The top award-winning foreign dramas on the Channel 4 offshoot.
If you’re looking for something new and different to watch then look no further than Channel 4 and its offshoot streaming service Walter Presents.
Walter Presents launched back in 2016 and is an on-demand platform featuring a hand-picked selection of award-winning foreign-language dramas.
The content is curated by Walter Iuzzolino, an Italian TV producer who considers three criteria when making his choices: the shows must have had mainstream success in their home countries; they must have outstanding writing, acting and directing; and they must have been critically acclaimed.
“It’s a balance of being innovative so we never become repetitive, but also to bring viewers what they love,” Iuzzolino tells us. “I knew there were thousands of great shows all over the world that were not being shown because there was that subtitle stigma.
“Walter Presents is like opening the club. The more people love it, the more people will talk about it. It’s a bit of a mission to ensure that as many people as possible get to appreciate the joys of international drama.”
Iuzzolino says that Italy, France and Eastern Europe are the places to look out for when it comes to new drama, and that Dutch series, like The Adulterer, are consistently ranking highly.
“It’s like going on a sexy city break without leaving your sofa,” he adds. “Access to a different culture is also a nice counterpoint to all the tension and bad feeling that is in our world today. It encourages tolerance, open-mindedness and understanding of the other.”
From hit German cold-war drama Deutschland 89, which the service launched with, and supernatural Italian series The Red Door to Ukraine’s Hide and Seek (Pryatki), here are our picks of the best shows available to stream right now on Walter Presents. You’re bound to find something you like.