MHz Choice is closing out 2024 with new Euro TV series, seasons, and additions from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Scotland, and Sweden.
December is an exciting month for international TV shows, what with the highly-anticipated premieres of British spy thriller Black Doves, American spin-off crime drama Dexter: Original Sin, Colombian drama One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Season 2 of the massive hit Korean thriller, Squid Game. For Euro TV shows, here are all the goodies we’re getting from MHz Choice, whether we’re naughty or nice!
Bannan: Season 6 (Scotland)
Folks on this side of the Scottish lochs haven’t had new episodes of this character-driven drama since 2021, so the new season is welcome, indeed. Set in a tight-knit community on the remote Isle of Skye, where conflicts and passions brew just under the surface before they explode, the show has gone from inter-family dramas to whodunits in its storylines. The series stars Debbie Mackay (Shepherd) as the lead character, Màiri MacDonald.
Bannan: Season 6 premieres Tuesday, December 3.
The Cinderella Murder (The Twelve: Season 2) (De twaalf) (Belgium)
Following the format of the first season of The Twelve, this character-driven courtroom drama centers on the individuals called to serve on a twelve-person jury for the trial of a controversial murder case. They do not have an easy task ahead of them, as their task is to decide on the guilt or innocence of Anton Bergman (Koen De Graeve, Ferry: The Series) and his daughter, Julie (Louisa Peeters, Familie), who are accused of murdering Marianne Coens (Katrien De Ruysscher, Undercover), Anton’s partner and Julie’s stepmother. While Julie claims she acted alone and Anton proclaims his innocence, the prosecution believes she is protecting her father and that they committed the murder together.
The cast of the eight-episode, Flemish-language drama also includes Peter Van den Begin (Pandora), Emilie De Roo (Hotel Beau Séjour), Inge Paulussen (A Good Year), Yassine Ouaich (The Bank Hacker), Bart Hollanders (Professor T.), Chris Nietvelt (Red Light), Wouter Hendrickx (Hidden Assets), Emma Van Raemdonck (Bittersweet Sixteen), Jobst Schnibbe (Amsterdam Undercover), Viv Van Dingenen (The Score), Abigail Abraham (Hidden Assets), Dirk Van Dijck (Under Fire), Line Pillet (13 Commandments), and Els Olaerts (Professor T.).
Both the English-subtitled and English-dubbed versions of The Cinderella Murder premiere Tuesday, December 3.
Fallen (Sanningen) (Sweden)
Sofia Helin (The Bridge, Atlantic Crossing, Mystery Road) stars in this new crime drama series as police inspector Iris Broman. Following the killing of her husband, Iris moves from Stockholm to the small southern town of Ystad, where she lives in her half-sister Kattis’s (Hedda Stiernstedt, Wallander) house by the sea. For work, she joins the Kalla Fall, the police’s cold case unit in Malmö, as the new head of the team. Upon her arrival, a cold case becomes topical again and everything is turned upside down.
The six-episode series costars Håkan Bengtsson (A Nearly Normal Family), Kajsa Ernst (The Sandhamn Murders), Inez Andersson (Clark), Peter Gardiner (Top Dog), and Johannes Lassen (Below the Surface).
Fallen premieres Tuesday, December 10.
Un Professore: Season 2 (Italy)
Based on the Spanish series Merlí, this dramedy series stars Alessandro Gassmann (The Bastards of Pizzofalcone) as Dante Balestra, an unconventional, intriguing, and womanizing teacher at the Leonardo Da Vinci high school. Here, he applies his nonconformist teaching method, that is, using the thinking of the great philosophers — from Dante and Socrates to Nietzsche and Epicurus — to help his students to reason things out and better cope with what life throws at them, including asking questions, questioning false certainties, and not falling for clichés. Although Dante establishes a special relationship with his students in the process of teaching them, the way in which he behaves also causes confusion, and the mixing of his private and professional lives complicates things. (Video is from Season 1)
Costarring Nicolas Maupas (The Sea Beyond) and Damiano Gavino (Shake), amongst others, Un Professore: Season 2 premieres Tuesday, December 10.
Freezing Embrace: Season 2 (Hautalehto: Rakennus 31) (Finland)
Based on Christian Rönnbacka’s best-selling “Antti Hautalehto” detective novel series, the second season of this crime thriller based opens with a retired psychiatrist found boiled alive. The police then receive a letter that threatens more bodies to come. Soon, Detective Chief Inspector Antti Hautalehto (Mikko Leppilampi, Arctic Circle, Bordertown) has his hands full with dead victims of ritual murders. But that’s not all: Antti gets distracted by Suvi Vettenranta (Jemina Sillanpää, Deadwind), an art forger who, after her release from prison, returns to a ominous community led by a charismatic, talented, and brutal painter known as Master. Antti fears for Suvi’s life after one of the community members is found dead, followed by threats on her life. (Trailer is from Season 1)
Freezing Embrace: Season 2 premieres Tuesday, December 17.
Tatort: Vienna: Season 1 (Austria) — English-dubbed
This long-running crime drama series, another in the Tatort franchise, centers on the criminal investigations of Moritz Eisner (Harald Krassnitzer, Murder by the Lake), a rather rough and gruff but intuitive detective, and his sensitive, alcohol-dependent partner, Bibi Fellner (Adele Neuhauser, Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteries), of the Vienna Police’s murder squad. Season 1 consists of 11 episodes.
