Series on TV or the Internet

[Ludwig Whitby]

I opened a thread about TV series a couple of years ago

Series I currently watch:

- How I met your mother (USA). Love it, though the 6th season isn't as good as the previous ones, IMHO.
- Física o química (Spain). Grown to love it. It's got very high audience ratings here in Spain, it's a pretty popular teenage TV series. The 6th season ended a couple of weeks ago; I'm currently watching the 5th one on the Internet.
- La pecera de Eva (Spain). I find this one amazing. Also with high-school related topics, but the main character is the school psychologist. The chapters evolve around the kids' psychic issues. The 3rd season just finished on TV. I'm beginning to watch said season.
- The Simpsons (USA)
- Futurama (USA). Love it even more than The Simpsons.
- Every now and then: Family guy, American dad

Series I used to watch and loved:

- The IT crowd (UK)
- Roswell (USA)
- Türkisch für Anfänger (Germany)
- Friends (USA)
- Caroline in the City (USA)
- Ellen (USA)
- Popular (USA)
- Daria (animated, USA)

The IT Crowd is hilarious. I just love British humor. I'll just mention a few other British shows I love:

-The Mighty Boosh
-Men Behaving Badly
-Only Fools and Horses
-Open All Hours
-Blackadder

And especially Peep Show.

[Tenebrarum]

I'm waiting for the new seasons of True Blood and United States Of Tara. Big Love can be interesting too, sometimes.

Yes, that means I'm enthusiastic about HBO series.

Some other American products dealing with the law and criminal activities are quite appealing, like The Guardian (starring Simon Baker, the guy that would go on to star in The Mentalist), Law & Order: SVU, and The Wire.

What else? American animated sitcoms packed with heartwarming, belly-gutting cynicism of course! The Simpsons (golden age), Futurama, American Dad (what a rising star!). I can't bring myself to enjoy South Park on the same level; somehow it feels to me like it doesn't have a very warm heart and some episodes left a foul taste in my mouth. Family Guy is just crap.

Cartoon Network's original series kick ass too, if your inner child is still alive. For me, special mention goes to The Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack. Then there's also Nickelodeon's Avatar The Last Airbender.

I wish I had better access to British soap operas with well done gay story lines like Coronation Street or Emmerdale. And more Brit comedy! Definitely more Brit comedy!

Television in Vietnam... well, nothing to say much about it, except the fact that it's oversaturated with Korean soaps and trashily done Chinese historical dramas. Korean historical dramas are decent, however. A few years back, American and Australian(!) series were more prevalent, but now the America is receding and the Australian ones are nowhere to be seen (the ones that made it to Vietnam were for pre-teens anyway). We also imported South American telenovelas, briefly in the '90s. They ran for 100+ episodes and nobody had enough patience.

On the other hand, American game shows and competition shows are being imported en masse. As of now, 2010, we has had localised, copyrighted editions of: Wheel Of Fortune, The Price Is Right, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire (two different versions for Hanoi and Saigon), Family Feud, Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?, Vietnam Idol [sic], Vietnam's Next Top Model. That's not to say there's no homegrown game show. I especially enjoy the one where adults have to guess the answers from children.

Other than that, TV functions as a mouthpiece for the Communist Party.

[Car]

Doctor Who (UK)
I somehow managed to miss out on Lost, so I'm catching up now.

Apart from that, there's nothing I watch regularly, but I loved Life on Mars (the British original). Once I've seen the first series of Doctor Who, I plan to watch Sarah Jane Adventures and K-9 which are related to it.

@loqu: Are there any other good productions in Spanish? Are they available through the channel's website?

I'm also looking for recommendations of French productions (or in French). I can receive all French free TV channels by satellite, but I just don't know what to watch.

[loqu]

They ran for 100+ episodes and nobody had enough patience.

LOL, is that supposed to be too much? I guess we're used to it, but for example, one of the series I mentioned (La pecera de Eva) has 65 chapters each season, thus it's been on for 195 episodes now, and it's still pretty short to be a daily show. The most successful daily teenager series, Al salir de clase, ran for 1200 episodes between 1997 and 2002.

One Andalusian telenovela is about to reach 2000 episodes next month, it's been aired since 2001.

@Car: Antena 3 and Telecinco both have made a lot of series, most of which are available to watch on their official sites (don't know if they are watchable outside Spain though). Let me describe you a couple of them, so that you can decide if you want to read more or watch them.
Antena 3 has:
- El internado. Lots of people liked this show. The storyline is pretty tricky though, I've never liked it much so I wouldn't be able to explain it properly. You can read about it on Wikipedia (I wouldn't advise you to read a lot of the sinopsis though). It's not a comedy, but rather a suspense series.
- Doctor Mateo. About a cosmopolitan doctor who moves to a really rural place and has to get used to living in such a small town. Comedy.
- Los protegidos. Some kids that have strange super-powers and must escape some people who are chasing them. The father of one of them take all of the others in. Fantasy-comedy.

