What's up with Netflix dubbing every foreign-made series into English??
Sorry if this topic has been rehashed here already, but if so I haven't seen the threads.
We recently watched "The Valhalla Murders," another dark snowy noir series with grim-faced characters and brutal killings to solve, this one set in Iceland. With "Default" set as the language of choice on our Apple TV, the damn thing was dubbed into English! We use subtitles even on English-language shows, because dialogue is often hard to pick up these days. With this series, we often encountered hilarious but maddening discrepancies between dubbed English and the subtitles, for example reading "Goddamn that motherfucker to hell!" and hearing the voiceover actor say "Man!" or vice versa.
We like hearing the dialogue as spoken by the performers, because you get the emotional impact of skilled actors speaking their lines as the writer and director intended, instead of somebody sitting in a room with headphones reading an English translation (that's possibly inadequate). So it was an annoyance throughout that series, which we decided to put up with. Whenever possible, we choose to hear the original dialogue, whatever the language, and read the English subtitles. But Netflix caters to lazy Americans who can't be bothered with subtitles.
Anybody else struggle with this issue and have suggestions?
= new reply since forum marked as read
-- helpful not only on foreign-language shows and movies but also on British series. And necessary for "Shetland." 
you have to make these choices in the device (Apple TV) settings, not at the app (Netflix) level. In practice this means that for one series, the Apple TV setting of "Default Language" means that Netflix will stream the program in the original language, while for another you'll hear it with dubbed English dialogue.
For example, the Icelandic series "Trapped" and the Finnish series "Deadwind" both played the dialogue in the original language, so we could hear the actors actually speaking as we read the English subtitles. But for "Lupin" (French series) and "The Valhalla Murders" (Icelandic series) the Netflix app interpreted "Default Language" for dialogue as English.
For "The Valhalla Murders," we were stuck with the dubbed English, because the Apple TV Netflix app has no way to choose language settings, and the Apple TV device setting doesn't include Icelandic as an audio choice for some reason. (I've since learned that the Netflix iOS app does include the option for original Icelandic dialogue for this series. Go figure!)
For "Lupin," I was able to change the language for spoken dialogue to French in the top-level Apple TV settings. But then when we started watching "The Money Heist" (Spanish series), the Apple TV's dialogue setting was still on French (and choosing "Default Language" on the Apple TV again gave us dialogue dubbed into English). So, after navigating up and down several levels in the settings a couple of times, we changed it to spoken Spanish dialogue, still with English subtitles.
Setting subtitles to English is not a problem. I just wish the Netflix Apple TV app had a setting for "Always use original language for dialogue." I was hoping that was what "Default" meant.
I know, First World Problems! 
As noted above, the Netflix app on my phone does give me a choice to hear the dialogue in the original language (for example, The Valhalla Murders). So we may just stream from phone to Apple TV for those in the future.
Technology is a great thing when it works as expected.
This experience reminds me why I don’t envy people working in consumer technical support — trying to solve many different problems every day for users with varied setups and different levels of expertise must be maddening.
Anyway, for this issue, I’ve managed to figure out some workarounds. And backatcha for your nice reply.
A friend once told me about watching an English-language comedy in a movie theater in another country. His laugh would boom throughout the theater a second or two before the rest of the audience read the translation and got the joke!
As noted in other replies in this thread, the Netflix app sometimes interprets the Apple TV setting of "Default" as "English Dialogue." In those cases, I have to choose the original language in the Apple TV device settings, if that language is available.
I guess if I were more adventurous, I'd watch Icelandic shows with Japanese dialogue and French subtitles!
at least partially. But I know what you mean about it being obtrusive, especially when you're trying to visually distinguish between lyrics and dialogue.
For one series, though -- I think it was "Deadwind" -- the caption for the opening credits just said "Singing in Finnish" (or whatever language it was, if I'm thinking of a different series). I thought that was odd, since the same music was used for every episode and they'd translated all the dialogue for subtitles. It's too much trouble to translate the lyrics for the theme song?
The only logical explanations I can think of are: a) they settled on a theme song late in the game, after the rest of the post-production was finished; or b) the lyrics were too cheery or otherwise incongruous with the mood of the series.
