Two more then
Van Dis in Indonesië - A
famous Dutch author of Dutch-Indonesian origin goes to Indonesia to explore the country, how it's changed and to examine the major role it's played in his life. It's a personal and fascinating look at a country that has meant so much to Dutch history, yet is little known and understood by most people here today.
Het Snelle Geld (The Fast Money) - A light hearted yet informative series about 'fast money' in the past twenty-five years. While very light hearted, the undertone is one of increasing greed. Of people making money doing nothing or doing things that hurt the economy, whilst the decline of industry continues. In the different episodes they interview different people who were involved in that stage of it all. Like in the most recent episode they talk about the failed IPO of internet provider World Online, where everyone lost money, including all the employees of World Online who had received a great many shares, except for then CEO Nina Brink, who had sold off just prior to the IPO.
Scripted TV in the Netherlands is extremely weak. Series produced are often low quality, feature poor acting, worse writing, have unimaginative premises and have incredibly low budgets. This despite the fact that while it's only a country of 16 million, programs like Farmer Wants a Wife prove (5.4 million viewers for the finale last year) that it's possible to captivate such a large part of the audience that quality programming should be possible. There are some high quality documentary/current affairs shows that have been running for years though. I'm thinking mainly of these:
Tegenlicht (Backlight) - Shows one hour documentaries about major issues in the world today, has a relatively international focus. The broadcaster, VPRO, puts some of the episodes on
its international youtube channel with subtitles or even dubs. They are definitely worth checking out.
Andere Tijden (Other Times) - History documentary series, often focuses on the more unknown stories from history, mainly Dutch history, and especially if they have some relevancy to issues of today. Recently they aired episodes about 'healing' gays in the 1970s and the Dutch punk scene and the effects economic crisis had on it amongst other things. There's also a separate sports edition of the programme, which is also quite good, but due to its subject matter, rarely as interesting as the regular version.
Zembla - Show that focuses on investigative journalism. One of the rare few examples you will find of actual investigative journalism on TV here (I have no idea how common it still is in the United States), none of the issues are really relevant to people here, as they often concern smaller scale domestic things, but revelations made in this show often make the national media, which is a good indication of the quality of the show.
Oh, and something different:
Ik Vertrek (I'm Leaving) - A show about Dutch people who plan to emigrate abroad and start a hotel/hostel/restaurant or anything of the sort. They go through the preparations, the deliberations, talking the family into it and so on, and then finally the move and how that all works out. My favourite part of course is that it rarely goes well. Most people discover they hadn't prepared properly at all, more still discover that the local culture isn't quite what they were expecting it to be. With them not being used to greasing some palms to get things done, it's not rare to see permits being held up indefinitely for these people.
People who don't prepare are definitely my favourite. There was once this episode about theis couple who had the dream of starting a restaurant in Greece. There were however a few problems as the viewers soon realized. Neither of them spoke Greek. Neither of them spoke English. Neither of them had the money to start a business. There were greater problems still though. Neither of them knew how to cook. They showed them going on-line on the computer to look up some incredibly basic recipes. Not deterred by this however, they went ahead with their move anyway. None of it really worked out as you may imagine. They did a follow up episode about a year later. The guy was now working in a sandwich stall and had learned some rudimentary Greek, the girl was cleaning kitchens.
I know it probably makes me a bad person to laugh at misfortune like that, but I can't help but feel people deserve it when they don't prepare properly. I enjoy schadenfreude too much anyhow :X.
