Dunno but you don’t really have to look that hard to find beautiful women in skimpy outfits on Spanish language TV stations. They pretty much all center around that.
Sábado Gigante is the most intrinsically entertaining television show I have ever seen. I can watch it for hours, and my knowledge of Spanish is limited to knowing if someone is cursing at me.
If I want to get wrapped up in a show from a language I don’t understand, there’s no beating NHK.
My favorite show for a while was the Japanese soap opera Vague Girl Disturbing World. Modern day Japanese woman deals with office politics, which involve her and a co-worker staring at each other in zooming close-ups for a few minutes, then a cut to a flashback scene with Samurais fighting.
I’ve never found myself getting into any of the telenovelas, which isn’t surprising since I don’t watch any daytime soaps in English, but I found one their versions of Judge Judy interesting. Instead suing for pet grooming gone wrong or back rent, a woman was suing her son’s girlfriend’s parents because their kid gave hers an STD!
It’s cool that the subtitles (in Spanish, not English) work too, because while I can understand Spanish as spoken in US movies and US tv shows without subtitles because it’s slow, just hearing native speakers is hard because they speak so fast. I can translate the subtitles in time to follow along, though.
Yep. Absolutely, as we all know. But for some reason, lots of dramatic US series are glammed up, while the “regular folk” get to feature in comedies (doesn’t mean there aren’t glammed up comedies). At least in the ones that get exported to Spain. Heck, even in cop dramas, half the time the folks from CSI Whatever have cars a Spanish cop wouldn’t be able to find a parking spot for, much less pay.
Never really watched them but, judging by their laugh tracks, the sitcoms I have seen most often rely heavily on boobs and slapstick to get laughs. Which is a formula for international success.
It’s all moot, since the three commercial networks broadcasting in Chicago don’t seem to carry sitcoms anymore.
Of which they are (Bienvenidos (Venezuelan), La otra cosa (Mexican)), but they are NOT the same ones produced by Chespirito and company (Chavo del Ocho, El Chapulín Colorado, Chespirito, etc.).
Saying that they’re one and the same is the same as saying FOXNews and The Daily Show are both the same because they transmit news.
Hey, sorry for not having seen what were clearly excellent programs and basing my opinion on the low-brow stuff that replaced them, like La Escuelita VIP, which had a brow so low it was a mustache.
Online example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gca2ja_sK4k
Shameless self-promotion: What’s the origin of “slapstick”? - The Straight Dope
I recall seeing a talk show on Telemundo once; a hairy fat guy in a hot tub chatting it up with two buxom bikini babes. Unless they were Mexico’s versions of Ron Jeremy and Robyn Byrd, then I’d have to conclude that, yes, Spanish TV shows are exactly as good s they seem.
I once took my mom to a Peruvian restaurant and some TV show was on. It featured a really unsavory Catholic priest going around beating everybody up. When the credits rolled, Mom noticed a blurb that roughly translates as “Brought to you by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.” I’m pretty sure the “Vaya con Dios” guy on King of the Hill was based on this.
Are you sure it’s not the same show? The word “tetas” roughly translates as “tits,” at least in some Latin American countries, while the word “senos” is more like saying “breasts.” They probably aired the same show, only with a sanitized title. I also heard they taped it with two different endings. I wonder if they aired the original tragic ending in some countries and the happy one in others. Dunno, 'cause I haven’t actually seen it, just read about it a little.
The novela my mom is watching now is called “En Nombre Del Amor,” and from what I’ve seen of it, it’s about a child named Paloma who is blamed for her parents’ death in a car accident because she indirectly caused them to argue and lose control of the vehicle. The spinster aunt who takes her in never lets her forget it, and when Paloma gets older, she rebels and takes up with a boy her aunt hates, mostly because he’s in danger of making the girl happy (God forbid). I will sometimes pass by when Mom is watching it and ask her “So what’s happening on the ‘Let’s abuse Paloma’ show?” just to bug her. I also sing the Macarena because that’s the name of a character on that show. 
That’s the thing about the telenovelas… they are SO over the top that I occasionally watch them just to amuse myself. (’‘Paloma’’ means Dove. You know, because she’s so innocent. And her life is soooo tragic.)
I can’t remember what show I was watching, it might have been Mujer: Casos de la vida real (Woman: Real Life Cases) which is a sort of non-linear show in which each episode features some woman’s dramatic story. I remember seeing something about a little girl whose father killed her mother and baby brother (or something) so a kindly neighbor forced her to haul bricks around while he screamed at her. And then she was abducted off the road by some skeezy man and I think she managed to escape from the truck but ended up in a whorehouse. The episode essentially ended with her being forced into prostitution. I mean wtf?
On preview: Shit. Now that I think about it, that might not be too farfetched for a lot of poor Latin American women.
I speak Spanish fluently, but the only Spanish-language show broadcast in the U.S. I ever watched faithfully was the original Betty La Fea. The only stuff they broadcast around here seems to be telenovelas and game shows. I don’t watch American soap operas or American game shows on the basis of them being stupid, lowbrow entertainment, and the same goes for the Spanish versions.
If we’re talking actual Spanish T.V. from Spain, there were a few shows that I found entertaining when I lived there. The comedy shows (sketch comedy, comedy news akin to “The Daily Show,” comedy recap shows like “The Soup”) were actually very funny. There was a puppet show that had a George W. Bush puppet with a dead-on Texas accent, except in Spanish. There was one drama that was worth watching, called Cuentame (“Tell Me”) about a Spanish family in the 60’s under Franco’s regime. It was very “Wonder Years”- narrated by a man who is reminiscing about his bittersweet childhood.