Non-American TV

Cafe Society
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My cable system has something like a dozen Spanish-language channels which as near as I can tell feature programming originating in specific Latin-American countries. One channel per country. I don’t speak Spanish so I don’t watch any of the channels (although I did happen to catch some Spanish-language World Series of Poker coverage which was quite humorous). My Argentinian ex-boyfriend was devoted to some talent show from I think Peru, or maybe Argentina, called Rojo: Fama y Contrafama. It was the same format as American Idol and as near as I could figure out the grand prize was an apartment. Episodes lasted for, like, five hours at a time. It was excrutiating.

We are? Details!

Sorry to disappoint but everything I’ve heard about American telenovelas indicates that they are going to be original American productions which will conform to American broadcast standards.

And people respond to teams from outside their home city or region? I’m trying to imagine how a show that switched main casts in their entirety every few episodes would fare here. Not well, I don’t think. Americans would probably become very annoyed that their favorite cast members weren’t on every week. I’d like it though, if for no other reason than every other show on the air wouldn’t be a goddamn CSI franchise. All the CSIers could be on one show and thus become even easier to avoid.

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I wish I could mention some great Australian drama, however unfortunitly they stopped producing that when the networks here caught the “reality” bug, what is left I don’t really rate.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned Little Britain ! ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/littlebritain/ ) A very funny show.

On the drama side of things, I’ve been a fan of The Bill for as long as I can remember, everytime I’m home when it’s on, I have to watch it

www.thebill.com

Dead Ringers is a great Satire show, although some things are a little too british other things are universal like this http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/deadringers/clips/clip13.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/deadringers/

A few others
Bromwell High

and from NZ
Six Periods With Mr Gownsby- a very very funny show (so funny it caused a stir in NZ)

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…New Zealand televison, burried in the depths of the imports and reality shows, are full of little gems.

My favourite at the moment is Outrageous Fortune, a surprisingly deep, comedy-drama about the crime family the West’s, and Cheryl West’s struggle to get her family to go straight. The series really captures aspects of the New Zealand way of life, particularly of the “Westie” (A resident of West Auckland, drives a beat up Ford, and looks like this guy. ) Its funny, sexy, smart, and very Kiwi.

Siobhan Marshall is drop dead beautiful, and smart in a “blonde” kind of way (the way she gets her own back on an attempted date-rapist is brilliant!), Antonia Prebble is cute, but deadly with a plan in hand, Anthony Starr plays the dual role of Van and Jethro, two very different twins, and Robyn Malcom is the star of the show as the hard-as-nails Cheryl. Its on DVD folks (Region Four) so you might be able to see it if your lucky!

http://imdb.com/title/tt0461097/usercomments

(Just a side note, the theme music is “Gutter Black”, by a New Zealand group called Hello Sailor. If some of you guys are interested in non-American music as well, the New Zealand music scene is full of fantastic stuff that you never would have heard of before… check out here for some samples from the ages: listen to the lot, but my favourites are “You oughta be in love”, “Sensitive to a Smile”, “Gutter Black” and “Can’t Get Enough”. )

Another favourite of mine broadcasts on the Maori Channel, called Kai Time. (Kai is the Maori word for food.) Its a great little cooking programme that showcases fresh, traditional NZ recipies and food, with dishes like Kahawai Steaks, Kai Time Paua Schnitzels with Mozarella Tomato and Basil Salad, and showcasing ingredients such as horopito (NZ Bush pepper) and kumara. (Sweet Potato) Most of the programme is in English, but Maori is spoken as well, and an effort is made to help people learn both the language and the culture.

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Wow, it’s like you write blurbs for video boxes!

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No it’s not. It’s Dutch. Blame them.

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Yes - More Doctor Who details!

One show I was enjoying while it was being broadcast on Showtime Beyond was Strange with Richard Coyle (of Coupling). It was a good mystery/supernatural show. The Pilot sucked as it was full of clumsy exposition, but once the series was underway and the characters were established, it got pretty good. At least until the last ten minutes of the show. It got real cheesy once they showed the monster.

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  1. Long ago I was in West Africa for about 2 months, but I didn’t see very much television while I was there – I stayed in low-end hotels and there just aren’t very many TVs. But one day in a Accra, Ghana I was feeling under the weather and spent most of a day hanging around in the grubby penson. After breakfast the staff hung out on the porch and watched TV, so I spend some time with them. The local TV was pretty bad – endless glurgy pro-government stuff, military parades, an hour of what seemed like a dimly lit high-school talent show that had been taped in the 70s and the cassettes kept in a box of saltwater, and then what I remember as an Omar Sharif swords-and-turbans-type movie. The high point for me was when someone burst into a wedding on a horse, grabbed the bride and threw her over the back of his saddle, and galloped off. One of the guys who worked in the hotel said, deadly serious, “That is how they do it in my village.”

Now that I think of it, I also once saw part of a soccer game on TV in a bar in Senegal, and some videotaped live local music in a small restaurant in Mali. I guess cheap production values is the key.

  1. I once lived in a rural area without cable, where one of the three TV stations that came in clearly via the antenna (look it up, kids) was a small UHF station (ditto) that seemed to split its airtime between Japanese and Korean programming. I don’t understand either language a whit, but my outsider’s impression of TV in these 2 countries is that it’s all incredibly manic, and that it’s fairly impossible to tell a children’s show from an adult show. A scene in Lost in Translation sort of implies that Japanese television for adults is a little cartoony. I guess the only export we get in the States is that “funny” redubbed thing called Most Extreme Elimination Challenge or something like that, which is a few notches below being told the same knock-knock by a three-year-old over and over again.

  2. Hi Xuxa!

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…well it really did. I only saw part of one episode, but what I saw had me in alternate states of shock, horror, and Rolling on the Floor Laughing. To put it simply, the series was not politically correct, and the scene in question had Mr Gormsby (played by David McPhail, a well known NZ comic) directing a bunch of Maori and Pacific Island students at a concert to a chorus of, well I can’t really the words to the song they were singing. Lets just say follow the link to find out the name of the song…

…and welcome aboard Simes! You have good taste in TV, I love the Bill. You should post more often!

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I don’t have a lot of time to comment right now, but thanks a lot guys. Keep 'em coming.

The Science Fiction Channel has picked up the new Doctor Who. It’s starting on March 17th at 9:00 pm after this season of Battlestar Galactica finishes up.

Here’s the night’s schedule.

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On my last trip to Brazil, a local TV station was showing an import show from somewhere called “WATER RATS”?? I think it was filemed in vancouver, canada-but curiuosly, the show was carried on an Australian network-anybody know about this? the show -it was pretty much like any american 70’s style police-themed show. How it would up in Brazil is a mystery to me.

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:: points at post 17 ::

…I would assume the show would go into syndication, like most American programmes-that’s how it ended up on Brazillian TV.