Bungo wrote: ↑Sun Oct 17, 2021 9:10 pm
One thing I have noticed in a few of the more recent ones is that the British seem to be growing more fond of pointless car (or foot) chases. But nowhere near as over the top as in American shows. And still relatively few explosions.
My only real complaint, and it's a minor one, is that it's not uncommon for a British show to feature an "American" character (usually in a supporting role, and often there's no obvious reason why he/she needs to be American), but almost invariably they don't use an American actor and the accent is appallingly wrong. Maybe it's revenge for all the terrible accents American actors have inflicted on the rest of the English-speaking world. Leonardo DiCaprio in Blood Diamond, anyone?
Yes. Btw, I have to assume that British police know to cover the back doors when trying to apprehend a miscreant, but you wouldn’t know it from watching TV shows, where the criminal runs out the back door and very often gets away after a foot race (or sometimes gets hit by a fast moving vehicle).
Another issue with foreign TV is the limited number of actors. One is accustomed to the wide range of American actors, but I think I know the major Dutch, French, Israeli actors, and at my advanced age I have trouble keeping them separate and distinct in their roles. So, watching a Dutch show, I see a character and think, “wait, wut, isn’t he married to her? She can’t be his sister?” having remembered the actors’ roles from a different casting.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s accent was bad, but Michael C Hall (
Dexter made me laugh so hard that tears came from my eyes in
Safe. Apparently, reviewers were more generous, categorizing it as a legit accent, but one stripped of class and locale specifics, so as to be a “generic” British accent. Anyway, I continued watching and forgot about it eventually.
A very positive factor for me watching foreign TV is my discovery of hitherto undiscovered language talent. I spoke German as a youth (single digit in age). When I started streaming, I discovered a surprising amount of German, but also Dutch and Yiddish, were understandable and I relied less and less on the subtitles. TV dialog is easy, suitable for the language skills of very young people (which is why so many people learned languages from watching TV) and it was interesting that I could follow TV German 60+ years after speaking it) even though technical/scientific/formal German is beyond me. With German, English, and slang from NYC, Yiddish and Dutch are easier than I would have thought.
I get the FI part but not the RE part of FIRE.