The English-dubbed version of Tatort: Vienna: Season 1 begins streaming Tuesday, December 17 (rescheduled from November).
Trom (Denmark)
Based on the best-selling novels of Faroese author Jógvan Isaksen, and set in the stunning landscapes of the Faroe Islands, this mystery-crime drama series stars Ulrich Thomsen (Face to Face, The New Pope, The Blacklist) as Hannis Martinsson, an investigative journalist. After he receives a mysterious message from a local activist who claims to be his daughter and that her life is in danger, Hannis heads home to the Faroe Islands from the United States to meet with her — only to discover that she’s dead, her lifeless body having surfaced during a local whale hunt. His search for answers soon brings him into conflict with the local police, as he uncovers a web of secrets in the close-knit community.
Costarring Maria Rich (Follow The Money) and Olaf Johannesen (The Killing), amongst others, Trom begins streaming Tuesday, December 17.
Deadly Tropics: Season 5 (Tropiques criminels) (France)
Set on the island of Martinique, this female-driven cop dramedy series follows two police investigators: Gaëlle Crivelli (Béatrice de la Boulaye, The Returned), a headstrong and impulsive cop who knows the island like the back of her hand, and Melissa Sainte-Rose (Sonia Rolland, Murder in the Somme), a single mother who, after living for quite a while in France, moved back to the island of her birth.
In Season 5, Gaëlle has cut ties with the police and settled in a post-hippie community far from the world after narrowly escaping death. But a danger that weighs on Thaïs (Tya Deslauriers, Tandem) convinces her to return and resume her job as a cop. Meanwhile, as part of an investigation, Melissa reconnects with her grandmother, Clarisse (Firmine Richard, Mortel), through whom she is able to reconnect with her culture and her island, as well as to finally mourn her mother. (Video is from Season 4)
Deadly Tropics: Season 5 premieres Tuesday, December 24.
I Am Scrooge (Ich bin Dagobert) (Germany)
Set in Berlin in 1988, this six-part historical crime drama follows Arno Funke (Friedrich Mücke, Tatort, Weinberg), a failing artist forced to spray-paint cars to make ends meet — until he comes up with a creative but radical idea: build bombs in his kitchen and detonate them at night in high-end department stores as leverage for extortion. But evading the authorities proves to be more difficult, as Detectives Çoban (Doguhan Kabadayi, Tatort) and Strack (Misel Maticevic, Babylon Berlin) are hot on the heels of Arno, now going under the alias of “Scrooge McDuck” (or, as the The New Yorker called him, “The DuckTales Bandit”) after he’s made off with half a million, leading to one of the most spectacular extortion cases in German criminal history.
Costarring Sonja Gerhardt (Deutschland 89) and Moritz Führmann (How to sell Drugs online (Fast)), amongst others, I Am Scrooge premieres Tuesday, December 24.
The Art of Crime: Season 7 (L’art du crime) (France)
In Season 6 of this fan-favorite, art-centered mystery series, Police Detective Antoine Verlay (Nicolas Gob, A French Village) and renowned art historian Florence Chassagne (Éléonore Bernheim, Murder In…) investigate two new cases. The first involves the murder of a medium, found in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles. Antoine and Florence suspect a group of amateur historians passionate about Marie-Antoinette, who used the medium to find a precious object in the Palace that belonged to the Queen. To solve the case, they enlist the help of Juliette Mariton (Dounia Coesens, Magellan), Antoine’s ex-fiancée, who is both a cop and a medium.
In the second, Antoine and Florence delve into the murder of an art restorer, whose body is found in her workshop, where Florence identifies a work of art as a masterpiece by Botticelli. While their investigation leads them to the Jacquemart-André Museum, each of them is trying hard to forget the other (in the romantic sense): Antoine asks her father, Pierre Chassagne (Philippe Duclos, Spiral), for help to seduce a woman on a dating app, while Florence also uses technology to meet her soul mate (Video is from Season 6)
The Art of Crime: Season 7 premieres Tuesday, December 31.
Freezing Embrace: Season 1 (Hautalehto: Kylmä syli) (Finland) — English-dubbed
Based on the fourth title in Christian Rönnbacka’s popular “Antti Hautalehto” detective novel series, the first season of this crime drama follows Chief Inspector Antti Hautalehto (Mikko Leppilampi, Arctic Circle, Bordertown) as he investigates the mysterious, almost weekly drownings of young men in the river in the small town of Borgå. As the investigation continues, Antti begins to suspect a fellow cop of the killings, and soon he and the entire Borgå police force are suspected of protecting one of their own. But there is more to the case than meets the eye, and it isn’t until Antti begins to follow a different line of inquiry that he gets close to the truth and to the real killer. (Video is the English-subtitled, not English-dubbed, version)
The English-dubbed version of Freezing Embrace: Season 1 begins streaming Tuesday, December 31.
In addition to the above Euro TV titles, MHz Choice is also debuting its first title from Taiwan, the mystery-crime drama series The Leaking Bookstore. Read about it in this article on our sister website, The Global TV Place.
Unless otherwise noted, all of the above programs are shown in their original language(s) with English subtitles and will premiere in the US and Canada on MHz Choice and its digital channels, including MHz Choice on Prime Video Channels, starting on the dates shown above. (Scheduling changes can occur at any time and without prior notice.)
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