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.

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

Ruben Terlou, once trained as a doctor, meets courageous go-getters in healthcare in seven countries who try to cure not only the ailment, but also the sickening conditions such as poverty, inequality, pollution and insecurity.

Series about the life and work of Queen Beatrix, offering a meticulous dramatised interpretation of historical events. The series opens in the Royal tour bus, a few minutes before the attack on Queen’s Day 2009, and goes on to show other tough and fine moments in the monarch’s life. Is she really the business manager on the throne that the media often call her? What is she like as a mother and grandmother? How did she cope with her husband’s depressions and illness?

Laura H, The teenager from Zoetermeer takes on a new identity in her search for herself and travels with her husband Ibrahim and two children to the caliphate in Syria. When she shows up at the border in 2016 and says she has escaped and regrets it, doubts about her motives are great. Why did Laura choose to travel to the 'Caliphate'?

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.

A series of eight episodes documenting 250.000 years of history. Charles Groenhuijsen takes us along sights and locations that historically harbored various inhabitants of ‘The Lowlands’. In what today is known as The Netherland, Belgium, Germany, New York, Ghana, Surinam, and Indonesia, Charles will be looking for the stories of ‘our’ past through potsherds, bones, stones, ancient text's, drawings, paintings, pictures, radio, and tv- fragments

Sander Schimmelpenninck investigates the far-reaching influence of social media on our society and politics. To this end, he talks to journalists, moderators, philosophers, lawyers and troll hunters. How does social media use undermine our democracy and why is no one doing anything?