Farewell German TV
The patience of the German taxpayers has run out and today is the last day of the broadcasting of GermanTV to North America. While I will save a little money each month as a result, I will miss the entertainment I have been soaking up during the all-too-short time it has been available on Canadian cable television.My basic motivation was to get better at listening to spoken German, but the availability of this station also meant the availability of a good collection of German TV Krimis (crime shows). I much prefer the German Krimis to our police/detective shows in general. They offer a wonderful variety of protagonists, from older women who exert a good deal of authority and struggle with feckless husbands at home, to young 'uns trying to work their way into a rather hierarchical structures. There is very little physical violence (except from Claus Theo Gartner), and there is often a good deal of focus on procedure (der Alte). One series, Tatort (the scene of the crime), features police KomissarInnen in several different German cities, and each location generates quite an individual atmosphere. Some of the finest German actors appear in various roles on that show. I will miss it.
We are still left with Deutsche Welle, but it is primarily a news show, and as such, the speech one hears is more formal and easier to understand, so less useful for my purposes. And also less entertaining.
GermanTV also featured many soap operas; I feel more sorry for their fans, as the disappearance of the network means an abrupt end to a continuing story.
I do not recall watching sitcoms, or for that matter, much in the way of humour, other than Harald Schmidt, somewhat of a lesser Letterman; I did find him reasonably amusing.
In the end, apparently Germany's taxpayers could no longer see a case for subsidizing my entertainments. Fortunately (see my many posts about theatre-going, attending operas, etc) the Canadian taxpayers have not yet figured out to the same degree what is going on.
posted by Alan Adamson @ 10:56 AM
2 Comments:
i am one of the distressed german TV viewers that was watching the soap opras. i think it is an outrage that german TV had to go. i started a blog to allow other Ex-German TV Viewers to express concers about the loss of ARD and ZDF programing in the states
if you would like to recive german tv, go check out www.shift.tv
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