The Best TV Shows on VPRO

What do you do when you lose everything and have to start all over again? Ten-year-old Lucas, the middle child of a wealthy family, lives in an expensive neighborhood in a large house, equipped with every luxury. Everything changes completely when Lucas, while searching for his Sinterklaas surprise, finds a large box of unpaid bills. Father Maarten turns out to have enormous financial problems and the family loses everything. The family is evicted and, with the help of their cleaner Nina, finds shelter in an old office building among other new poor people. While father (Jeroen Spitzenberger) and mother (Hadewych Minis) have a hard time with themselves and each other, and big brother Thomas (15) and sister Emma (7) have a terrible time getting used to the new situation, Lucas tries to make the best of it with the highest goal: a Merry Christmas for the whole family.

Debiteuren Crediteuren is a satire of boring office life and repetitive corporate culture. The series focuses on three colleagues and their secretary working in a financial administration office. Each episode follows a rigid pattern: mundane small talk, bad jokes, office supplies obsession (like "stiften"), and lunch breaks involving specific sandwiches. I was made by the Dutch absurdist comedy show Jiskefet and originally aired on the VPRO network.

China is playing an increasingly important role worldwide. Under President Xi Jinping, substantial investments are being made in communication and cooperation and industrious Chinese people are settling abroad in large numbers. Documentary maker and China expert Ruben Terlou visits them in the new VPRO travel series ‘The World of the Chinese’. Who are they, what do they want to achieve and what impact does their presence have on the local population?

Pat & Mat is a Czech stop-motion animated series featuring two handymen, Pat and Mat. It was created by Lubomír Beneš and Vladimír Jiránek.

Tegenlicht in Dutch or Backlight in English is a series of television documentaries by the VPRO, a Dutch public broadcasting organisation. Backlight "aims to grasp the quintessence of prominent trends and developments" in the practice of critical journalism, and tries to improve understanding of the intricate inner workings of our modern society.

Sint Hubertusberg is the final Jiskefet series, set in a bleak and surreal retirement home. It is a tragicomic satire of elderly care, blending absurd humor with a poignant, often painful realism.

Fay (14) and Boris (10) discover that their parents secretly replaced themselves by robots. Claudia and Joost each have demanding jobs and even though they try very hard, they are not able to combine their jobs with spending quality time with their children. Boris, Fay, Claudia and Joost slowly realize they need each other as a family and when the robots become uncontrollable, they can only clear up the mess by working together.

Draadstaal is a satirical sketch comedy television program of the VPRO, and CCCP 2 Dutch production company and broadcaster. It was created by CCCP and Jeroen van Koningsbrugge and Dennis van de Ven. The show features lots of recurring stereotypical characters. The program is reminiscent of the work of Van Kooten en De Bie.

"Keek op de week" was a satirical television program by the duo Kees van Kooten and Wim de Bie. In it, Van Kooten and De Bie discussed current events, usually through sketches featuring their various characters. They often held "conversations" with these characters via a screen, which in reality was just a blue screen. They also provided commentary on the news in a columnist-like style. The rug beater logo of Van Kooten and De Bie's "Simplisties Verbond" was still present, though placed modestly in the background. The song "Duke of Iron" by saxophonist Sonny Rollins served as the show's theme music.

A manless world, a nuclear missile on Amsterdam, a collective brainwash, and suffering as a recipe for success. Six filmmakers drag the viewer into their most terrifying fantasies.