Then the streaming wars happened, and a lot of companies stopped licensing their content to Netflix in order to fill their own streaming service with exclusive content. Netflix responded by both producing far more own shows, and by buying shows from a wider, more international selection of providers with less license restrictions. The overall result was that the content I get now in Belgium is a lot more international than it was a decade ago.

A year or two back, my wife started to watch a lot of Asian TV series, often costume dramas. Not really my favorite genre, and I don‘t liked that they usually aren‘t dubbed, but are in their original Chinese or Korean with English subtitles. Nevertheless I watched the latest Netflix Asian costume drama hit show, Pursuit of Jade. I liked that one, because a part of it is about how regular people lived in a small town in China. It isn‘t really historical, but it gives you some idea. Pursuit of Jade is a huge success, with over 80 million people watching each of its 40 episodes, for a total of over 3 billion views.

Personally I found Pursuit of Jade interesting to watch, speaking as somebody who hasn‘t watched other Asian TV shows. There are cultural differences in how a story is told that I needed to get used to, but overall it was a good experience. And I like the fact that I can get TV shows from all over the world on Netflix now, and it is much less US-centric.