I tried looking up “German sitcoms”, “French sitcoms” and a few other countries as I thought they might have a lot of content ala BBC England/Scotland. But I came up with almost nothing. It could be my ability to Google for foreign language comedies is poor, or maybe there isn’t much out there. I’d love to hear some suggestions as always looking for new things to help take my mind off my situation when I can’t game.
I’m trying so hard to resist making a joke about French, Germans and sense of humor.
Just how far beyond are we talking?
Japan makes good comedies. Mr. Nietzsche in the Convenience Store is one of the funnier things I’ve seen in the last year. Unfortunately a lot of their comedies rely on jokes about different dialects and that sort of thing that don’t make any sense in translation.
If the cringe-worthy John Cleese Fawlty Towers are of interest to you, the danish sitcom Klovn (Meaning, clown) should be of interest to you as well. Sadly, I don’t know if its streamable in the US in any way. I think it used to be on Netflix at some point though.
@Chappers - ironic you posted that as I watched a German comedian on Netflix and his opening jokes were about Germans having no sense of humor. It got me thinking, “I have never seen a true silly German sit-com”.
@jd - thanks will check that out. Any more German ones let me know!
@tgb123 of all the English stuff I’d missed that one, Thanks!
@Miguk Yes Asia, especially Japan! Though not a scripted show, I found Takishi’s Castle MXC very funny, and also Japanese propensity for portajohn gags and other hidden camera shows and sonenof their odd game shows. I may not understand dialects, but will pretend I do to get in on the jokes for the series you posted.
@jostly - seeing if it streams anywhere, I hope!
@Razgon - there was another countries version of Klown and I’m so glad I didn’t watch it. Would rather see the original Danish. It was on Hulu at one point I just hope it’s still streaming somewhere. Thanks! Anymore Danish comedies?
A true Sitcom of American flavour is not something we Germans really do I think. There is the aforementioned Tatortreiniger and Families Braun, which is a web series. We have a bunch of stand up comedy and shows with them.
You are dead to me, sir.
no no, I LIKE it - really. But it IS cringe-worthy, in the meaning of the phrase!
As previously mentioned, there are hardly any German sitcoms. You’d have to go back to the 70s Till Death Us Do Part remake Ein Herz und eine Seele for a proper example of the genre.
I’d also recommend Tatortreiniger and particularly the episode “Öztürk” featuring the wonderful Sandra Hüller of Toni Erdmann fame.
And despite its awful title and being quite derivative, the show “Jerks” was surprisingly good, but it might be hard to get a hold of. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6071060/
Oh. In that case,all is forgiven
Klovn was wonderful. Familie Braun - the intro scared me it felt so “real”. The show itself is amazing. In Familie Braun - Ich verstehe ungefähr 70% der Wörter. Ich hatte schon lange keinen Deutschunterricht mehr.
Ich hoffe, ich kann die restlichen Wörter mit wiederholter Betrachtung aufheben.
Ich möchte nicht mit Untertiteln betrügen. Entschuldigung für schlechte Grammatik.
Oh shit, some TV show broke Jeff. He switched over to German mode.
Your German is better then my British colleagues who lives in Germany since 2007! I don’t feel subtitles are cheating. We use English VO with English Subtitles to train the ear to understand it better.
The most German comedy would be everything by Loriot I think. It will be very hard to translate that humour.
hehehe
Danke!
I completely forgot that the guy who hooked me up with my first job in film just directed a comedy series about a German cultural institute in a ficticious Caucasus republic. You’ll probably need a VPN to watch it though:
He also made mockumentary series called Endlich Deutsch prior to this, but it doesn’t seem to be available online currently.
Awesome thank you! And it’s actually working without a VPN. How nice!
Hogan’s Heroes was a pretty good German sitcom.