Let's Go Global: The Rewards and Challenges Of Watching International TV.

There's a lot of excellent TV in the world (and no, I'm not just talking about Britain) that you should consider tapping into and expanding your mind.

I watched the first two episodes of FX’s “English Teacher” and wondered, as I soaked in the bland stupidity of it all, the easy jokes and network-level ambition, if the whole world hadn’t changed.

If “English Teacher” was on the Fox network my level of agitation would have been significantly lowered, but this was FX, a brand with a high bar. And even when it doesn’t meet its own levels of quality, there’s usually a good (enough) reason why. Here, I can’t see it. And as for the show, I can’t unsee it, at least with the FX banner attached to it.

Luckily, all of us viewers (and critics) aren’t swimming in a local pond. We are in a gigantic ocean, and drowning in content though we may be, at least that allows us the ability to look around and find excellent and/or entertaining offerings, floating all around us, brought to us on currents from distant global shores.

In the Korean series “The Frog,” streaming now on Netflix, all of the reasons one would choose international fare is ever present. The same can be said for “Furies,” the French action series that’s also on Netflix. In that latter, it’s hard to go wrong with Paris as a location/character. Though it amounted to no more than a serviceable action series with numerous flaws but plenty of distract-me-from-the-world appeal, an argument could be made that a series like “Furies” can most likely be found done better on American television, but the je ne sais quoi of it all makes the discursion worth it.

In Germany’s “Kleo,” now in its second season (also on Netflix — a leader in global imports and co-productions), a series about a quirky Stasi agent forced to deal with the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification, the glories are more abundant. The first season was dramatic with notes of comedy to undercut it and add some quirk, so it was like “Killing Eve” set in East Germany. The second season, which just dropped, is — kind of gleefully and with some begrudging acceptance on my part — leaning into more of an absurdist comedy bent (still with a lot of action). What I can tell you about both versions of “Kleo” is that it’s a whole lot better than many of the forgettable American dramas I’ve run into in the last few years.

Even if it doesn’t turn out to be your thing, “Kleo” is a completely different television universe, and one I encourage everyone to partake in with various shows of their choosing and discovery. (I will, of course, continue to seek out plenty of foreign fare for us.)

“Kleo” is getting weird, in a good way, I think.

But “The Frog” is something different entirely. It’s why we should all be watching more international fare — motivations, morals, location, worldview, intent from characters, it’s all different and fresh and rewarding as you assess what you’re watching through two different cultures.

All told, “The Frog” is yet another very strong international series to debut in 2024, an alluring mix of creepiness, foreboding, and the insistent evocation that evil is banal, a complex series that shifts between the present and the past and one that offers myriad surprises both in acting performances but also in plot twists.

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The Korean series “A Shop For Killers” on Netflix is must-see.

Perhaps the most intriguing thing about “The Frog” from an American experience is that it’s a story that couldn’t believably be told in this country because it relies heavily on niceties and deference that Americans are not historically told to embrace, particularly in the modern era. In lots of very good series, writers will explore what happens when one seemingly small, innocent decision is made and how that reverberates through the rest of the story. In “The Frog,” such decisions are present but the weight of the series essentially relies on a culture that shows and gives respect in a way that Americans, in our me-first, oh-hell-no attitudes and provocations, simply don’t value.

In “The Frog,” the series takes place in what we’d describe as bed and breakfasts or inns, several of them, tucked into the woods a couple of hours outside of Seoul. One of the proprietors, Jeon Yeong-ha (Kim Yoon-seok) is a widower with a daughter who lives in Seoul; he doesn’t seem keen on running the inn, but neither does he seem motivated to leave. He’s just existing until a beautiful young woman Yoo Seong-a (Go Min-si), who also leans toward icy and enigmatic, arrives with her young son.

All of this is pretty normal until it’s not — Seong-a is potentially mad, in a magnetic way, and the innkeeper Yeong-ha’s dashboard cam catches her leaving in a rush with a very heavy suitcase and no kid.

Your mind begins to reel here, of course, and “The Frog” starts being must-watch right in that moment. Yeong-ha’s mistake, his choice, is that while he has no proof that something happened to the boy, he’s certainly thinking the worst, and when he finds that Seong-a cleaned up the bathroom a little too well before leaving, he finds traces of blood. His decision, based on impulse and too little thought, is to clean everything up and tell no one.

Now, this is a human characteristic that tracks everywhere — he had no proof that something bad happened, just worries, and his inn is barely getting business as it is. If he reports a murder, the whole thing can go under. You can certainly imagine an American television series having a character choose this same route, then being wracked with guilt and remorse, as well.

But in “The Frog,” it haunts Yeong-ha, even though he knows that nobody ever came to ask questions about the boy; there were no news reports, a lot of time passes, so maybe it was nothing.

Until Seong-a, about a year later, arrives back at the inn. Alone. It shocks Yeong-ha, who pretends not to know her. Now, of course, they both know.

This, naturally, is a thrilling turn for viewers. But the disconnect for some American viewers (and elsewhere, of course), is that Seong-a, emboldened, is now a real dangerous menace and won’t leave the property. Even if Yeong-ha feels he can’t call the police because of his previous inaction, why doesn’t he just kick her out? Or, in American speak, why doesn’t he just toss her wispy ass out into the driveway?

Because it’s complicated. And cultural.

I loved “The Frog” for a number of reasons but separately was attracted to it precisely because it was making creative decisions based on Korean (and a wide-swath assumption, many Asian countries) mores.

Its very difference in almost every regard was added value.

Not the best guest.

I’ve found any number of international series to have this wonderful “not American” quality in that people make decisions and have beliefs and act ways that Americans do not. Any international series is, at its most basic, a travelogue, and we as viewers are learning and broadening the horizons of our minds as we watch. From a storytelling standpoint, the differences are always intriguing and thought provoking. Different cultures make unique storytelling decisions, even when that storytelling style is influenced by another country.

They don’t always work, of course. Or maybe a better way to put it is foreign series likely will land very differently with you, depending on your personal comfort zones.

I watched two episodes of the Korean series “A Killer Paradox” and stopped cold — it moved much too slow, particularly in the second episode and there were cultural elements that were not resonating with me, or I was just missing their importance, their relevance to the characters. So I bailed.

But most of the time I’ve found that international series, even if they don’t reach the level of two of my favorites I watched this year — the Japanese mystery and comedy series “House of Ninjas” (Netflix) and the Korean action series “A Shop For Killers,” (Netflix), both of which you can find in the archives — are nevertheless highly recommendable, entertaining fare.

Sometimes just being different is enough. Just discovering new perspectives is enough. If they end up being great, like “House of Ninjas” or “A Shop For Killers,” all the better.

There are plenty of not very good American dramas right now, and of course there’s the particularly disappointing FX comedy “English Teacher” mentioned above, that all add up as good reasons to branch out from too-familiar fare. Other than needing to hone your subtitle-reading chops (or accepting the dubbed version if you must), what do you have to lose?

All those variations on “travel broadens the mind” are present for a reason — they are true. Appreciating a good walk in your neighborhood is fine, but sometimes you should try the cobblestones of Europe or the desolate roads further afield on the globe, just to shake things up.