif Skodvin, the duo behind 2012 crime dramedy “Lilyhammer,” aka Netflix’s first-ever “original series.”
The second season of “The Broken News,” a Hindi-language TV drama about the state of modern journalism, goes past the one-season blueprint source material BBC drama “Press” laid out. The initial set-up is still present, of course: two rival TV news empires fight for dominance in the political news landscape. On one side, we have Awaaz Bharati, led by Amina Qureshi (Sonali Bendre), an idealist who fights to uphold the standards of journalistic integrity. On the other side, we have Josh 24/7, led by an editor-in-chief, Dipankar Sanyal (Jaideep Ahlawat), who cares about ratings more than anything else.
Season 2 picks up more or less where Season 1 left off, with Amina’s progressive protege Radha (Shriya Pilgaonkar) in jail. After trying to expose an intrusive data-gathering program known as Operation Umbrella, Radha has been deemed a “terrorist” by Dipankar’s media channel. She vows to bring him down, but can she hold onto her journalistic integrity in the process. “Broken News” has some of the best performers on Indian TV, and it works as a drama in its own right—but it’s especially fascinating to watch in comparison to “Press,” and to see the same relevant questions about the role of TV news media in the age of social media explored in a different cultural context.
While Korea’s “Hierarchy” and “Pyramid Game” made a good run at the next “Gossip Girl” or “Pretty Little Liars,” it was Japan’s “Chastity High” that brought the “anonymous social media presence throws the high school social landscape into chaos” premise into 2024. When elite school Asuran Academy goes co-ed as a way to compensate for low enrollment, the headmaster puts into place a strict no-dating rule. The consequence if broken? Expulsion. Scholarship kid protag Ichika Arisawa (Ai Mikami) doesn’t have any plans of dating, but when she inadvertently stumbles into a money-making scheme that involves blackmailing fraternizing students to keep their love “crimes” off of the headmaster’s radar, her life is changed forever.
As a representative of teen rich kid drama, “Chastity High” refuses to fall into cliches, instead eventually making the teen girl a reluctant champion for adolescent sexuality, and poking holes in the absurd logic of purity culture in the process. Rather than painting rich characters as bad and poor characters as good, “Chastity High” has a great deal of sympathy for most of its characters, while still depicting how different forms of privilege impact who we are as people and how society shapes us.
In 2010, one of the most popular Egyptian series on the airwaves was a show called “Ayza Atgawez,” or “I Want to Get Married.” Adopted from a popular blog by writer Ghada Abdel Aal, the show chronicled the life of a young pharmacist called Ola (Tunisian actress Hend Sabri) who planned to get married before the age of 30. The series ended with Ola finding her groom.
More than a decade later, Netflix rebooted the series under the title “Finding Ola,” allowing viewers to catch back up with the now 40-year-old protagonist in a new life phase. In 2022’s Season 1, Ola was a recently divorced mother of two trying to get her feet back under her, chafing against the societal expectations around what a fortysomething Egyptian woman should be. In the second season of this Arabic-language romantic drama, Ola continues her journey of self-exploration, as she continues to balance the roles of entrepreneur, mother, daughter, and romantic partner. In an era of media-making when each release can feel like a flash in the pan, “Finding Ola” doubles down on a decade-old character who subverts the ephemeral nature of modern media.
Lidia Poët is the latest character in the grand tradition of period drama lady detectives. Technically, she is a lawyer and not a detective, and technically she is based on a real-life woman (Italy’s first modern female lawyer), but these distinctions are but details in the genre format that has also brought us great characters like Miss Fisher, Miss Scarlet, and Sara Howard. “The Law According to Lidia Poët” introduces us to Lidia (Matilda De Angelis) just as she loses her right to practice law. In the wake of that devastation, she moves in with her lawyer brother, Enrico, and his family, and convinces Enrico to take her on as his legal assistant.
