The Godless selected as nr 1 Top Ten International series!
Twitch’s ‘Best Of’ : Television From Lands Other Than America
Todd Brown, Founder and Editor:
At this point it’s almost a truism to say that TV is in a new golden age, the twin factors of contraction within the former ‘mid-tier’ of films geared to adults and the rise of the cable nets embracing those same talents having resulted into a massive boom of long form story telling of exceedingly high quality. And while American shows tend to top many best of lists – Game Of Thrones rests at the top of my own – the fact is that audiences are watching more international television than ever before and while US shows may take up a couple slots in the top three of my personal list it’s international shows that dominate the Top Ten. So here is nr one of our favorite international shows:
The Godless (aka Van God Los or The Godless) (The Netherlands)
In 2003, the Dutch thriller The Godless by Pieter Kuijpers was released, basically showing a “behind the scenes” of an infamous crime which truly had happened ten years earlier. The film became a big success, beloved by critics and audiences alike. Of course, the idea of taking a “true crime” an dramatizing it isn’t exactly new, but the way it was done was pretty special: flashy, but not without integrity, and taking into accounts most sides of the story, painting what happened in shades of gray rather than black versus white.
As there (alas) is no shortage of “true crimes”, in 2011 The Godless was turned into a nine-episode television series. Instead of taking the original story and stretching it out, the concept was taken over from the film: each 50-minute episode would focus on a different well-documented crime, as seen from the viewpoint of both criminals and victims. Different actors, different directors and different writers were attached for each episode. Again this was a big success, and follow-up seasons were made using the same formula.
All in all it’s a pretty good approach, and indeed it (still) makes for a pretty good series.