Television

One fun aspect of watching foreign shows is learning about the folklore of other lands; whole unfamiliar mythologies. One of these is the fashion in Korean drama for the last few years of shows about “grim reapers”, messengers of death…

Netflix users at the beginning of 2021 were justifiably confused when they noticed two new movies, both Chinese fantasy films, and both with almost identical names. One was The Yin Yang Master, while the other was The Yin-Yang Master:…

Born in the 18th century, “gothic fiction” is a genre defined by three key elements: supernatural elements (either actually present or implied), the fear of the unknown, and the idea of the present being haunted by the past. While we most…

Nazi sa Ghaeltacht tells the astonishing story of Dr Ludwig Mühlhausen, a folklore scholar from Germany who visited Teileann, a small village in the Donegal Ghaeltact, to learn Irish in 1937. Long been considered a figure of suspicion and…

Hello and welcome to Subtext, a new irregular column looking at the hidden gems among the foreign language shows and movies available on streaming services. On the 18th of June, a show will arrive on Netflix that promises to be one of…

It's no secret how important a filmmaker Danny Boyle is. Ever since the cult classic Shallow Grave (1994), and his era-defining Trainspotting (1996), he has remained integral to cinema - granted there have been some clangers such as The…

“I don’t think you want to peel that onion.” – Nadia Vulvokov After the triumph of 2019's mind-bending Netflix series Russian Doll, Natasha Lyonne revisits her twisted moral compass, Nadia Vulvokov. With the praise and awards for the…

Heartstopper is a close-to-perfect TV series. Beautifully presented and thoughtfully cast, it chronicles a simple love story of two teenage boys who must each overcome difficulties of identity in order to be together. What sets …

Of late the streaming service Disney+ has branched out. With its Star series of movies and programmes, they moved from Disney only products and are now wholly aimed at competing with Netflix. One much-hyped series which promised to nourish…

Whomst among us is not guilty of using filters on Social Media platforms to change our appearance? That is at the core of Inventing Anna: pretense, faking and reinvention. Granted, in this limited series from Netflix, this pretense is on a…