North American streaming service MHz Choice has set its Euro TV slate for March 2024, including brand new series The King, Prisoner, and Vincenzo Malinconico.
MHz Choice is premiering new series and new seasons of returning series from Denmark, France and Italy, plus several more titles under its “Movie of the Week” banner, to viewers in the US and Canada in March. They are also adding a few other titles to its streaming library. Check ’em out.
Alice Nevers: Season 6 (France)
Marine Delterme (Coco Chanel) and Jean-Michel Tinivelli (Murder in Tahiti) return as criminal prosecutor Alice Nevers and her personal and professional partner, police captain Fred Marquand, in new episodes of this crime drama, derived from the long-running series Le juge est une femme. (Clip is from Season 5)
Alice Nevers: Season 6 premieres Tuesday, March 5.
Movie of the Week: Summer Camp (Merci papa, merci maman) (France)
In this comedy, Denis (Sébastien Knafo, Chronicles of the Sun) is a burglar whose last heist turned out to be a disaster. To evade the police, he pretends to be a summer camp counselor, and gets paired with spoiled co-counselor Gilles-Henri (Laurent Ournac, Murder in…). Between him and the rowdy kids, camp turns out not to be a perfect hideaway for Denis.
Costarring Francis Perrin (Mongeville), Summer Camp premieres Tuesday, March 5.
Vincenzo Malinconico (Vincenzo Malinconico, avvocato d’insuccesso) (Italy)
Based on the popular “Vincenzo Malinconico” novels by Diego De Silva, this comedy-drama series stars Massimiliano Gallo (The Bastards of Pizzofalcone, Imma Tataranni) as Vincenzo Malinconico, a 40-something divorced, philosophizing, semi-unemployed lawyer in Salerno, whose client portfolio is light and work is less than stimulating. After a series of chance events, Vincenzo finds himself defending a mafioso.
Costarring Denise Capezza (Gomorrah), Francesco di Leva (Mixed by Erry), Teresa Saponangelo (The Hand of God), Giovanni Ludeno (1993), and Tony Laudadio (Don Matteo), Vincenzo Malinconico premieres Tuesday, March 5.
White Sands (Hvide Sande) (Denmark)
In this “beach noir” mystery-crime drama series, a young German man is murdered in the tourist paradise of Hvide Sande. Although the Danish police conduct an investigation, the German authorities are not satisfied with it, so they set their own inquiry in motion by sending Danish undercover cop Helene Falck (Marie Bach Hansen, The Team, The Legacy) and Danish-German homicide detective Thomas Beckmann (Carsten Bjørnlund, Rita, The Killing) to the seaside town to conduct an undercover investigation while posing as a married couple. But the two quickly realize that being credible in the roles of husband and wife isn’t easy when you’re used to being alone.
White Sands begins streaming Tuesday, March 5.
Movie of the Week: Thank God We Have Each Other (Heureusement qu’on s’a) (France-Belgium)
This poignant drama centers on Vincent (Oscar Pauleau, Murder in the Tarentaise Valley), a 13-year-old boy whose unemployed father shows zero interest in taking care of his three children after his wife, burdened for years with handling all of the family’s responsibilities, tries to commit suicide and ends up in the hospital. Now separated from his mother and failed by father, Vincent takes it upon himself to take care of his two younger siblings on his own. Thank God We Have Each Other premieres Tuesday, March 12.
Prisoner (Huset) (Denmark)
The winner for TV Drama at the 2023 Prix Italia, and a Canneseries 2023 nominee for both Best Series and Best Screenplay, this drama stars International Emmy® Award nominee Sofie Gråbøl (The Killing, The Shift), Robert Awards winner David Dencik (The Chestnut Man, The Kingdom), Canneseries nominee Youssef Wayne Hvidtfeldt (Borgen, Couple Trouble), and Bodil Awards winner Charlotte Fich (Borgen, Unit One) — collectively a nominee for Best Performance at Canneseries.
Set inside a Danish prison (and filmed at the Vridsløselille State Prison in Albertslund), this six-episode drama follows the prison’s employees and inmates and their mutual relationships. When four of the prison officers are forced to make some major changes in order to help save their jobs, the changes end up disrupting the fragile balance of power amongst the inmates and turn daily life at the prison into a battle for survival.
Prisoner premieres Tuesday, March 12.
