Knokke Off

Knokke Off (High Tides) is a Belgian fictional television series created by Anthony Van Biervliet which first aired in 2023. It tells the story of a group of young people and their parents who spent their summer in the Belgian coastal town of Knokke.

The show is a Flemish-Dutch coproduction. It was first made available in Belgium on the public broadcaster VRT's streaming platform VRT MAX and in the Netherlands on Netflix. Knokke Off was highly successful, drawing a large viewership in both countries.

Internationally, the series is also known as High Tides. A second season was announced in December 2023.

Synopsis
A young couple in their early twenties, Louise Basteyns (Pommelien Thijs) and Alexandre "Alex" Vandael (Willem De Schryver), experience a carefree summer with their friends in the chic town of Knokke on the Belgian coast. Despite their opulent lifestyle and extravagant parties, the pressure from their wealthy families to meet high expectations looms over them.

As the summer unfolds, the facade begins to crack for everyone involved. Louise grapples with her bipolar disorder, questioning the necessity of the mood-regulating pills she takes. Alex, often short-tempered, wrestles with his own demons, determined not to follow in his father Patrick's (Geert Van Rampelberg) footsteps after his affair with Eleanore (Ruth Bequaert), Alex's mother and her best friend. Knokke, a fashionable coastal town, reveals itself to be a snake's nest of hidden secrets.

Into this tumultuous world enters Daan (Eliyha Altena) and his mother Melissa (Anna Drijver) from the Dutch city of Breda. Spending their summer near Knokke in Cadzand, their presence turns everything upside down. The search for truth intensifies as the masks worn by everyone begin to unravel.

Cast

 * Pommelien Thijs as Louise Basteyns
 * Willem De Schryver as Alexander Vandael
 * Eliyha Altena as Daan
 * Manouk Pluis as Anouk
 * Ayana Doucouré as Margaux
 * Kes Bakker as Matti
 * Jef Hellemans as Victor
 * as Emilie Basteyns
 * Anna Drijver as Melissa
 * as Eleonore
 * as Patrick Vandael
 * as Angelique
 * as Jan Basteyns
 * as Christine
 * Gene Bervoets as Jacques
 * Felicia van Remoortel as Olivia
 * Pierre Gervais as Charles

Production and Distribution
Knokke Off is a co-production between the Flemish production company Dingie for the Flemish public television station VRT and the streaming service Netflix. The series was created in collaboration with the Dutch film distributor Dutch FilmWorks and with the support of the Flemish film fund Screen Flanders, the municipality of Knokke-Heist and the tax relief measures of the Belgian government ("Belgian Tax Shelter").

Filming took place in the summer of 2022, mainly in Knokke.

The series was shown on the Belgian online platform VRT MAX from May 12, 2023, before it was broadcast every week on the Flemish channel VRT 1 from August 3. In the Netherlands, the series was available on Netflix from July 19.

On 7 December 2023, Netflix made the series available in the rest of the world under the title High Tides.

In December 2023, VRT announced that the filming of a second season would take place in summer 2024 and that new characters would be added.

Critical reception
The series was generally well received by critics. Stefan Werbrouck of the Flemish magazine HUMO wrote that Knokke Off was "more exciting, more daring, and simply better than all other fictional works of VRT that spring". Elmo Lê Van of the newspaper De Morgen particularly highlighted the performances of the actors Pommelien Thijs ("Louise") and Willem De Schryver ("Alex") and stated that the series is "fast-paced, fascinating, simply excellent." He continued saying that despite the overarching theme that those with money and status are invariably among the winners, the screenwriters did not make cheap attacks on the rich because life would also "hold shitty moments for those ready, who hang a cashmere sweater around their shoulders."

Elien Valcke of the Belgian website Geekster praised the series in the highest tones, especially the screenplay, the acting performances of the main actors, the soundtrack and also the choice of filming locations, stating that Knokke would at times look like an exotic destination and not like the ordinary Belgian coast. Ruben Praster of the Dutch entertainment magazine Veronica Superguide found Knokke Off to be "easy to swallow", but that it takes a while to get going. Especially the tension between Alex and his father "lack any subtlety and seem to come straight from a soap opera". He continues that the series does not capture the viewer immediately, but one would want to know how it will proceed.

Marc Reynebeau of the newspaper De Standaard, on the other hand, found Knokke Off "absolutely unbelievable". He commented that the characters are one-dimensional, the plots too jerky, and that the secondary characters come and go without internal logic. Omar Larabi of the Dutch public television association BNNVARA regretted that the scriptwriters would often resort to clichés and never really make life at the bottom of the social ladder tangible. He criticised the series for being just one more show focusing on the life of rich youth.

At the end of November 2023, the series had a score of 3.38 out of 5 stars on the Dutch platform moviemeter.nl, with 65 votes. In the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), the series held an average rating of 7.6 out of 10 from over 1,500 individual ratings.

In December 2023, Knokke Off was one of 10 programmes nominated for the Flemish television award "De HA! van Humo". The readers of the same magazine also voted Knokke Off the "Best Series (National)" in "Humo's Pop Poll".

Viewership
The series was a huge success. Although it was initially only available exclusively on the online portal VRT MAX, the 10 episodes were viewed more than seven million times in the first four months. Half of those clicks came from the 13 to 34-year-old target group, which is generally harder to reach.

When Knokke Off was broadcast on television, the first two episodes were watched by half a million viewers live and an additional 400,000 people time-shifted.

The series was also successful in the Netherlands and was the most-watched series on Netflix.

Outside of Belgium and the Netherlands, Knokke Off or High Tides was in the global Top 5 of the most streamed Netflix shows in a language other than English in December 2023. It took the second spot in Spain, Uruguay, Argentina and Germany, the third spot in Austria and the fourth spot in Switzerland.