The recent rise of Dutch dubs of media for older audiences
Hey y'all! I have been learning Dutch for the past year and have recently been trying to immerse myself by watching original Dutch TV series, and Dutch dubbed versions of my favorite shows.
Recently I've found out there's been a small push for the production of Dutch dubs for shows and films tailored for older audiences recently, even though I had learned online that they've been mainly produced for children's content and general audience cartoons for many years, and any made for older audiences are usually rare exceptions (like for example, at one point The Simpsons' first few seasons were dubbed over and aired on RTL during the 90s, and the Simpsons Movie was also dubbed).
But I had watched some episodes of Invincible, Fallout, Good Omens, Jack Ryan and The Boys on Prime Video, dubbed into Dutch. And it's crazy how good the voice acting is on those shows. Not only that but I had noticed that independent web series had been fully translated into Dutch. The most popular examples I can think of are Glitch Productions series like The Amazing Digital Circus (which was translated as "Het waanzinnige digitale circus" there) and Knights of Guinevere (Ridders van Guinevere). Most of these shows are very dark and take deep existential turns or have a lot of harder to stomache scenes. And both of those show's dubs have amazing voice acting and really adapted the jokes so well... even adding their own localized jokes (like in an episode of TADC where a gag involving the US anthem being sung, the Netherlands anthem was sung in the Dutch dub)
The live action adaptation of One Piece was also dubbed into Dutch. I havent been able to check that one out yet but I was also so shocked that ANYTHING from One Piece would recieve that!!
I am probably not gonna get a clear answer but do any of yall know what's up with that, or at least find this interesting? Did some of the big companies recently decide this decade that there was monetary potential in them being fully localized and dubbed, or that people wanted them that badly that they asked them so much? Because as far as I know, yall seem to have American and European shows meant for older audiences subbed over for the longest time and primarily had no issues with it (at least compared to other places where they may be more passionate) and I wonder if anything changed. I am curious to learn more. Anybody who is involved in the Netherlands dubbing industry can answer this too if they want, depending on how much they're allowed to talk about stuff like this.
Much love from the US. 💜