Luk De Konink

'Familie' is the longest running Belgian soap opera. The Van den Bossches originally had an electronics company, later a holding company that included a clothing chain and a sandwich shop. In the meantime, we closely follow the personal lives of the Van den Bossches and their entourage. Grandma Anna and all her children and grandchildren have been through a lot over time and it doesn't look like their lives will become calmer any time soon.

Zone Stad is a Flemish-Belgian TV series about a police-department located in Antwerp. In the series, police officers solve various crimes, which are shown as realistically as possible.

Witse is a Dutch language crime drama produced by Belgian broadcaster VRT and broadcast on their één channel. It is also shown on BVN. First broadcast in 2004, as of 2010 the programme comprises eight series with a ninth and final series planned for 2012. It stars Hubert Damen as the eponymous Witse, a driven inspector in the Belgian federal police based in Halle. It is one of the most popular Flemish television programmes with some 1.6 million viewers. There are also Witse books. The first three were based on the last two episodes of each season, but since 2010 every six months a brand new story is published, written and invented by established Belgian writers, as Bob Van Laerhoven and Bart Van Lierde. The music for Witse is composed by Steve Willaert.

Flikken was a popular Flemish-Belgian TV series about a police-department located in Ghent. The show started in 1999 and ended recently on 19 April 2009. In the series, a team of six police officers solved various crimes, petty crimes as well as organised crime. The series always aimed at showing the policework in a realistic way - though a little personal drama was never far off. Of all the actors that came along during the ten seasons, only Mark Tijsmans and Ludo Hellinx appeared throughout the entire series. Flikken was produced by the VRT and broadcast on Belgian public channel Eén and TROS in the Netherlands. Flikken is very popular in Belgium and the Netherlands. The show has had very high ratings of up to 1.8 million viewers during the last season. Every year the VRT organises the Flikkendag, a family day where the public can meet the actors of the show. There are many games, demonstrations of the real police and other safety organisations and performances of singers. On 18 April 2009, a special farewell party was organised in Ghent, in which the actors and crew said goodbye to their fans - thousands had assembled to watch the show on stage.

Female detective Hannah Maes leads a police squad, specialized in sexual offenses. A smaller, but important part of the story is about the private quest of Hannah. She investigates a past robbery at her home and the subsequent brutal rape of her mother.

The story takes place on Terschelling, which is closed off from the rest of the Netherlands at the end of the 19th century. Sil Droeviger, a farmer in Oosterend, supplements his income for his family, consisting of his wife Jaakje and sons Jelle and Wietse, with beachcombing. One day a strong storm arises and Sil rescues a girl from a sunken Swedish dinghy, while the mother drowns. Sil takes the girl home and raises her as his own daughter. He calls her Lobke, just like their daughter who died shortly after birth.

Following over two dozen different individuals in the almost wordless atmosphere of a dark night in a Brussels town, acceptance and rejection in the realm of romance is examined.

The second movie version, now in color, of Flemish (heimat-)author Ernest Claes' classical novel, titled after the nickname (Dutch 'the White', referring to a blond male) of the main character. The smart but naughty farmhands son's eternal mischief, pranks and disobedience drive his elders (especially teachers, family and father's grumpy employer, a rich farmer, but also neighbors and even the kind curate whose liturgical server he is) and classmates to despair in a time when a boy's punishment was still inevitable, swift and often severe; thus when his mother catches him skinny dipping she takes all his clothes home, forcing him to a long walk of shame, dreading dad's wrath all the way. This version also stresses the story's social and Flamingant aspects.

A frank and funny romantic comedy set in Antwerp, filmed in a quirkily inventive style, Madly in Love has a lot to say about human relationships. It focuses on the four women of the Miller family: teen daughter Eva, her mother Judith, aunt Barbara and older half-sister Michelle, as they work their way through the chaos called love. The result is a roller coaster ride of first crushes, lust, affairs, baby fever, and indestructible love. The four women are beautiful, courageous and sensible, but are also sometimes a bit lost. Can their male counterparts handle this dangerous cocktail of determination and female hormones?

Floor wants a bathtub full of chocolate coins. Her wealthy father, the baron, cannot provide this, so she asks Saint Nicholas for help. When even Saint Nicholas cannot help her, her father becomes angry because someone said "no" to his daughter. He kidnaps Saint Nicholas with his hot air balloon.

The antiques shop Gerard owns should help him to get rid of his financial problems. He dreams of writing the most important Dutch novel ever. Unfortunately he spends money like water. As a result he is constantly broke. His sister Ingrid is married to Pierre. She wants a child but he refuses. While Gerard is willing to consider leading a normal life, a wish mainly expressed by his parents, Ingrid's marriage falls apart.

The film describes the first working day of a twelve-year-old girl, shortly after the turn of the century. After a miserable childhood in a proletarian family, where she was mother to five toddlers, the sensitive girl follows in the footsteps of her parents and seventeen-year-old sister and sets off for the brickworks. The girl bravely defends herself at work, enduring the boys' bullying without tears, but when the day comes to an end, the foreman tells her that she must go to Krevelt, the boss, to be registered.