New here? If you'd like to be notified of new content, simply subscribe to my RSS feed or sign up for email alerts. Thanks for visiting!
Oh look, my favorite London blog and one of my very favorite actors, united - in pseudonym / title anyway.
Alright, so this show was released last year, but I only just found it now.
Do you know how long ago it was since I saw any new films, tele or absorbed any new cultural influences, for that matter, in English? Unlike most expats and even locals here, I do not have satellite; where I live (and with only a coathanger for an aerial), I’m lucky to get “normal tele” (analog) and the TDT (digital tele) hasn’t reached us yet.
When my dad was alive (he died in early 2001), he used to send me VHS tapes nearly every week, so I have this amazing collection of videos, most guaranteed to have at least one Lovejoy, Only Fools and Horses, Antiques Roadshow …
Actually, the tapes themselves will qualify to appear on the latter soon. 
But they (along with movies I’d purchased in the past, when I had money) have become “old friends” and, besides, that’s the only English tele I’ve seen in almost two decades. (Have I missed anything? That’s what I thought, probably not.)
Ever mindful of the dangers of wallowing in some rose tinted version of the past, nevertheless, watching the same old thing has become much less undesirable than having nothing at all that one can simply relax and vegetate to.
The old films could, mostly, be replaced on DVD, which will (technically) play on a computer, IF one had money, but I don’t and some can’t and some of the other stuff on those tapes is unrepeatable … So, last year, I bought a “gadget” and software to connect the VHS to the computer to “digitize” them and, an external hard drive to hold this “digital nostalgia / crap” collection.
Not that I’ve actually been able to make it all work yet … Then, over Christmas the video machine (on top of everything else) died. Well, it’s terminally ill and the sound is buggered. I’m hoping a clean will work. Spit. Spit. Spit.
Yes, of course I can understand and do watch the Spanish tele, but the infernal and utterly terrible dubbing kinda takes all the joy out of the exercise!
So does trying to simultaneously translate and explain every damn thing from the tele to my non-Spanish speaking mother during the month she was here.
“Relax / vegetate in front of the tele” are just not phrases that fit.
Sponzurz
I don’t even notice the badly synced dubbing on the newer programmes any more. Perhaps that’ll comeas my fluency improves?
Did you get my message ab out the comp?
As to what you’ve missed: anything with Michael Palin or narrated by David Attenborough.
Then there’s the drama “Life On Mars” and the delightful “Q.I.”
No, you are right Neil, some of the newer dubbing is much better and they also seem to be matching the tone of the voices better too. I first noticed that with the voice of whoever is dubbing James Caan in Las Vegas, because it has the right sort of roughness to it. I also wondered (if it’s possible) if they might be digitally enhancing them.
Most previous dubbing always sounded like the same few dubbing artists doing every film or series and I felt sorry for them, because I imagined them to be locked in some basement in Madrid, dubbing away 24 hours a day.
The worst - apart from the squeaky women doing the kids - is when obviously white voices dub black actors or, when the original dialog is obviously some sort of NY or wherever street slang (or Jamaican patois) and yet the Spanish comes out with perfect Real Academy grammar rules applied. No matter how technically well that’s done, this just grates and, for a full appreciation, can I have version original, por favor.
I did get your email, thank you and thank you so much for the offer. You obviously didn’t get my reply. I’ll try that again shortly.
Ah, yes, one of the few things that I’m almost up to date with is anything with Michael Palin. I have all of them (on VHS), from 80 Days, thru the Poles, round the Pacific Rimmy, across the Sahara and up the Himalaya. I’m only missing New Europe. And those are some of the things that I really would like to keep forever, for posterity.
The rest you list have eluded me, so I quickly Googled Q.I. and, I feel that I rightly assume you are talking about the BBC quiz / comedy with Stephen Fry, which does, indeed, sound delightful.
Don’t worry, Only Fools and Lovejoy are still on telly almost every day so you’re almost watching the same things the rest of us are.
I know how you feel though, when I was in France I was ecstatic when I discovered that I could get BBC, even to the point of watching things I would never usually dream of looking at!