In the second season, which came out in October, we are invited back into the vibrant world of 1880s Turin, and to the life of Lidia for six more episodes as our busy protagonist juggles her career ambitions with her complicated domestic life, including her messy romance with journalist brother-in-law Jacopo (Eduardo Scarpetta). In another year when women’s rights were further encroached upon in the U.S., “The Law According to Lidia Poët” was a nice, albeit temporary escape—light, feminist fun, wrapped up in a comforting period procedural format where the good guys usually win and it’s usually due to the hard work of a smart woman
In a year that began with the release of Wong Kar-wai’s first ever TV project, continued with the unexpected success of rural drama “To the Wonder” and ended with a renewed commitment to costume dramas from one of China’s major studios, there was a lot to celebrate in Chinese television in 2024. But the arguable highlight of the year came with the release of “Love Game in Eastern Fantasy,” a 32-episode xianxia drama about a woman who is pulled into the world of a terrible book—to hilarious and high-stakes results.
Yu Shuxin (aka Esther Yu) stars as Ling Miaomiao, a twentysomething office worker eager to read the new book, “Monster Hunting,” from her favorite author. When she does, and finds it lacking, she writes a scathing online review that has her pulled into the world of the book and forced to “play” as a supporting antagonist. The series makes clever use of video game mechanics to add familiar structure and stakes to the absurd fantasy scenario, and Yu charms as a modern woman with knowledge of the plot, just trying to make it out alive. Her main foil (and later romantic interest) comes in the form of Mu Sheng (Ding Yuxi), a hard-to-please demon-hunter with secrets of his own.
Korea has become one of the centers of globally popular TV production. While violent, action-driven dramas (e.g. “Squid Game,” “Hellbound,” “The Glory”) tend to get the most American critical attention, Korea continues to make some of the best romantic TV dramas of all time. Time-slip romance “Lovely Runner” was 2024’s best, pulling viewers into the story of Im Sol (Kim Hye-hoon), a thirtysomething fangirl who, distraught by the mysterious death of her favorite K-pop idol Rye Sun-jae (Byeon Woo-seok), accidentally travels back in time 15 years to her high school self. Once there, she discovers that she lives next door to teenage Sun-jae, and becomes determined to save his life in the future. With that premise, “Lovely Runner” always stood a good chance at being diverting, but an Episode 2 twist recontextualizes Sol and Sun-jae’s entire relationship, setting viewers on a time-hopping love story that was as unpredictable as it was satisfying.
A precious adventure about one Brazilian girl’s quest to find the truth about her birth family, “Luz: The Light of the Heart” was one of the best children’s series released this year. Marianna Santos shines as nine-year-old Luz, a girl who is raised by an Indigenous community following a tragedy around her birth. When she turns nine and learns her Kaingang family have not been telling her the whole truth about her identity, she runs away with her steadfast (and magical) firefly companion, ending up at a boarding school filled with other curious, kind-hearted kids. Marketed as “Brazil’s first telenovela for kids,” “Luz” does an impressive job balancing the high-stakes of its main character’s birth family drama with the sweeter stories of her school adventures across 20 episodes, all while celebrating Brazilian culture. This Portuguese-language series is a gem, and the rare example of a fantastical middle-grade kids series that goes the live-action route.
Adapted from a bestselling novel series by one of the writers of “Dark” (Daphne Ferraro, serving here as Head Writer), “Maxton Hall” is the kind of story we’ve seen before. Working class scholarship student Ruby Bell (Harriet Herbig-Matten) is trying to keep her head down at elite private school Maxton Hall, a vital step in her dream to study at Oxford. But when she inadvertently walks into the orbit of entitled rich kid James Beaufort (Damian Hardung), her perfectly constructed plan is threatened. And feelings only make it worse.
