Best shows and podcasts to learn Dutch

The day's news read at a calm pace in plain Dutch, with the background explained instead of assumed. A short bulletin every day is the easiest listening habit to keep.

Hidden cameras follow the animals in Dutch zoos day and night, with the keepers explaining what you are looking at. The pictures carry most of the meaning, so you can follow it long before you catch every word.

Anouk's own dialogues for the situations you meet first: the doctor, the shop, the neighbours. Short enough to play twice, which is when the phrases start to stick.

A second set of the same everyday scenes, a little longer and a little quicker. Move on to these once the first twelve feel comfortable.

A Sinterklaas romantic comedy with a dozen Amsterdam storylines that cross over by the end. Half a crash course in the biggest holiday in the Dutch calendar, half an hour and a half of people talking to each other the way they really do.

Dutch presenters travel the world and talk you through each place straight to camera. The commentary is clear and unhurried, and there is always something on screen to hang the words on.

Single Dutch B&B owners abroad hope one of their guests turns into a partner. It is hours of unscripted conversation at normal speed, and the plot pulls you along even when the words get away from you.

Three couples each spend a night at the others' bed and breakfast and then score what they found. The hosts come from all over the country and nobody is reading a script, so you get everyday Dutch and a wide spread of regional accents.

Farmers across the country look for a partner, filmed at home on the farm. You get real regional accents and the way people speak when nobody has written it down for them.

Floortje Dessing visits people who have built a life in the most remote corners of the planet and stays with them for a few days. She narrates most of it herself in calm, clear Dutch.

Ten home bakers compete for the title of best baker in the Netherlands, and everything on screen shows you what the words mean. The kitchen vocabulary comes back every episode, which is what makes it stick.

A consumer show that takes on holidays gone wrong, from a hotel that was nothing like the photos to an airline that will not pay up. It is exactly the vocabulary you need the day you have to complain about something yourself.

Amsterdam in the late 1980s, where two brothers launch Europe's first erotic phone line and a psychology student takes a job answering it. Fast, slangy, adult, and a good ear workout once you can follow a scene.

Videoland's drama about Máxima Zorreguieta before she became queen of the Netherlands, from Buenos Aires and New York to the Dutch royal family. Much of the early story plays out abroad, so the Dutch arrives in stretches rather than all at once.

Local reporters around the world answer the same question from their own city, with Stef Biemans introducing each episode in Dutch. The Dutch framing is clear and the reports come subtitled, so it doubles as reading practice.

Two families at opposite ends of the income scale swap houses and budgets for a week. Nothing is scripted and a lot of it is emotional, which means fast, ordinary speech and real accents.

The Dutch public broadcaster's knowledge platform: a real question, then a short answer cut from its own documentaries and science programmes. The same clips run on their Instagram if you would rather have them in a feed.