Why Does The Outlander Age Rating Vary By Country?

Why are ratings for ‘Outlander’ so different from country to country? Firstly, every country has its own classification board, its own legal definition of contention items and its own cultural sensitivities. Some rating boards focus on sexual content and nude scenes, others on graphic and gruesome violence and on realistic depiction of assaults.

Additionally, marketing and local laws of distribution also need to be considered. Distributors may even censor a film themselves in order to sell it to a certain audience. Classification criteria also changes from time to time and it adapts to the evolving society. I look at the rating first and then read the content warnings and reviews of ‘Outlander’ before watching it or even recommending it to friends. All that extra work is worth it in order to avoid unexpected and awkward surprises.

I noticed that ‘Outlander’ ranks differently on the streaming platform Netflix in different regions, while it is ranked differently on local television channels in the same region.

In simple terms: countries have their own rules for age restrictions, and viewers have their own parameters of what is acceptable. Some countries are more strict when it comes to sexual content, while others are more stringent when it comes to violence. The country’s classification board looks at more than just the number of occurrences of a scene of violence, for example – they also take into account the scene’s tone, context and how gratuitous it is. In some cases, edited episodes of TV shows are classified with a lighter rating in order to be shown in a ‘family-friendly’ timeslot. This, along with a number of economic and cultural reasons, has led to distributors of TV shows such as Outlander editing the content in order to reach a wider audience.

So my practical use case for this is to go to the local ratings info and then read a spoiler-free content guide before recommending ‘Outlander’ to friends with kids. The local ratings are somewhat useless as they’re always imperfect, but knowing why they differ from the (extended) streaming ratings makes me feel smart.

There are lots of different reasons that Outlander has received different age ratings in different countries. More than one classification agency has given the show a number of stars or a rating.

For a start, there are different countries with different classification bodies and lots of different laws to adhere to. In some countries, more weight might be given to sex than others, and other countries might worry more about violence or language than others. This means that a very passionate love scene could be given a rating that is different from one country to another. Then there is the matter of the context of historical scenes, of scenes that describe or show medical procedures, of scenes of assault. All of these will be looked at by the different classification bodies in the light of what they consider to be suitable for young people and what they consider to be for adults.

Distribution, localization and even editing for translation and/or dubbing can cause a show to receive vastly different ratings. For example, a version of ‘Outlander’ edited for daytime broadcast by a cable channel may have all nudity removed, while the version of the episode streamed online would be the full, unedited version and receive a more restrictive rating. The translated/dubbed dialogue and subtitles can also affect the perceived intensity of a scene, and thus be taken into account by the rating agency. These differences are very interesting and often tell more about the culture and the legal history of a country than about the actual TV show. They even give me lots of talking points for my watch parties!