Tuesday, April 24, 2007

television

Even though I go to the movies nearly every other night, this does not mean that I have sworn off television. I bought a tiny TV that sometimes has problems turning on completely for about 30 euro about a month into my arrival. I believe I am entitled to more channels than I have figured out how to program, but the six that I do get are more than enough for me. Unlike my television habits in the States, in Germany I exercise no discrimination whatsoever. The talk show is an especially prized genre here, with staples like Sabine Christiansen, Menschen bei Maischberger, and Beckmann ruling the airwaves (and the headlines, apparently: Anne Will, the sweetheart of nighttime news, is taking over for the reigning queen of talk, Christiansen, and it was all anyone could talk about in the newspapers for a while). I absolutely cannot stomach these programs in the U.S., but seeing a hoard of people arguing about things like "is consumerism a disease?" is very helpful for language development and cultural insight.

My favorite programs, however, are:



Rote Rosen
: a soap opera about a sexy divorcee who starts her life over again after her bourgeois world comes crumbling down when her husband impregnates their daughter's viperous best friend - only to construct and even more saccharine bourgeois universe for herself. It takes place in Lueneburg, a hamlet a scant hour from Hamburg, and I enjoy the occasional pans over twee red brick buildings.



Menschen Hautnah
: a fantastic series of documentaries that take a close look at people in particularly vulnerable situations. I've seen one devoted to a hospice that treats children with terminal cancers and palsy, interviewing the families, caretakers, and children. Another focused on middle-aged men who continue to live with their mothers. A third was a portrait of a day in the life of a dominatrix in Cologne. It's difficult to describe, but the program is never exploitative or out to stage a freak show. What I find most original are the subtle and modest ways it confounds our impulse to set up taboos only to congratulate ourselves on transgressing them.



Tatort: a detective series that has been on the air for decades, a real German cult favorite that alternates among the challenges facing the various Kommissare in different cities all over the country. Who am I to resist? (Here is the actor Klaus J. Behrendt who plays Cologne's Hauptkommissar Max Ballauf. I find him particularly dreamy.)

Grey's Anatomy dubbed in German, called Die Junge Ärzte [The young doctors]

I am also devoted to the channel 3Sat, which is a broadcasting consortium for German, Austrian, and Swiss programming. Sometimes I catch the evening news for Switzerland, and whenever anyone in a report speaks in Swiss German, there are always subtitles in Hochdeutsch, which I particularly appreciate.

No comments: