Barbarians ticks every box

One of the few things that has surprised and delighted me about Netflix recently is just how much non-English language content there is, and how much of it goes roaring up the algorithm and, presumably, gets beamed into the houses of people whowouldn’t pay money to see a subtitled movie at their local cinema if it camewith snacks and a backrub.

Even in the tragically hipster ghetto of central Wellington that I call home, anything subtitled still struggles to pull a crowd outside of the film festival season.

There are a few exceptions every year but, as a rule, the day I go to see amovie with subtitles, the cinema will bemostly empty.

And yet, according to the Netflix home screen, right now Barbarians – which is performed in amix of German and oldLatin – is the third-most popular show in Aotearoa. Possibly even more remarkably, theNo 1 show is about a woman chess prodigy. Have I told you lately how much I love this country?

Barbarians is a German series of six, 50-ish minute episodes, loosely recounting the events that became known as The Battle of Teutoburg Forest, in 9AD. The battle was a – spoiler alert – famous victory for the tribes of Germania, who famously wiped the floor with three entire legions of Rome’s finest and threw the empire back behind the Rhine for all time.

Unsurprisingly, a vastly simplified and idealised retelling of the battle has become a foundational myth of German nationalism. The story was revived and put to work as ‘‘Germany versus the World’’ propaganda by the Nazis in the 1930s and, more recently, by the antiimmigration neo-fascists of today.

So, Barbarians was going to have to tread very carefully to avoid feeding the flames of nationalism and hatred.

As the show’s writer and showrunner

Arne Nolting said to The New York Times last month, ‘‘We didn’t want to be scared away and leave the subject to those forces we detest.’’

Nolting and co achieved this by taking the radical step of doing some research into who the people that lived in the area at the time actually were, how they came to forge analliance, and what became of them after their victory.

So, along with a lot of Vikings- style action, Barbarians also nicely cuts the nationalists’ myth off at the knees, by pointing out that the tribes who won the battle were themselves nomadic people, who left the area for good long before modern-day Germany was founded.

Barbarians ticks all the fighting and bonking boxes amodern audience expects. But it is also a nice lesson in how graft and research can lead to a showwith durability and a real story to tell.

Or, for somethingmore cerebral that’ll still have you jumping off the couch, Netflix’s new horror His House is a treat.

The film reinvigorates the old possessed house tropes, by weaving in a story of a refugee couple from South Sudan, and an ancient spirit that may have followed them across the oceans to the United Kingdom.

In the leads, Sope Dirisu ( Gangs of London) and Wunmi Mosaku ( Lovecraft Country) are superb. Debut director Remi Weekes is one to look out for.

Barbarians has all the fighting and bonking that modern audiences expect. But it is also a nice lesson in how graft and research can lead to a show with durability and a real story to tell.

Barbarians is a German series of six, 50-ish-minute episodes, loosely recounting the events that became known as The Battle of Teutoburg Forest, in 9AD.