You can file “Maxton Hall” alongside other enemies-to-lovers romance TV classics like “Élite,” “Skam,” and many a K-drama, or even trace its basic elements back to the source of so much of today’s romance genre: Jane Austen’s “Pride & Prejudice.” While popular, this story format is not as easy to pull off as it might seem. However, propelled by the chemistry between series leads Herbig-Matten and Hardung, some gorgeous direction, and a subtly diverse supporting cast of characters, “Maxton Hall” nails it. The German-language show became the most-successful of any non-American Amazon Prime Original series launch ever as a result. With a second season already filmed, there will be more “Maxton Hall” in our near future.
In Mexico City, the government funds only 100 ambulances for a population of roughly 10 million. Apple TV+’s Spanish-language series “Midnight Family” explores that real-world issue through the familiar lens of a family drama. Based on a 2019 documentary of the same name, “Midnight Family” is about a family of Mexican paramedics trying to provide care in a cutthroat, for-profit ambulance industry where workers often have little to no medical training. While daughter Marigaby Tamayo (Renata Vaca), a med student burning the candle at both ends, is our entry into this 10-episode series, “Midnight Family” gives time to each member of the family, including father Ramón (Joaquín Cosio), and sons Marcus (Diego Calva) and Julio (Sergio Bautista), expanding the world of this series in vital ways. It’s hard to do something fresh within the medical drama format, but the richness of “Midnight Family’s” setting, not to mention its real-life inspiration, help the series stand out in the over-saturated genre.
“Mother of Penguins” brings viewers into the messy, imperfect world of parenting through the story of Kamila Barska (Masza Wągrocka), an MMA fighter and single parent. When her seven-year-old son, Jaś (Jan Lubas), is diagnosed with autism and is referred to a school for kids with disabilities, Kamila struggles to accept the diagnosis and to help her son find the support he needs while also maintaining her demanding career. If that sounds like a serious premise, it is—and “Mother of Penguins” doesn’t sugarcoat the realities of life as a single parent supporting a kid with autism in a world that still doesn’t really understand neurodivergence. However, this Polish-language dramedy is also filled with moments of humor that are treated as just as true.
Nigerian mother and businesswoman Aunty Bunmi (Sola Sobowale) may have lost her husband 20 years ago, but she refuses to live the life of a grieving widower. Instead, she is the life of the party in Lagos, fabulously confident in her social life. Still, she feels lonely, and has neglected her own health. When Bunmi is diagnosed with fibroids, she must travel to India for treatment.
Meanwhile, Bunmi’s estranged son Yemi (Tobi Bakre) is a dancer who dreams of leaving Nigeria. When he lands a Bollywood gig, he also travels to Mumbai, throwing the two into one another’s orbits once again.
Bollywood and Nollywood have a history of working together on productions, and “Postcards” is the second such project from filmmaker Hamisha Daryani Ahuja after the 2020 feature film debut “Namaste Wahala.” Ahuja was born in India, but grew up in Nigeria, bringing her own multicultural knowledge to the story. “Postcards” celebrate the vibrancy of both Lagos and Mumbai, with dialogue in Yoruba, English, Nigerian Pidgin, and Hindi. “Postcards” is not as polished as most of the international dramas on this list, but it is a universal tale of family and community from two vibrant TV industries that are too often overlooked by the Western world.
A non-linear tale of one woman’s post-breakup foray into the modern dating world, “Thank You, Next” is a stylish romantic dramedy set outside of the Western world. To be fair, you might not notice the locale change, given “Thank You, Next’s” familiar interest in the lives of the well-off, cosmopolitan, and traditionally beautiful. Still, it’s fun to spend time in the shiny offices and homes of Istanbul and on the thumping beaches of the Turkish coast. Serenay Sarikaya stars as Leyla Taylan, a young lawyer hoping to move past her years-long relationship with Ömer (Metin Akdülger) with the support of her friend group. With a cool-kid soundtrack, slick editing, and an appreciation for the role social media plays in our modern lives, “Thank You, Next” scratches the same escapist rom-com itch as series like “Emily in Paris,” “XO Kitty” or “The Bold Type.”
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