Talk about Brexit may be dominating UK politics but, if our television viewing habits are anything to go by, the Leave campaign shouldn’t start cheering any time soon. It’s never been easier – or more popular – to watch European television shows. The launch of the Channel 4-backed online channel Walter Presents at the beginning of this year has introduced us to pacey spy dramas from Germany and racy political thrillers from France. We are watching Czech criminals and Danish vampires, thrilling to Italian cop shows, and snuggling down on the sofa for a bit of Swedish familial angst.

Nor is our interest confined to EU member states. On BBC4, the claustrophobic Icelandic drama Trapped has been the sleeper hit of the early half of the year, building its addicted audience by word of mouth – around 1.3 million viewers are expected to tune into its final two episodes on Saturday.

“We bought Trapped on the strength of its script,” says Cassian Harrison, channel editor for BBC4. “There was just this sense that you can’t go wrong with what’s basically an Agatha Christie novel set in a frozen fjord. It’s a brilliant piece of psychodrama with some great characters, but at heart it’s a country house murder transposed to a different and unusual location.”

It’s not just Trapped. Channel 4’s 80s-set German spy thriller Deutschland 83 was the highest-rated foreign-language drama in UK history, pulling in 2.5 million viewers each Sunday evening. French political drama Spin is performing solidly on More4 on Friday nights, the new Swedish family saga Thicker Than Water launched last week on the same channel to strong reviews, and both Danish drama Heartless and French comedy drama Kabul Kitchen are performing well online.

So why are European dramas so successful in the UK? Walter Iuzzolino, the Italian behind Walter Presents, billed as “the Netflix of foreign drama”, insists that British viewers are a surprisingly outward-looking bunch. “I say this as an anglophile who’s lived here for 20 years, but the UK has always seemed to be the most culturally progressive nation in the world,” he says. “Maybe it comes from being an island, but the British look outward … they have an innate desire to understand the rest of the world. That’s why they respond to programmes from elsewhere.”

Even our infamous lack of language skills can be seen as an advantage when it comes to embracing foreign fare. Iuzzolino says: “I think there’s a level of guilt about not speaking other languages, that sort of ‘Oh God, I’ve gone to France and I don’t speak French’ and, because of that, British television viewers are prepared to make an extra effort. They don’t mind reading subtitles. They would never dub a European show as we do in Italy and France.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Swedish family drama Thicker than Water has garnered strong reviews.

The growing success of Walter Presents suggests that he might have a point. Since its launch at the beginning of the year, the online channel has been increasing its audience figures, drawing more than a million users to the site, which is free to view and takes its revenue from advertising. Iuzzolino says that’s proof there’s a growing mainstream audience for European shows.

“There used to be a sense in the UK that subtitled dramas were for intellectuals only, ” he says. “You had to be a certain type of person to watch them and that person wasn’t a Downton Abbey fan. But that’s been changing since the success of [Paris-set crime series] Spiral and [existential zombie drama] The Returned. Those were commercial shows with mainstream appeal and they showed there’s more on offer than Nordic crime dramas about missing girls and forests, regardless of how good those shows are.”

There’s no denying, though, that it was Nordic noir that kicked UK interest in foreign drama up a gear. From The Killing to Borgen to The Bridge, British viewers have long thrilled to atmospheric stories featuring difficult, determined women in beautiful knitwear unearthing unpalatable truths, whether police or politics related.

“The Killing was an absolute game changer,” admits Harrison. “It connected with UK audiences in a way no foreign language drama had done before. The reason was that the British feel as though they’re the masters of the whodunnit, so it was a revelation that Europeans could do crime dramas with as many twists and turns as we could and with such rich stories and narrative.”

There’s also a certain sense of schadenfreude about watching these perfect-looking people in their minimalist homes undergoing the torments of the damned. “There’s definitely something in that quote of Henning Mankell’s that the outside world looks on Sweden as the perfect democracy where everything is in order, there’s water in the tap and the electricity works perfectly, but when you start to peel off the layers and work behind that facade then everything isn’t actually perfect. The tap drips, there are stains … and that’s the appeal of Nordic noir,” says Morgan Jensen, the head writer for Thicker Than Water, which tells the story of three estranged siblings who reunite at their mother’s isolated B&B as family secrets tumble into the open. “It’s also the case that something like Thicker Than Water is basically a story about family, and that’s something that everybody can relate to, that idea of terrible secrets lurking beneath the surface.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A scene from the French political tale Spin. Photograph: Bernard Barbereau/FTV

The show’s creator, Henrik Jansson-Schweizer, agrees: “Increasingly, people don’t really care what language a show is spoken in,” he says. “They’re interested in the drama itself. People are getting used to subtitles in the UK, France and Germany, even in America these days.”

But why is this? Jörg Winger, the co-creator of fast-paced spy drama Deutschland 83, a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, believes it’s partly a generational thing. “Younger audiences are definitely more willing to watch something in Swedish or Hebrew or German,” he says. “To them the language is a soundtrack to the series, not an annoyance. There’s a sense that, if you’re watching the show in its original language with subtitles, then it’s a more immersive experience. You’ve been taken deeper into that world.”

Iuzzolino agrees. “There’s something cool about watching a show in its original language,” he says. “Young people don’t really care if something is subtitled – they consume TV in the same way they consume the internet. They’ve grown up clicking on things from all over the world, and this is just another example of that. If the story is good enough to grab them, then it doesn’t matter where it’s from.”

It’s also the case that our changing viewing habits have opened up the world to us. Where once we were at the mercy of schedulers, now we build our own schedules, streaming shows from Amazon and Netflix, DVRing programmes for later, taking risks on that quirky-looking series from France or this thriller from Turkey. Iuzzolino says: “People will take a chance on a show because it looks like it’s got a good storyline and it falls into a slightly different milieu from traditional British drama. There’s something vicarious about it – it’s the television equivalent of taking a weekend break to Antwerp.”

This theory of foreign TV as lifestyle choice is amplified by social media. At the height of The Killing, we all wanted to know where to get Sarah Lund’s jumpers. During Deutschland 83 the internet was abuzz with comments about the show’s “Ostalgie” chic and perfect retro soundtrack. After Thicker Than Water launched, Iuzzolino says his feed was filled with interior design lust.

“Suddenly there were loads of people tweeting ‘look at that fantastic furniture’,” he says, laughing. “That’s part of the appeal, that glimpse into a world that’s not your own.”

The finale of Trapped is on BBC4 on Saturday at 9pm; Thicker Than Water is on More4 on Thursdays at 10pm

COMING SOON

Blue Eyes The tense Swedish political thriller follows the fallout after the chief of staff at the justice department disappears weeks before the national election. Catch it on More4 later this month.

Clan Dark Belgian comedy about four sisters who plot to murder their loathsome brother-in-law. On the Walter Presents strand of All4 later this month.

Follow The Money An ambitious and tense Danish financial thriller that deals with corporate bank fraud and the financial crisis. Catch it on BBC4 later this year.