Telecinco made:
- Hospital central. Nothing new, a series about hospitals, doctors and nurses. Lots of blood.
- Siete vidas is a comedy. Originally it was about a guy who had an accident in the shower in 1981 and spent 15 years in comma, so that he wakes up in the 90's thinking the 80's are still in. That plot ended but the show went on. It ended a couple of years ago, but it's still aired.
- Aída is a spin-off of that one, it's a comedy based on the outskirts of a big city where the characters are usual clichés of the outskirts, middle to low class people.
- Tierra de lobos. I've heard a lot about this one, but I couldn't even explain what it's about because I've never watched it. All I know is that it happens in the 19th century. Wikipedia page.

You can tell me what kind of shows you usually watch, so that I can recommend something more precisely.

[kibo]

We also imported South American telenovelas, briefly in the '90s. They ran for 100+ episodes and nobody had enough patience.

That's not much. If they show it every day, it only lasts for a few months.

We used to have the Latin American craze in the 90's and apparently at the moment we have a Turkish craze. We had Binbir Gece and now they are showing Gümüş.

[Varislintu]

I used to watch so many series when I was a teenager that I don't even know where to begin. But nowadays I find it happens more and more rarely that I can stand spending my time watching TV-series. Most of them are just so uninspired, uninteresting, unrealistic and most of all, don't have sufficient character or story arch development to keep my interest. No matter what happens in one eopisode between some people, it's basically forgotten in the next one so that the precious starting dynamic doesn't have to change. Bleh. But I do still watch some stuff.

Watch(ed)/follow(ed) recently: Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Bones (it varies), Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Silent Witness, Stargåte, The Wire (could only watch season 1).

Enjoy when it's conveniently on (recently): Bones (it varies), Futurama, Murder She Wrote, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Reality shows: Dog Whisperer (be a calm assertive pack leader !), Animal Rescue (Australian) and Super Nanny-type shows. I used to also watch Dr Phil if there was something interesting on, but not really anymore. I can't stand the near hysterical standing ovations in the beginning and end or the worshipping looks the audience members give every time Phil says something that they as adults should have already known.

Actually only the reality shows and Law & Order run at the moment, so I don't watch TV-series very much at all right now .

[Tenebrarum]

That's not much. If they show it every day, it only lasts for a few months.

I remember them being shown every night a week and they usually lasted for 4 or more months. Anyway, the length is not what made them so frustrating, but the extreme repetitiveness of plot line. They're not like American/British long-running series where we follow the lives of the characters and get introduced to new ones, no. We're talking about the exact same faces, exact same issues stretching for hundreds of episodes, with minimal character development.

[md0]

Currently:
[flag]us[/flag] 30 Rock
[flag]en[/flag] Coupling
[flag]el[/flag] Ουκ αν λάβοις παρά του μη έχοντος
Εγώ κι εσύ
[flag]ja[/flag] Liar Game

but just because it was holidays and I actually had time for TV...

[ILuvEire]

I think I answered this topic before, but I don't watch the same things any more I don't have a lot of time to myself, so mostly I tape these shows and then watch them whenever I get around to it.

Nip/Tuck
Ugly Americans
Seinfeld*
The Simpsons*
Family Guy
Ugly Americans
Strangers with Candy
The Tudors*
Rome*
Dead Like Me*
Law and Order SVU (and reruns of CI)

* DVD boxsets!

Aside from these American shows, I like:
XFactor Denmark
Riget
Krøniken
RIS Delitti Imperfetti
Ros na Rún
Fair City
Life on Mars
Little Britain

[Car]

What an extensive list!

@Car: Antena 3 and Telecinco both have made a lot of series, most of which are available to watch on their official sites (don't know if they are watchable outside Spain though).

I doubt they are, but I have a VPN service which worked well for Teledeporte. So it should work out. BTW, did you know that most VOD services of the German channels aren't blocked outside of Germany? ARD/ZDF only block their sports streams, arte is limited to the EU and one of the big private groups is limited to Germany/Austria/Switzerland (I think it's Pro 7/ Sat.1).

- El internado. Lots of people liked this show. The storyline is pretty tricky though, I've never liked it much so I wouldn't be able to explain it properly. You can read about it on Wikipedia (I wouldn't advise you to read a lot of the sinopsis though). It's not a comedy, but rather a suspense series.
- Doctor Mateo. About a cosmopolitan doctor who moves to a really rural place and has to get used to living in such a small town. Comedy.

Those sound quite interesting.

