The Best TV Shows on ČT1

Czech Century brings the key moments of the history of the Czech nation from 1918 to 1989.

A businessman discovers he has a hidden gene that enables him to breathe water, threatening the existence of the secret Aquarian race, in this charming, comedic fantasy drama from the Czech Republic.

Set in Czechoslovakia, the drama follows the lives of its characters against the backdrop of real historical events that shape their personal stories. To evoke period atmosphere, the series intersperses authentic clips from vintage Czechoslovak film newsreels, using their original commentaries or newly recorded historical voice-overs by Vladimír Fišer. A narrator, initially voiced by Vojtěch Kotek and later by Matěj Hádek, provides continuity and reflection, guiding viewers through changing times. Under the guidance of screenwriter Rudolf Merkner, each episode’s script weaves family and individual dramas into key moments of Czech and Slovak history: political shifts, cultural trends, and social transformations from the 1960s onward.

Detective Kunes has a problem once again: he's lambasted the boyfriend of his ex-wife, and is threatened with dismissal from the police service. His high-ranking (female) boss has a solution for him: "removing" him on an internships in a back-of-beyond borderland region. But there's a fly in the ointment. His real mission is to unravel the two-year old case of the murder of policewoman Wágnerová, the investigation of which has reached an impasse. But the crime rate in the borderlands is one of the highest in the whole country - involving smuggling, drug production, poaching, prostitution and murders. Kunes has to deal with one difficult case after another, and it takes quite some time before he can start doing what he's sent to do, and then he does it in fact by coincidence.

Finding the body of the regional politician Karas, killed in the spirit of medieval torture and carefully arranged in a strange scene, unleash police hunt for a sadistic perpetrator. He puts investigation team in the way of a complex series of murders that shake the local region and criminologists themselves.

The Inspector Hynek Budik as been assigned chief of police in the area on the outskirts of Prague, With detectives Martin Novacek an inexperienced rookie and the inspector Havlik will seek to solve difficult cases of murder.

Barrandov Studios, once one of Europe’s most modern film factories, became both a cultural refuge and a propaganda tool under Nazi occupation, churning out Czech comedies and romances to keep the public distracted while its actors mingled with German authorities. After the war, many of those same stars faced accusations of collaboration, their meteoric Protectorate-era fame tainted by the compromises they made to keep the cameras rolling under shifting regimes.