Probably a PAL vs NTSC thing, but I'm not sure from your description.
Standard framerates in NTSC-land are 30/60.
Standard framerates in PAL-land are 25/50.
Film is roughly 24fps.
The way they "convert" from NTSC to PAL when they are lazy/underpaid/uncaring is by just doing a straight-conversion. In other words, playing what was designed to play at 30fps (29.97 to be precise) at 25fps instead, altering playback speed to compensate. This is awful and is probably not what is happening here, because it would be really bad and it would be "slower" (roughly 83% of the original speed) not "faster". The proper way is to use a complex pulldown pattern to convert, though in practice most content that makes it "across the pond" was originally shot at 24p, so they usually just use the film methodology (or they reverse telecine it to 24p and then use the film methodology).
The way they convert
film (24p) for PAL is almost always just to play footage that was shot at 24fps at 25fps instead. This means it will play ever-so-slightly "in fast forward" (4%). The
proper way is to insert repeating frames as needed using a complex pulldown pattern (2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:3), but since the framerates are so close (and pulldown is hardware-expensive and complicated), this is not commonly done. Of course, using a pulldown pattern introduces telecine judder (the last frame in the pattern plays for 1/3rd longer than the others), but this difference is less distracting in many cases than the audio speedup pitch change.
Of course, if you grew up in PAL land, you grew up all thinking we speak a quarter tone higher-pitched than we actually do. I wonder how Darth Vader sounded there?
More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecinehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_standards_conversion