- Siete vidas is a comedy. Originally it was about a guy who had an accident in the shower in 1981 and spent 15 years in comma, so that he wakes up in the 90's thinking the 80's are still in. That plot ended but the show went on. It ended a couple of years ago, but it's still aired.
- Aída is a spin-off of that one, it's a comedy based on the outskirts of a big city where the characters are usual clichés of the outskirts, middle to low class people.
- Tierra de lobos. I've heard a lot about this one, but I couldn't even explain what it's about because I've never watched it. All I know is that it happens in the 19th century. Wikipedia page.

Those sound interesting, too.

Anything like Lost. Apart from that, time travelling, police/ secret service series and the like. I also quite like Law & Order and something CSI-like isn't bad either. As long as it's not an awful soap or any other kind of love story, I might give it a go. Anything involving several languages is cool, too.

[loqu]

Wow, OK, so you're more into suspense. Then I'd certainly recommend El internado, and about police series, Telecinco made a successful one called El comisario, which reminds me more of Hamburgo 112 (Notruf Hakenkante, yes, it's aired in Spain as well , and Alarm für Cobra 11 also). The Antena 3 "equivalent" series was called Policías (en el corazón de la calle) (my bf liked this one better, I think it was a bit poorer though).

Wow, reading my posts I seem to watch every single TV show. And I don't even show a TV set, that's the worst part, lol.

BTW, did anyone from you Canadians ever watch Student bodies / Vice-versa? It was aired for some time in Spain and I liked it a lot, but it doesn't seem to be any place on the net to watch it again, as if it never existed ok, I just found it's on youtube...

[Ludwig Whitby]

Loqu, did you watch Türkisch für Anfänger with subtitles? I couldn't find German subtitles for them, so I wanted to ask you if you found them somewhere.

[loqu]

Loqu, did you watch Türkisch für Anfänger with subtitles? I couldn't find German subtitles for them, so I wanted to ask you if you found them somewhere.

No I couldn't find them either I had luck because I found dual audio versions on German and Catalan, so whenever I didn't understand something in German I switched the audio channel. But that was a lame alternative.

[Ludwig Whitby]

Catalan's no good for me, unfortunately. I'll have to settle with English subtitles then...

[Lada]

It's incredible how much time people spent in front of the TV, I haven't been watching TV and TV series particularly for more than 2-3 years and quite happy actually.

When I was a little girl and a teenager I used to watch Mexican, Brazilian and Russian soap operas, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Quantum Leap (that was my fav. series). We watched the first Russian series about police work - Улицы разбитых фонарей, that was just very new for us, nothing like that was on Russian TV before, that was in 1998. I heard the series are still running

If someone is interested in Russian series I can name the most popular ones among Russian audience (these are not contemporary ones, but quite old, made 3 years ago or more):

- Петербургские тайны (1995 or so) - life in 19th century St. Petersburg - the first New Russian series
- Бригада (mafia)
- Бандитский Петербург (mafia) - watched that and it was good, I remember I cried
- Идиот (Idiot by Dostoyevsky) - excellent, perfect
- Master and Margarita (based on Bulgakov's most famous roman) - perfect
- Бедная Настя (Poor Nastya) - again 19th Century St. Petersburg with Russian Emperor, love, death etc. That was popular but I watched because of the actor He was playing tsar's son and was a negative character.
- Моя прекрасная няня (copy of American sitcom Nanny) - sometimes funny
- Не родись красивой - (copy of Ugly Betty)


Classical Soviet series:
- Приключения Шерлока Холмса и Доктора Ватсона - (about Sherlock Holmes)
- 17 мгновений весны - the first ever made Soviet/Russian series about Russian spy in Nazi Germany.

Everything is available on YouTube.

[ILuvEire]

I quit watching TV because I had either finished the series I was watching or because I just got tired of watching it, but I recently found a couple new shows to watch in my free time:

The United States of Tara
The Borgias
Being Human
Sanctuary

I've been contemplating getting netflix, I was at a friend of mine's house, and she had netflix, it was like watching tv, but we could watch whatever the hell we wanted whenever we wanted. Amazing!

[mōdgethanc]

BTW, did anyone from you Canadians ever watch Student bodies?

Yep. My brother did. I don't remember it very well though, except there was a black guy (?).

[culúrien]

I watch a lot of TV but only because we recently got a DVR and now I can watch my show's whenever the hell I want. It's also good since what my brother wants to watch is completely different from me (he is obsessed with family guy).

[Palabriscious]

Does someone know any good Norwegian series? I'm desperately searching some.

[hlysnan]

I'm not really watching anything at the moment but I can answer the other questions.

Do you have any favourite TV shows of all time?
Daria
Gilmore Girls
How I Met Your Mother
The Vicar of Dibley
Keeping Up Appearances
Battlestar Galactica
神雕侠侣
Futurama

What is popular on TV in your country
Cooking shows. Master Chef, Top Chef, My Kitchen Rules etc.

Family Guy is just crap.

This.