A night-walk programme that treats strange encounters as anthropology rather than shock television
Part of: Dutch Culture, Publieke Omroep
Nachtdieren literally means nocturnal animals.
It is a BNNVARA programme in which Raven van Dorst moves through cities and towns at night, meeting the people who are still awake.
The premise is simple: who is out there after normal life has gone quiet? The answer is usually a mix of insomniacs, workers, drifters, loners, oddballs, and people whose emotional lives do not fit daytime rhythm. It is one of those programmes that is almost "about nothing" in the best way. What matters is not a big plot, but the texture of the encounters.
Source: Nachtdieren | BNNVARA
The programme is revealing because it is curious rather than sensational.
It does not treat the night only as danger or spectacle. It treats it as a parallel social world with its own tenderness, sadness, humour, and weirdness. That is a recognisably Dutch public-TV move: interest in outsiders without having to turn them into freaks.
These formats depend heavily on the presenter. Without the right personality, the whole thing collapses into aimless small talk. Nachtdieren works because Raven van Dorst can move through the night with enough curiosity, awkwardness, and calm to make people open up.
It also has to happen in the street, or at least in the guest's natural environment. A studio version would miss the point. The quiet, the late-hour looseness, the sense that you are catching people where they actually are — that is the whole format.
Nachtdieren shows a side of the Netherlands that expats often miss at first: beneath the organised daytime surface, there is still room for quiet eccentricity and odd human encounters. The show likes the country's margins without romanticising them too much.
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