5mo ago

Shows that were only popular in your country?

Original question by @Justathroughdaway@lemmy.world

Ask any Australian/New Zealander who grew up in the late 2000s or early 2010s what they're favourite show was and they'll probably say something by Chris Lilley. In particular Summer Highs High or Jonah From Tonga. I used to love watching these shows when I was younger and Lilley is such a great actor. To this day there still quoted in schools all over NZ and Australia.

37 comments

I was surprised Yu Yu Hakusho wasn’t as popular around the world as I thought.
- Slam Dunk, too That was big where I live but growing up it seems to be largely ignored

Around the twist.
Still remember the theme tune.
- I run into an Australian about once a year in Montreal and suddenly launching into singing that song within the first minute is the fastest way possible to make a new friend.
  
  “Have you ever, ever felt like this” Australasian solidarity kicks in like we’re standing in Anzac cove.
- I recently found out about that show, assuming we're talking about the same Australian children's supernatural comedy, and although some of the jokes don't land on me as an adult, I am actually really enjoying it. A few episodes into season 1 and I could see kid me absolutely loving it.
  Though, if we're talking a different show, I'm SOL.
  
  The best way to know if we are talking about the show is, do you ever, do you ever get the feeling.

The Littlest Hobo.
80s kids in Canada.
Link: https://youtu.be/0kabcD3r1Bs
Also: Today’s Special and The Polka Dot Door.

When it was released, Alfred J Kwak was wildly popular in Germany and I think the Netherlands, too. I still consider it to be one of the most beautifully produced European animated shows from that era. DVD releases were sparse and I don't think you can stream it anywhere (except some shady YouTube channels that probably are only left alone because the whole thing has pretty much disappeared into obscurity).
Something that I guess is only popular over here is Tatort, which is essentially your typical crime solving series. It's released every other Sunday and always plays in some German speaking city or town. Quality varies wildly, but that is also sort of what makes it nice to watch, Tatort just hits differently depending on whether it's the one from Münster or from Wien.
Wildly popular over here is also "die Sendung mit der Maus", "the mouse program", maybe. It's usually a set of entertaining animated or puppeteered shorts, educational segments and few-seconds-long animations of the mouse. It's been on air for decades.
- Alfred J Kwak is actually a Dutch series.
  I am Dutch btw. My parents always watched Tatort and any other krimi on ARD and ZDF, like Derrick, Cobra 11 and Kommisaris Rex. I learned to speak German at a young age thanks to the TV 😄
  
  Alfred J. Kwak was actually a co-production of VARA (NL), ZDF (DE), TV Tokyo (JP) and TVE (ES). Lots of people involved ;).
  Didn't know those German series were popular across the border! Very interesting. And hey, learning a language is never a bad thing, I guess. Sometimes I wish the Germans wouldn't dub everything.
  
  I'm watching Tatort Münster to learn German. Love Thiel and Börne.
  Alfred J Kwak started as a performance by Herman van Veen. I still have the record.
  En het orkest riep “boe”. Oh jee, dacht Alfred, wat noe.

Does anybody like the Red Green Show outside of Canada?
- How about Kids in the Hall? Best ever Canadian show by far.
  
  I think about “Fattening up our taaaaapewoooorms” weekly
  
  Corner gas, Schitt's Creek, also quite good Canadian tv
  
  watched both growing up.
  I didn't get the red or green in the show but I had a black and white bunny TV that only got PBS.
  I cobbled it together with hangers, aluminum foil, and tape. after all if the women don't find me handsome...
- I liked it a lot growing up in the US. I still have the mental image of them "fixing" a flat tire (by duct taping a new tire to the flat) and the good tire popping off and rolling away when they drove away.
  If women can't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.

For some reason every once in a while a random Spanish show becomes insanely popular in Finland. Years back it was Los Serranos, a (soapy) comedy about a blended family, and now it's La Promesa, a historical soap opera about wealthy family who owns a mansions and their servants.

Kaamelott by Akexandre Astier.
A funny take on the Arthurian legend and a jewel of France. There are 6 seasons and 3 films, only one of the films is out at the moment.
I don’t think it got outside of francophonie as it uses a lot of local slang and humor. But if you are learning the language and can understand that show I’d say you pretty much bilingual.

Hopefully COPS.

Not exactly only in my country, but I was talking to some people a while back and realized something, there's a TV show that absolutely everyone in Spanish speaking countries (and Brazil) knows of, and has watched over and over again, it's so ubiquitous to us that the closest comparison in terms of how known it is that I can think of would be The Simpsons. However the show never broke the language barrier (except, like I mentioned, to Brazil where it was translated to Portuguese). So imagine going somewhere and realizing you can't make Simpsons references because these people have never heard of the Simpsons. By this point I think every Spanish speaking person knows what show I'm talking about, but for non-spanish speaking people the name of the show is El Chavo del 8 (which translates to "The boy from the 8th" as in the boy that lives on number 8, the implicit joke is that he's so poor he doesn't even have a name, which sort of got ruined by translation because in Brazil he's named Chaves)

Ask the Leyland Brothers

I haven't watched tv here in ages tbh, I don't even know what's on lol.. though one of the shows I grew up with was "gustavo enciklopedija" which was an educational kid's thing, and I doubt that was ever dubbed in any other language, so that's probably something we only had in lithuania

The Beachcombers! Very long running Canadian TV show about a log salvager from British Columbia. I don't know how you make 18 years out of stray logs, but they did.

Plats Bruts (comedy), Laberint d'ombres (soap mystery).

I heard about how good Chris Lilley was so I tried watching that high school one, but I found nothing funny about his schtick. I might have just been to old for it. I thought The Comedy Company was pretty funny when I was a kid, but that's pretty unfunny when I watch it now as well.

Seinfeld
- Never seen it, but I hear it's schtick is that all the characters are horrid.
  
  It’s like if the It’s Always Sunny characters took more effort to pretend they were good people, but silently ruin the lives of everyone around them.
  I actually enjoyed it if only because it can give some context on how people justify some of the absolutely insane things they do. Very much a slow burn.

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