In January 2025, American broadcasting company Fox started airing a sitcom called “Going Dutch” about an American colonel who is reassigned to lead a small military base in the Netherlands as punishment. (Punishment for him, not for the Dutch. Though I guess its debatable.) The sitcom was renewed for a second season which aired from January 2026.
I write about all the ways the Dutch and the English language overlap and interact, and have a special interest in how Dutch-speaking culture is represented in English-speaking media. That meant that when I learned about the existence of this series, there was nothing for it: I had to sit myself down and watch the whole thing.
Did the writers just know nothing about Dutch culture?
Watching this series as a Dutch speaker, the cultural inaccuracies washed over me right from episode one. At first, I assumed there was a lack of knowledge and/or fact-checking on the part of the writers, but as I kept watching, I realised most inaccuracies had been chosen for comedic effect. Every now and then there would be a nod to Dutch culture that told me at least one of the writers knows more than a little about the Netherlands. They just didn’t have “culturally accurate” as their goal, here. The goal was to be funny.
All the things the series “Going Dutch” gets wrong about Dutch culture
8) A Dutch village wouldn’t be called Stroopsdorf
The American army base that is home to all the high jinks in this series is located in a fictional village called Stroopsdorf. “Dorf” is German, not Dutch. Had the writers chosen to call the village “Stroopsdorp” it would have actually been quite a good funny hypothetical Dutch village name. But that “f” at the end ruins the whole thing.
7) The Dutch accent doesn’t sound like that
Neither of the two Dutch main characters are played by Dutch actors, and the accents are appalling.
Arnmundur Ernst Björnsson plays Jan, a stereotypically flamboyant gay character (except it later turns out he has two female partners – polyamory apparently being a safer Dutch trope for Fox than homosexuality) who is on the base as a translator. Björnsson is an Icelandic actor who is putting on what sounds to me like a parody of a WWII-era German accent.
(He gets called Ziggy Stardutch in one episode which I did think was funny.)
Catherine Tate, the redhead from Doctor Who (not that one, the other one), plays Dr Katja Vanderhoff who owns (hahaha, so funny) the local brothel, and is the colonel’s love interest in season 1. I love Tate as an actress, but her accent goes from the Scandinavian chef from the Muppets to Irish and back again. Every now and then she hits on a sentence that actually sounds a little Dutch. But not often.
6) The game of korfbal does not feature a teenager playing a traditional Swiss (?) mountain horn to signal start and half-time.
No comment.
5) There couldn’t be possums in the air tower
One of the recurring jokes in the first season is that there are possums squatting in the air tower – except there couldn’t be, because possums do not live in Europe. Like, at all.
4) There aren’t that many tulips around
In the series, there are tulips everywhere. Giant tulip statues on the grounds. Tulips on the tables in every eatery. Tulip posters, tulip paintings. Granted, in touristy areas in the Netherlands you will see a lot of tulip imagery, but a random army base does not need to appeal to any tourist, and so apart from a few tulips in the flower beds in spring, you really wouldn’t see them in such abundance.
3) The Netherlands does not look like a cute Irish village
For unknown reasons (cough, tax breaks, cough) this show was recorded in Ireland. That means that when we get a look at “downtown Stroopsdorf” for the very first time in Episode 6 Season 2 it looks so much like a charming Irish village that you can almost hear the tin whistle music drifting through the streets.
2) There are no shops called “voorwerpen”
They changed some shop fronts to make them seem Dutch. I just love the gift shop called “voorwerpen”.
“Voorwerpen” means “objects” and though it could totally be the title of an avant-garde art show about everyday items, it is not a very marketable name for a shop.
1) And finally: no, we do not live in fear of Belgian separatists.
For the plot of episode 4 in season 2 to work, they needed a character who would be seen by the audience as a bad guy straight away and with little explanation. A terrorist.
So they went with… a Belgian seperatist.
In the episode, Belgian separatists are protesting in Stroopsdorf, which is in the Netherlands, in French, because they want to establish their own country. One of them has particularly nefarious intentions; he plans to plant a bomb! (Oh no!)
Where to start?! Belgium, of course, already is its own country. They did have to fight a war against the Dutch, to be fair, but this was 1830 to 1839 and is pretty much water under the bridge by now.
The French speakers in Belgium are Walloons, and though I am sure there are a few out there who would like Wallonia to be its own country, this is very much a fringe view, and there is definitely no terrorism involved.
Also, the hypothetical Walloon seperatists in question would go and protest and be nefarious in Brussels, you know, what with that being the capital of Belgium, and not in a small random village in the Netherlands. It’s as if Colorado would go and fight for its independence in the Canadian town of Baie-Saint-Paul.
There were a few things it got right, too
7) Yes, there are a lot of bicycles everywhere
The series goes out of its way to make sure there are people cycling around in every outdoor scene, and bicycles parked on every street corner. This, I would say, is accurate.
6) Yes, korfbal is a thing
Korfbal is an existing Dutch game that is played mostly in the Netherlands and Belgium but also in the rest of the world. As the episode portrays, it is indeed co-ed, with men and women playing together, and it is quite close to being basketball but with round wicker circle-baskets instead of nets.
