Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

This thread idea was inspired by that "Empire" TV progamme list thread. Amongst the many obvious shortcomings of their inane middlebrow and historically unaware selection was the fact that, whilst it did not in terms limit itself to English language output, its entire content was in fact so limited.

Now, I find it a tad unlikely that every single one of the "best" 50 TV series ever would be English language. By way of comparision, self-evidently the top 50 films of all time would include numerous foreign language classics. One poster mentioned "Heimat" as a possible candidate on the telly thread.

On the other hand, I wouldn't rule out the possiblity that practically all non-English language telly is ropey, even compared to ours. We residents of anglophone countries don't really find out, do we, I mean the foreign stuff just doesn't much make it on to our screens. And my experience of German telly when I lived there in the 1980s was that, by and large, it was pretty woeful.

So, any OTFers able to cite some good foreign stuff in the TV series line?

[Guest]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

Das Boot

[Wyatt Earp]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

Das Boot was originally a miniseries, and has to count. The original Wallander looked pretty good, what I saw of it.

Er, Pobol y Cwm.

[Ginger Yellow]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

My knowledge is basically limited to those broadcast in the UK (hotel rooms aren't the best place to familiarise yourself with quality TV).

Riget (aka The Kingdom)
Das Boot
Heimat

[erwin]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

Brazilian novelas (soap operas) are normally dross, but there are exceptions: 'Gabriela' and 'Tieta' were very good adaptations of Jorge Amado novels.

[ursus arctos]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

Even the beyond shameless Silvio Berlusconi would blush at nominating any Italian productions for this thread.

[Taylor]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

Gimme Gimme Octopus

[Ginger Yellow]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

Oh, it just occurred to me that anime series would count in this. I'd hesitate to nominate many in a "Greatest TV Of All Time" list, but, say, Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex is better than fucking Alias.

[Guest]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

Hey, if we're counting animated programmes then I nominate those deeply strange Czechoslovakian cartoons from the 1960s that RTE used to show on Sunday mornings.

[Incandenza]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Was the original "Traffik" a miniseries?

There's Lars von Trier's miniseries about a hospital that's supposed to be very good.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

Even the beyond shameless Silvio Berlusconi would blush at nominating any Italian productions for this thread.

I think Il miglior gioventu, which I saw in 2 parts in a Madrid cinema, was originally a tv series in Italy.

Doubt Berlusconi had much to do with it, as it was a 'Friends in the North' for a country with a massive far left rather than just a Labour Party

[ursus arctos]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

It's an interesting case, because it was originally produced by RAI, but shown as a film at Cannes and put on theatrical release here before it was ever broadcast on television (either here or elsewhere).

[erwin]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

Kieslowski's Dekalog is fantastic.

[Ginger Yellow]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

"There's Lars von Trier's miniseries about a hospital that's supposed to be very good."

That's Riget.

[Alderman Barnes]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

I hardly watch anything on German TV apart from football and children's programmes. Some of them are quite good, mind. My favourite is Wissen macht Ah!, which is an irreverent popular science programme for kids. It also quite often features poo jokes, which keeps me happy.

German TV is also very good at low-key travel and wildlife documentaries, but as for the kind of thing that gets into top fifties, well there's Heimat and Das Boot, but that's about it.

[linus]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

Same in France, there is a lot of great french television content, but most of it isn't in the form of miniseries. Maigret and Arsene Lupin were pretty good. Some good historic/literary adaptations like La Dame aux Cameleas.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

The best thing on German TV, in my opinion, is a show on the children's channel called Bernd Das Brot (Bernd the bread).

It's kind of about a miserable, misanthropic loaf of bread, who gets reluctantly dragged into his flatmates' schemes. Reminds me of Gilbert's Fridge.

[Ginger Yellow]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

Gilbert's Fridge?

Is Bernd Das Brot available legally online or am I going to have to download it?

[My Name Is Ian]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

Wattoo Wattoo.

[Taylor]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

Ginger Yellow wrote:

Is Bernd Das Brot available legally online or am I going to have to download it?

Seconded.

[linus]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

twohundredpercent wrote:

Wattoo Wattoo.

Lots of great children content from France. Before Wattoo Wattoo, there was Chapi Chapo, les Shadoks, Pollux (Manège Enchanté), les Barbapapas among others.

Chapi Chapo featured terrific original music from François de Roubaix (not just for the themes, the music was a central item that run through the show)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7z3x--Z5tBQ

[Taylor]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

I used to love Barbapapa.

[Guest]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

Alderman Barnes wrote:

German TV is also very good at low-key travel and wildlife documentaries, but as for the kind of thing that gets into top fifties, well there's Heimat and Das Boot, but that's about it.

Maybe nostalgia is clouding my views, but I'd disagree with that to some extent:

* There's some amazingTV for children in Germany, especially when you put it in a comparative historical context: Löwenzahn, for instance, was pretty damn good, especially its 80s/early 90s run. I don't know how it's doing these days after Peter Lustig retired. Similarly, I've never seen a news TV show for children of comparable quality to Logo which covers incredibly wide-ranging issues really well.

* Rockpalast is probably one of the best live music TV shows in Europe, perhaps world-wide. They had multi-hour live shows from an arena that probably, over the years, had the greatest lineups on (free) TV ever -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockpalast

* In terms of simple popularity, if not actual quality (I never watched them), Derrick and Der Alte were syndicated in 100+ countries world-wide, and are amazingly popular police procedural shows. (I may be overestimating how popular Der Alte was world-wide, but Derrick definitely made a huge impression in many countries)

* FWIW, I thought Ein Herz und Eine Seele was in some ways superior to Til Death Do Us Part (which it remade) and All in the Family (the US remake). Notably, the German show wove the FRG-GDR divide and inter-German politics into its subject matter, and somehow managed to make it hilarious.

And I always considered Heimat and its sequel (yikes, two now) to be extremely long-winded, pseudo-serious soap operas. It's just the higher-brow version of Diese Drombuschs mixed with a healthy sprinkling of German history.

On a purely personal level, I had an enormous weakness for Auf Achse and Die Sendung mit der Maus.

[ian.64]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

"There's Lars von Trier's miniseries about a hospital that's supposed to be very good."

It is. It's around on DVD somewhere and awaits your perusal.

[Alderman Barnes]

Telly programmes outside the Anglophone world

Some good calls there. Die Sendung mit der Maus is still going strong, and Löwenzahn now has a younger bloke in the Peter Lustig role, and I think he does a good job.

I've never really seen much of Rockpalast - perhaps it was mainly shown in the WDR region - but you've reminded me of Beat Club of course, which had some excellent line-ups, and unlike the BBC, they didn't wipe all the tapes, so it's a fantastic historical record.

I'm not really into detective stuff, so Derrick and the like never interested me, but I suppose if you mention him, then you've also got to mention Tatort, which has been going for donkey's years and can be pretty good at times.

I never watched Heimat, so I bow to your superior knowledge there. I just mentioned it as a series that gets bandied about as a classic. Whether or not it deserves it, I couldn't say.

Ein Herz und eine Seele was very funny, and another reason it was especially interesting was because being German, the Alf character could be an actual Nazi. They pulled it off very well, but the fact that it's constantly repeated even today only serves to highlight the dearth of decent comedy on German television.