I’m watching one TV series from every European country — what’s your recommendation from yours?

[u/Ali_Merrikh]

Hi everyone!

I started a project where I watch one series from each country in Europe. I’ve already done:

France: La Forêt

Spain: La Casa de Papel

Next up: Gloria from Portugal

I’d love to hear what show you think best represents your country (or is just a really good one to watch). Ideally something available with English subtitles.

[u/Four_beastlings]

You already picked one for Spain, but if you want something that actually represents the country that would be "Aquí no hay quien viva" (comedy series about the neighbours in a block) or "El Ministerio del Tiempo" (about public servants who travel in time to important historical events to keep the timeline intact, imo the best TV to ever come out of Spain).

[u/elbrujohalcon → u/Four_beastlings]

Hahaha!! I just came here to recommend “El Ministerio del Tiempo”, too… but also if you ask me for the worst possible Spanish series I would 100% say “Aquí no hay quien viva”. 🤦 Another great one from Spain is “El Vecino”.

[u/Four_beastlings → u/elbrujohalcon]

Oh, but I didn't say Aquí no hay quien viva was good, I said it was representative of Spain :D and I mean it. Spanish author Valle Inclán defined "el esperpento" as holding a concave mirror to society, and that's what it is. All the stereotypes in there, albeit exaggerated, are based on reality.

Plus it shaped the modern Spanish colloquial language: everyone nowadays still uses expressions from it like "un poquito de por favor" or "radio patio".

[u/Mesetarier → u/Four_beastlings]

This! We may disagree on whether "Aqui no hay quien viva" is good or bad. But it IS Spain. There are some interesting spanish shows in netflix, moderately successful. But they are usually adapted to the taste of international public. Aqui no hay quien viva is not adapted at all, actually a non-spaniard will not get all the nuances.

If you ask me, familiarity with this one should result in automatically getting the spanish nationality :)

[u/Federer91 → u/Mesetarier]

Bulgarian here and "Aqui no.." and its successor "La Que Se Avecina" have been hugely popular in BG for 15 years. LQSA is the way bigger one though, since it's more modern, but both are on constant rotation on TV every year. You would find people on the street who would instantly know who Antonio Recio or Amador Rivas are if you'd ask them 😄.

The stories and culture shown on those shows are very relatable to Bulgarians (well beside the colorful sexual orientation stuff), which made it easy to understand the characters and their motivations in the many outrageous schemes.

[u/Rakothurz → u/Four_beastlings]

One more vote for El ministerio del tiempo, I learned a lot about Spanish history and the story is very entertaining