5) Yes, our KitKats are better
In Season 1 episode 5 a character says: “In the Netherlands the biggest threat to the United States is how much better their KitKat is.” This is true! It’s a different recipe, way more chocolaty!
4) Yes, we’re pretty direct
In season 1, episode 7, Katja, the main character’s Dutch girlfriend, tells his adult daughter she doesn’t like her, and explains exactly why. This is in keeping with a stereotype about the Dutch that has a good basis in truth: Dutch people are very direct and they say what they mean.
3) Yes, at Christmas, many families do put raw ingredients on the table and expect guests to cook it themselves in teeny little pans
For Katja’s Christmas party they do gourmetten, a tradition where an electric grill is placed on the table and you get little pans to fry your own food, which is provided raw. This really is a thing in the Netherlands, and I completely agree with the main character who thought it was quite stupid.
2) Yes, our labour laws are pretty protective of employees
In season 1, episode 8, the colonel finds out that it is very difficult to fire someone in the Netherlands, they need to have transgressed three times and even then you need to hire a mediator. I don’t think this is true for all companies, but I do believe it is true for civil servants.
And yes, Dutch people get unlimited sick days. (How could you not? If I have a high fever, I can’t come to work, no matter if it is my 5th or 50th sick day, no?)
1) A Dutch person gets played by a Dutch actor two whole times
In the whole of the two seasons, there are two Dutch bit parts that actually get played by Dutch actors. In episode 9 of season 1, Maud, a laundry assistant who attracts two romantic rivals, is played by Dutch/French actress Anaïs van der Werff, and in episode 10 of season 2 Jan’s uncle Dietrich is played by Dutch/Canadian actor Walter van Dyk. Each of them gets about three lines, but they are three correct lines. Hurrah!
Things that “Going Dutch” got right. -ish.
6) The first day of herring season is not a national holiday, but it is celebrated in Scheveningen
Vlaggetjesdag is celebrated in Scheveningen on 22 June, when the first fresh herrings come in. It is, alas, not a day when all of the Netherlands stops working, as suggested in Season 1, Episode 9.
5) There is no Dutch village that celebrates “second Christmas”, but at least the backstory is based in truth
Season 1 Episode 7 features a Dutch Christmas in spring, which the writers cleverly decided would be a local Stroopsdorf tradition, rather than a national one, even giving it a backstory based in kinda, sorta reality.
The fictional explanation has it that Stroopsdorf couldn’t celebrate Christmas in 1944 because of the war, so decided to celebrate Christmas after they were liberated in spring, and then the tradition of having a second Christmas lived on.
Though there are no places in the Netherlands where this is an actual tradition, it is at least true that most families were indeed forced to skip Christmas during the last war winter in the Netherlands. “Skip” sounds a bit too innocent, though; it was known as the Hunger Winter and many people died of starvation.
The Netherlands was then liberated on 5 May 1945, which is indeed spring, though of course people would have had other things on their minds than celebrating Christmas. Also, though the allied troops brought food, I don’t think a Christmas banquet was on the cards immediately after Hitler popped his clogs.
In this Christmas episode, our main Dutch character Jan, still played with an excruciating accent by an Icelandic actor, dresses up like Sinterklaas, whose costume they get right. He explains that Sinterklaas puts candy in little children’s boots (yes, correct) and travels from Madrid in a boat full of oranges?!? Well, two out of three, I suppose.
4) During WWII, Dutch children did run errands for food. I don’t think they laid mines, though.
It’s a throw-away joke, but in season 2 episode 10 Jan’s uncle Dietrich admits to having placed mines for German soldiers in return for chocolate. (It’s funny because it makes him a nazi, haha). Though chocolate was nowhere to be found during the war (the allied soldiers famously gave kids chocolate after the liberation), and laying mines seems very extreme, children probably did run errands for the Germans in return for food. Because, you know, they were hungry.
3) The printed Dutch is at least tolerable
Every now and then an episode will feature a poster or a pamphlet or something in Dutch. The translations are very literal and have clearly been generated by a machine. Sometimes there seems to be an extra vowel, which I think is probably intentional, because those double vowels make our language look extra foreign to English speakers. But at least is isn’t just gibberish, we have to give them that.
2) Catherine Tate does a passable job speaking Dutch
In Season 2, episode 2 we hear a few Dutch sentences for the first time; before that it was just the odd Dutch word. Catherine Tate seems to have actually done some homework and does an okay job. Yay!
1) Niksen is a thing, but you don’t get together to do it, because then it wouldn’t be niksen
Season 1, episode 8 starts with Dutch civilians lazing about on the army base’s grounds, cycling, playing hacky-sack, doing yoga. “It is the Dutch art form of niksen, the art of doing nothing” a character explains.
Niksen is a thing, though one of those things that is more a thing when explaining it to foreigners than that it is actually a thing.
The extras in the episode were doing it wrong, though – doing yoga and cycling is definitely not “niksen“, because they are not doing nothing, they are cycling and doing yoga. Duh.
Heddwen Newton teaches English and Dutch, and is also a translator and a linguist. Her newsletter
English and the Dutch is about all the funny and interesting ways Dutch and English overlap.
