The first thing you notice in “Lilyhammer” — before the presence of Steven Van Zandt, playing a less mannered version of his Mafia capo from “The Sopranos,” and before the sheep’s head lying in the road — is the big red Netflix logo. It announces that this is a Netflix original series (its first) and that another front is being opened in streaming video’s war on television.

Netflix didn’t make “Lilyhammer,” a low-key black comedy starring Mr. Van Zandt, who played the stand-up guy Silvio Dante in “The Sopranos.” It was made by a Norwegian production company for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, which began showing it on Jan. 25. But Netflix helped finance it, and on Monday all eight episodes of the first season will have their American premiere via streaming video. If you want to watch them on a television, the set will have to be connected to Netflix — but it won’t have to be connected to a cable company.

Pretty soon such things will go without saying. For now they’re still novel, and “Lilyhammer” is both a trailblazer and an interesting test case. It may be a Netflix property, but it’s a traditional TV show, and the episodes are about 50 minutes long, far beyond the norm for a Web series.

“Lilyhammer” is most distinctive simply for being a foreign show presented in its original form, with subtitles (though a good share of the dialogue, including nearly all of Mr. Van Zandt’s, is in English). That’s something virtually unheard of on mainstream American television. The possibility of increased access to current foreign-language TV, beyond newscasts and Asian cartoons and soap operas, is a good reason to root for the streaming services.