Looking for online sources of foreign-language television

Cafe Society
1

I have an assignment where I have to watch TV in a language I don’t understand. I understand enough spoken Spanish that I can’t use that, so that excludes telenovelas. I also can’t use a news program (which excludes Deutsche Welle, which airs on my local cable system), films or anything with English subtitles. Unfortunately, I do not live in an area that has a lot of foreign-language entertainment, nor am I willing to spend money on a DVD set if I don’t have to. I do have a subscription to Netflix.

The purpose of the assignment is basically to teach me to empathize with students who don’t speak English and who are forced to understand through body language and other cues.

Any recommendations for dramas, soaps, or sitcoms, and where can I find them?

2

I use Livestation to watch Russian, German and French channels. You do have to download a free program and register (it’s not browser-based), but if you’re willing to do that it works pretty well.
The default list of channels is almost all news, I think, but you can search for other channels, some of which are entertainment or general-interest channels.

3

Silent Regrets has links to downloadable Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese movies and television drama series. They come with English subtitles, either embedded in the video files or as separate files. If they have separate subtitle files, you should be able to turn the subtitles off, or just not download the subtitle file.

I just started watching the Japanese drama series Otomen, which is a high-school drama that explores gender stereotypes – it starts with the father of the male protagonist announcing that he wants to be a woman, the mother of the male protagonist insisting that he (her son) be as manly as possible, and the son being outwardly masculine, but secretly having feminine tastes. The series is still broadcasting in Japan, son it’s incomplete on the site that I’ve cited.

4

Can’t you just get a disk and turn off subtitles at the menu? Check a few instant viewing on your computer over the internet. There are frequent reported problems with no subtitles over the internet. Perhaps you can find one of these by chance.

5

There’s a plugin for Google Chrome that provides streaming video (sometimes TV, sometimes a corner webcam) from around the world.

6

I checked Netflix and couldn’t find anything I could use. I found an Austrian miniseries, but it was in English.

I think I’ll go with Silent Regrets. Some of those shows look… intriguing.

7

Youku, the Chinese Youtube, has a bunch of shows that aren’t subtitled.

8

These are links to the online resources of two of the most important (and most respectable IMHO) German TV stations where you can choose from selected programs of different genres:

ARD

ZDF