Television

Couch potatoes would be in trouble here. The TV options for English speakers are very limited even with cable. Most of the channels are in French. They show some American programs, but they are dubbed in French. There’s something very wrong about Bart Simpson and Eric Cartman speaking French! We watch it sometimes just because it’s hilarious.

We get a couple of Dutch channels and all of the shows are in English with Dutch subtitles. These channels are a mixture of Dutch and American TV programs. They show a lot of cop/law dramas and American movies that were made for TV only or that went straight to video. I’m not sure who does the programming here, but they have really bad taste. I hate to think that this is what their idea of American television is. With that being said, we have seen a couple of decent movies and we sometimes get Larry King, Jay Leno, and Conan O’Brien during primetime. Friends is also pretty reliable. I was told that Desperate Housewives comes on Tuesday’s at 10:00, but I seem to keep missing it. It’s one season behind the U.S., so I’ve already seen all of the episodes anyway.

We also have a couple of BBC channels and CNN. Besides BBC World, however, the BBC channels are not much better than the Dutch channels.

Our one saving grace is that we brought our American TV and DVD player, so we’ve been watching a lot of Simpsons and Seinfeld on DVD.

We have definitely lowered or standards as far as television is concerned. We find ourselves watching some of the lamest stuff!