CGTN Europe spoke to Karen Krizanovich, an entertainment journalist and film critic.
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00:00Karen Krasanovic is an entertainment journalist and film critic. I'm delighted to see you again, Karen.
00:06Let's start off with Squid Game. The second season of that South Korean series has had millions of views on Netflix.
00:14Why is it so popular?
00:17Well, I think why Netflix has really put Squid Game at the top of its roster, and it has.
00:24I mean, it's number one globally as of today, actually, on Netflix.
00:29It's because it's a really high quality show. There's no getting away from it.
00:34And it also has a very, very strong word of mouth. It's very addictive.
00:38But most of all, it respects its audience. It's got lots of symbolism, a lot of metaphors.
00:45And you can really go down a rabbit hole with it and have fun with it.
00:50It's not a silly show. It seems very serious in places.
00:56Now, Karen, my other film guru is my 15-year-old son, who you've met.
01:01He's given me a list of the films he's watched lately.
01:04Flo, Latvian film with no dialogue at all. Anora, Kneecap.
01:09Amelia Perez in Spanish.
01:11Now, he's particularly precocious, but there's a growing demand, isn't there, for foreign language content in English-speaking countries?
01:19Yes, there definitely is, and there's a reason for that.
01:22Generations past had the habit of going to the cinema.
01:27Now we have a habit of watching streaming, and that's a habit.
01:31So when you're clicking around, as we all do, there's so many shows.
01:34But after a while, you've heard about this one, you've sampled that one.
01:37What about this one? Or maybe my shoe repair guy tells me about a lot of them.
01:42And so you just think, great, and these shows are now available.
01:46And when they're good, they're really good.
01:48And again, it just goes to show that there are great stories around the world.
01:53We always knew this, but we didn't have access to them.
01:56There's also one other reason why Netflix in particular is really scoring high with what we call non-English language content,
02:03or TV shows or TV series, if you like to call them.
02:07It's because we are now used to watching subtitles, which have gotten a lot better,
02:11and also the dubbing technicalities are so much better now.
02:16We're no longer getting the gravelly voices we used to get in the cinema.
02:19We're getting really very audible kinds of dramatic dialogue.
02:25And none of those voiceovers which are out of sync with the lips.
02:30I used to love those.
02:32It's an acquired taste.
02:34What about the content, though? What do viewers particularly want to watch?
02:37Is it something that has those high production values, or are we looking at particular genres?
02:44I think, well, fantasy is very high.
02:47I mean, anything, like we talk about Three-Body Problem, that's based on a very successful series of sci-fi novels.
02:54I think if you've already got a fan base for fantasy or novelization or drama or adventure, that's an automatic sell.
03:02But also, we are expecting cinematic quality cinematography, great sound, great acting, a wonderful cast, if you can get it, proper production design.
03:11We want everything. We want it right in front of us, and we can watch it any time we want.
03:16And that's what Netflix and some of the other streamers provide us.
03:19I think the days of watching something with the wiggly camera and the grainy stuff, unless it's supposed to be that way, are pretty much behind us.