State of Happiness: Season 2 (Lykkeland) (Norway)
Following the events in Season 1, the second season of this historically-based period drama opens in 1977, five years after the founding of the national oil company Statoil. But after the first years of giddy success comes a great disaster: Well 14 at Ekofisk Bravo blows out, causing a massive oil spill to creep towards the Klondike fishing reservoir — the wellspring of the Norwegian economy for centuries.
Environmental politics is put on Norway’s agenda for the first time, intensified by outrage over industrial safety when the Aleksander Kielland platform capsizes in 1980, killing 123 people inside. Season 2 focuses on questions about safety, women’s rights, environmental protection, and the power of profit.
State of Happiness: Season 2 begins streaming Tuesday, March 12.
Movie of the Week: They Swapped My Baby (Ils ont échangé mon enfant) (France)
Julie De Bona (Women at War, The Bonfire of Destiny) stars in this dramatization of the true story of Sophie Serrano, a single mother who discovers that her daughter, Manon (Charline Balu Emane, Sam), is not her biological daughter, owing to her newborn having been mistakenly swapped with another at the hospital nine years ago.
Costarring Agustín Galiana (The Art of Crime), Sonia Rolland (Deadly Tropics), and Anne Le Ny (Frozen Dead), They Swapped My Baby premieres Tuesday, March 19.
The Returned: Season 1 (Les revenants) (France)
The first season of this supernatural thriller is fabulous! It follows the residents of a small mountain town after deceased members from their lives and community return from the dead. Also odd is these walking non-dead don’t realize that they had died and act like nothing utterly bizarre had happened. While their loved ones are beyond confused, other strange goings-on begin happening — including a series of murders that brings back memories of a serial killer — and soon the living and the undead find themselves in danger.
The Returned: Season 1 begins streaming Tuesday, March 19.
Tandem: Season 7 (France)
This popular mystery series sees detective colleagues and ex-spouses Léa Soler (Astrid Veillon, Perfect Murders) and Paul Marchal (Stéphane Blancafort, Innocent) investigate crimes in Montpellier while co-parenting their children. (Clip is from Season 5)
Tandem: Season 7 premieres Tuesday, March 19.
The King (Il re) (Italy)
Another prison drama is this one starring Luca Zingaretti (Detective Montalbano, No Activity: Niente da Segnalare) as Bruno Testori, the controversial director of the San Michele prison. The laws of the State have no value here, because Testori rules the place as a monarch with an iron fist. What is considered good or evil at the prison depends solely on his judgement. While Bruno applies his own personal idea of justice inside San Michele, his life is far from ordered outside of it. When his kingdom unexpectedly comes under threat, he finds himself fighting the most difficult war of his life.
The cast of the eight-episode drama includes Isabella Ragonese (Rocco Schiavone) as prison police officer Sonia Massini, Barbora Bobulova (Detective Montalbano) as Bruno’s ex-wife, Gloria, Anna Bonaiuto (Il Divo) as public prosecutor Laura Lombardo, and Giorgio Colangeli (Imma Tataranni) as prison commander Iaccarino, a close friend of Testori.
The King premieres Tuesday, March 26.
Movie of the Week: Thick As Thieves (Vieilles Canailles) (France)
This comedy sees a trio of septuagenarians — Raoul (Claude Brasseur, A Simple Story), J.P. (François Berléand, The Law of Damien), and Martin (Patrick Chesnais, Deadly Seasons) — hatch an elaborate con to exact revenge against the man responsible for their friend’s death.
Thick As Thieves premieres Tuesday, March 26.
No Place Like Home: Season 2 (A casa tutti bene – La serie) (Italy)
This reboot of the 2018 film There’s No Place Like Home follows members of the Ristuccia family, including the overlooked siblings, multiple black sheep, and control freaks, not to mention their tense family dynamics, the roots of which get revealed as the season toggles between the present and the past. (Trailer is from Season 1, which premieres in the US and Canada on Tuesday, February 13.)
No Place Like Home: Season 2 premieres Tuesday, March 26.
All of the above titles are set to premiere/begin streaming in the US and Canada on MHz Choice and its digital channels, including MHz Choice on Amazon, starting on the dates shown above. (Note that scheduling changes can occur at any time and without prior notice.)
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I Hadn’t Understood (The Vincenzo Malinconico Novels by Diego De Silva)
My Mother-in-Law Drinks (The Vincenzo Malinconico Novels by Diego De Silva)
There Is No Place Like Home (2018 film DVD)
