Set in divided Berlin during the Summer of 1946, eight-part drama series Shadowplay will premiere on SBS and SBS On Demand at 8:30pm on Thursday 4 March.
From the creators of Midnight Sun and The Bridge comes a provoking and dynamic period drama set against the lawless and unpredictable backdrop of post WWII Germany.
Created by Måns Mårlind (Midnight Sun, The Bridge) and co-directed with Björn Stein (Midnight Sun, The Bridge), Shadowplay is the wild west of purgatory. American cop Max McLaughlin (Taylor Kitsch, Friday Night Lights) arrives in Berlin in the summer of 1946 to help create a police force in the chaotic aftermath of the war. Max’s goal is to take down “Englemacher” Gladow, the Capone of this divided and broken city. Secretly, Max undertakes a personal crusade to find his missing brother (Logan Marshall-Green, Madame Bovary, The O.C), who is killing ex-Nazis in hiding. Unbeknownst to Max, he is being used as a pawn in what will become the Cold War. Shadowplay also stars Michael C. Hall (Dexter, Six Feet Under), Nina Hoss (My Little Sister, Homeland) and Tuppence Middleton (Mank, Sense8).
In an SBS On Demand exclusive, Shadowplaydirector Måns Mårlind will be curating a collection of TV series for Australians to experience on the platform. The collection will showcase a wide variety of European dramas personally recommended by Måns, from ZeroZeroZero and Gomorrah to We Are Who We Are. The complete curation, Måns Mårlind Guest Curates, will be available to view from Thursday 4 March.
Shadowplay will be subtitled in Simplified Chinese and Arabic and will be added to the subtitled collection on SBS On Demand. Each subtitled episode will drop at the same time as broadcast.
Audiences craving more drama can experience nine additional series coming to SBS On Demand next month. Norwegian series Beforeigners will arrive on the platform on Friday 5 March. HBO Europe’s first Norwegian language production, Beforeigners is a six-part series set in Oslo. When sudden flashes of light appear in the bay of Bjørvika, groups of people from different time periods in the past – the Stone Age, Vikings Age, and the 19th Century – suddenly appear in the present. Labelled “delightfully bonkers” by Vulture, the series has since been renewed for a second season.
Israeli psychological thriller Possessions will arrive on the platform on Wednesday 10 March, and Czech espionage thriller The Sleepers will be available on Thursday 11 March. In Possessions, Natalie, a young French woman living in Israel, is accused of murdering her husband on the night of her wedding. Karim, who works at the French consulate and is charged with helping French people in trouble, slowly falls for her. He can’t decide whether she is vulnerable and lost, or incredibly manipulative. He becomes obsessed with the case, delving deep inside Natalie’s mysterious past. Set in 1980s Prague, The Sleepers follows Marie, who fled Communist Czechoslovakia with her husband Viktor. Now it is 1989, the cusp of the Velvet Revolution, and Marie and Viktor return to their home country. When they’re hit by a car, Marie wakes to find her husband has disappeared, and nobody seems to know anything about him.
Danish comedy-drama Pros and Cons returns for a second season on Thursday 18 March, alongside the first season of Swedish thriller Partisan. In season two of Pros and Cons, daily suburban life continues to weigh heavily on Erik and Nina, formerly Denmark’s most infamous con artists. Keeping up mortgage repayments and remembering sports practice is just part of the problem – the couple are also reeling from the events at the end of season one. But could an audacious new scam targeting the global fashion industry offer the key to freedom at last? Five-part series Partisan is set in Jordnära, the idyllic gated community running a thriving organic farm. When Johnny, a mysterious man, enters the community to work as a truck driver, he soon suspects trafficking. The series won the prize for best series at the 2020 Canneseries Festival.
On Thursday 25 March, audiences will be able to experience French mystery Laetitia. Laetitia is also based on real events, exploring the disappearance of 18-year-old Laetitia. Her overturned scooter is found in the early morning, just in front of her house. The police reconstruct the young girl’s last hours, but the investigators can’t find the body. The drama series follows the repercussions on Laetitia’s family, above all on her twin sister Jessica, but also on the workings of the police force, the social services, and the judicial system and even the Government. Laetitia has been selected for the ‘Indie Episodic’ category for this year’s Sundance Festival. It is the first time this category has included a French production among its nominees.
Other additions include season one of Unit One (1 March), seasons one-two of Spring Tide(11 March) and seasons one to thirteen of The Sandhamn Murders (26 March).
2021 LATIN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL
This week, SBS On Demand is hosting the 16th annual Latin American Film Festival, bringing the festival to a national audience for the first time. The streaming service will premiere 10 Latin American Films, curated by the Latin American Film Festival in partnership with the Council on Australia Latin America Relations (COALAR).
Films will drop daily, and the first four films to premiere, The Dognapper (2013, Brazil), Rey (2017, Chile), Hero Soul (2019, Columbia)and Panama (2019, Ecuador)are already available to view on the platform. Other films to drop over the course of this week include Hunting Party (2015, Guatemala), Kimura (2017, Panama), Guarani (2016, Argentina), Las Toninas van al Este (2016 Uruguay), El Baile de la Gacela (2018, Costa Rica) and La Pasión de Javier (2019, Peru). Each film is subtitled in English and will remain available until Friday 30 April.
