Eva Jinek

Sinterklaas plans to celebrate his birthday lavishly. This year, he's coming to the Netherlands for the hundredth time, and that's reason for a big party. He wants every child in the Netherlands to receive an extra present this year. At the same time, the Pieten (Black Petes) plan to surprise Sinterklaas with a big party, culminating in a special performance by one of the Netherlands' most famous artists. Robbie Reuzel, whose birthday is also on December 5th, hears about Sinterklaas's grand plans and becomes furious. After all, it's not the first time his birthday has been ruined by Pakjesavond (Santa's Eve). He devises a plan to outwit Sinterklaas, taking advantage of his witty neighbor, among other things. Will Robbie Reuzel succeed in thwarting Pakjesavond, or will the Pieten smell a rat and save the Sinterklaas celebration?

On February 29 – Leap Day – we celebrate Sonja Barend's birthday. She turns eighty then. She made countless programs, and when you watch them back, you can sense the spirit of the times. Sonja was the Netherlands' first true talk show host. She dared to ask anything, was critical, broke taboos, and had an opinion. In the night of Saturday, February 29 to March 1, we pay tribute to her. Dutch presenters will talk for an hour about what Sonja meant to them and to the Dutch television landscape.

While everyone is at home because of the Corona virus, chemistry teacher Gerri van Vlokhoven goes viral in his not-so-white underwear.

Spring 2012: the SP is doing better than ever in the polls. The party stands at well over thirty seats. With that, Emile Roemer could very well become the new Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Director Coen Verbraak approaches the SP leader with the proposal to follow him as he prepares for the elections, which are likely to come in a year or two. Roemer says ‘yes’. For these could be historic times, both for his party and for the Netherlands. Two days after that meeting, the first Rutte cabinet falls, and everything accelerates rapidly. This documentary meticulously shows what happens from that moment on.

Reading relay of the novel 'Oeroeg' by Hella Haasse by eighty well-known and lesser-known Dutch people. Each person reads a page aloud, after which the book is passed on to the next reader. Philip Freriks, news anchor and ambassador for Nederland Leest, opens the reading relay. Director Shireen Strooker concludes it. 'Oeroeg' is Hella Haasse's debut novel from 1948. Haasse tells the story of the friendship between an Indonesian boy and the son of a Dutch administrator at a tea plantation in the Dutch East Indies before the Second World War. Gradually, the two boys grow apart. When the narrator, the Dutch boy, returns to the Indies—which has not yet quite become Indonesia—after studying in Delft, their estrangement turns out to have grown into a chasm. The final sentence reads: "Am I forever a stranger in the land of my birth, on the soil from which I do not wish to be uprooted? Time will tell."