Where and How to Watch Non-US TV Series?

August 15, 2012 4:42 PM

Forbrydelsen, The Bridge, Borgen - all these great Danish and Swedish television series. Where and how the heck can I watch them?

So much delightful chatter about dreary Danish detectives: so how are y'all watching these?

I'm in the US so of course they're not on telly anywhere here; any DVDs available are Region 2; even with the VPN to watch the Beeb these shows are no longer on BBC iPlayer since they aired last year; blah blah blah. Do I HAVE to do the torrent thing? Is there something I'm missing? (Besides great television?) Tell me if I am not seeing an obvious answer!

posted by henry scobie to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Multi region DVD player? That's what I do. Or downloads from one of those places on the internets.
posted by Ideefixe at 4:47 PM on August 15, 2012

Borgen has been showing on DirecTV's channel 375 for months, so that's how I saw it. If you don't subscribe to DirecTV cable, maybe someone you know does?
posted by vickyverky at 4:59 PM on August 15, 2012

And there's a Season 1 and 2 marathon starting on August 20!
posted by vickyverky at 5:05 PM on August 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

I bought the region 2 DVDs and am playing them on my laptop, connected to my TV with an HDMI cable (just learned how to do this so I could watch Forbrydelsen).
posted by smilingtiger at 8:16 PM on August 15, 2012

Don't forget there's also Wallander - both the BBC adaptation and the original Swedish series. Both are on DVD.
posted by mippy at 1:36 AM on August 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Set your VPN up with a Swedish IP address and you can stream from SVT Play. Don't know if you will find the specific program you want, but this is the main portal for Swedish television.
posted by three blind mice at 5:54 AM on August 16, 2012

Bron | Broen (Bridge) was on YouTube but got removed, presumably for copyright violation. My, uh, cat obtained the BBC version of Forbrydelsen via torrent. I also recommend Wallander. A playlist of the first season is here, and season 2 episodes are here but aren't listed in order. The latter user has several other series that may or may not be Scandinavian.
posted by desjardins at 6:50 AM on August 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Wallander was great, I second that rec. I watched it via amazon instant video if that's a service you have. If you like the tone of Wallander you might also enjoy the UK series Vera, which is also on amazon instant. I know that's not in your question, but thought I'd throw the recommendation in.
posted by pymsical at 9:05 AM on August 16, 2012

Is there something I'm missing?

Yes, how clueless the media CEOs are. They simply can't imagine somebody like you would pay for watching foreign movies, and that you're not the only one.

Imagine being European and wanting to view American or British movies. Just a no go. Netflix isn't even here. iTunes movie store severely restricted compared to the US store.

Even our tabloids tells how to use a VPN to gain access to the US Netflix.
posted by flif at 11:24 AM on August 16, 2012