The NFL on PBS!

Well not quite, but I'll ask you this;

If the Super Bowl was on PBS (with no commericals, but instead of commercials every break would be the announcers yapping) and your announcers were Don Cherry, a guy who played division three college football turned announcer, and Willie McGinst would you watch it?

I'll Also throw in that the game doesn't start until 11.00pm.

Life in the UK.

Saesneg y frenhines

An example of a Cornish language sign.

Many of our American friends probably realise that not all Brits sound like the queen. What you may not realise though is that the UK has seven non-English indigenous spoken living languages, the BBC supports television channels devoted to two of those languages and that one of these seven even is an official language in part of the UK.

Apart from English, Welsh is the most widely spoken of these indigenous languages and shares official language status with English in Wales. Many over here treat Wales almost as a fictitious place that you might somehow wander into, like you would Narnia, but it's a real place with a real language, with real people speaking it. (It's probably the second most spoken language in the UK, but we'll have to see what the newest census figures show when they're released this week, Punjabi, could pass it up.) Welsh has a type of sing-song quality to it, and just looks ridiculous on signs. The BBC produces Welsh language content for S4C, an independent publicly broadcast station in the country.

The BBC also produces content for the Scottish Gaelic television channel BBC Alba. This puzzles me a bit since Scottish Gaelic, out of the seven indigenous languages is spoken by the second least amount of people. To me, Scottish Gaelic sounds exactly like a language you'd imagine Scots to speak, if they didn't speak English. (Although to hear some of them, you might think that they don't speak English.)

Out of the seven indigenous languages in the UK, four (Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Cornish) stem from the Celtic language. Two are mixed languages spoken mostly by gypsies (yes that's a politically correct term over here) and one is very closely related to English and is considered by some to not be a language, but rather a dialect of English.

You Say Goodbye, I Say 'Allo 'Allo

Erica and I don't watch much TV. One of the main reasons for this is the TV Tax that I wrote about almost three years ago. We still watch some shows after the fact via DVDs or Iplayer. (Hulu is blocked over here dontcha know?) I've started watching a classic Britcom called 'Allo 'Allo. Set in occupied France during WWII this comedy is from the creators of 'Are You Being Served' and bears a slight resemblance to 'Fawlty Towers' in that it is centered around a cafe owner who has a wife whom he tries to forget about interacting regularly with foreigners. One of the most enjoyable features of the show for me is the fact that while the audience hears all the characters speaking English, the characters interact as if they are speaking different languages. The French and Germans understand each other as it is assumed that they are speaking the same language (probably German (in reality English with exaggerated accents)). When two British airmen are stuck in the village and the Resistance tries to sneak them out, they are unable to comprehend the 'language' being spoken. The only person who knows 'English' and can communicate with them is Michelle, the leader of the resistance who when speaking to them uses an exaggerated posh accent (how all us Americans expect Brits to sound (except obviously the lower classes who all sound like Dick Van Dyke)). The show relies on a lot of verbal gags and innuendo, but is a welcome companion for late evenings while Erica does her freelance work.

Some of the other programs I've enjoyed while over here.

Downton Abbey--The first series (as the Brits call seasons) was certainly the best, but two and three are a nice distraction. It'll be interesting to see how far they can stretch it out.

Fawlty Towers--John Cleese at his finest. (Yep I said it) You also have the loveable Manuel and they only made twelve episodes so it never feels like it jumped the shark.

Top Gear--I find that if I watch too much of it, it can feel very forced. Some of the stuff they do is fun to watch, especially on Youtube. 'Star In A Reasonably Priced Car' (Take celebrities, give them a cheap car and have them race around a track (A real one that's shaped like this and not one like this NASCAR fans.))

Extras--Probably the program I've most enjoyed. It's a Ricky Gervais creation where he plays an out of luck actor who gets work as an extra on movies. Always hoping to somehow get a speaking part, he bumps shoulders with stars such as Ben Stiller, Patrick Stewart, Kate Winslett and Daniel Radcliffe who play themselves with exaggerated or inverted personae. The Daniel Radcliffe episode was my personal favourite. 

Friends--I know it's an American show. Brits love it though. For almost the first three years we were here you could basically turn on the TV at anytime of the day and some channel would be showing an old episode. When Erica was pregnant with Clive we worked our way through the complete set of episodes.

Dr. Who--...Dr. Who I feel just demands too much energy. You have to buy into the whole experience. You can't just watch one episode because if you do it just doesn't make sense. I want to want to like Dr. Who, so perhaps someday, but for now I'll just leave the good doctor for all his other fanatics.

This One Goes to Eleven!

The BBC has a device called iPlayer on their website that allows you to watch shows, clips, and films after they have aired. The max volume on the iPlayer isn't ten. It's eleven.