French Television

If there are two things I can't stand, it's having to put up with the adverts taking up almost as much time as the programmes you're watching and trying to watch a film or programme that's been so heavily edited that it's no longer watchable.

ADS

A while ago - while we were in England, we tried to watch a programme about teenage girls who were being given an object lesson in what prison life was really like. Ten minutes of programme was followed by ten minutes of advertising. Half the time I had trouble remembering which programme we were watching - whether it was the programme I've just described, or one of the programmes repeatedly shown in the adverts.

France's free TV is much better than that.

Well, it's not exactly free, but is what's freely available for anyone who has a digital aerial, a French TV and pays the 125€ in their local taxes for the TV licence. There are even HD channels too!

France TV stations show many English language films and programmes in English by outputting various language options - usually French, English and occasionally German. Series such as Body of Proof, The Closer, Drop Dead Diva, CSI (various versions), Dr Who and many, many more plus oodles of films are shown on a regular basis.

So despite us paying to have an English TV dish for Freeview stations installed, we actually watch little of it, simply because what's shown on French TV has less advertising and what it does have isn't pumped out at an ear splitting volume or with such mind-numbing repetitiveness as to make you wish you'd never turned the damned thing on in the first place.

I realise that many ex-pats cannot do without their English TV and from what I can gather, it's mainly to watch the soaps, though heaven alone knows why. I also know that when you're not proficient in the language, trying to get your head round a foreign tongue can make things particularly difficult, but what better way to learn?

Programmes like Mot de Passe, Money Drop and Questions pour un Champion are brilliant vehicles to learn words and to a degree, the grammar, while other programmes can help to hear French spoken as it should be, not as it comes out of a book.

I know that French programmes cannot compete with Coronation Street, Hollyoaks and other drivel that passes for programming in the eyes of many, but we couldn't be more pleased to have got shot of it. Nor are we displeased at having to let go of those interminable adverts for bingo or other ways to lose your money on your mobile. Let's face it, what could be more pointless than the programme of the same name? Can you really say that programmes with a top prize akin to a Blankety-Blank chequebook and pen are actually worth watching?

Uncensored programmes

The biggest difference I think is the fact that nothing gets edited. There's no showing movies that are cut to shit. Whether they're dubbed in French or shown in English, they show the whole film - warts and all. What they do is put a warning at the bottom right of the screen suggesting that the programme may be unsuitable for children below a certain age.

I think they call it common sense, which  appears to be being taken away from the British public. I once set my video to record Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest after setting the Digibox (I didn't have Sky+ at the time). I returned home hours later to find that my video had actually recorded two hours or more of the message "Please Enter Pin".

Despite only myself and Penny living at the address with no children, we couldn't turn this off because it was the law. I argued that since neither Penny nor I had children, why should we have to enter a pin before we watch something and were told it was the law; there might have been people under age able to view. How stupid is that? Did the British government think that truckloads of children were likely to invade our home while we were out or something? God forbid.

So, while we have to learn the language to understand the vast majority of programming, we are at last able to make our own minds up as to what is seen and what is not.

We have been a little taken aback when ads for future programmes contain nudity, but not disgusted. It's just we're not used to it. It's actually refreshing that what Britain gets all stuffy about, is seen as here as normal.

For us French TV is not only more pleasing to watch, but is a great way to learn at the same time - something a great many English speakers over here could take note of, since there are far too many who can't communicate even on a basic level.