Daily Dose of English 32
TV Shows
Daily Dose of English 32
Intermediate
Hey, everyone. My name is Ben, and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today, because in this episode, we're going to be talking about TV shows, or series as you might know them, And that's actually I think where I'm going to start is because a lot of English learners don't necessarily know the word TV show or show is actually the most common way to say it where I'm from in the US. I think in most of the U.S., show is just really, really common to say. However, in a lot of textbooks and classrooms, you'll hear the word series or TV series or something like that. That's more common in Britain and the U.K. and other English-speaking parts of the world. However, in the U.S., we almost always just say show. Hey, what show are you watching right now? And very frequently I've had English learners ask me, what? What's a show? I think part of the confusing thing is that a lot of other languages use the word series or almost the exact same word, which exists in English, right? It's an English word as well. And so they kind of assume that series in their native language will also become series in English. Why not? That just makes sense, right? But we almost always call them TV shows or specifically just shows, like I said. And so shows or TV shows are a really, really common part of media nowadays. I don't actually know for sure, but I think that they're more popular than movies, which was not the case 30 years ago. However, TV shows, or actually that's not true. TV shows have always been around because they were before that. However, there's always been like a, yeah, so I take that back. That's not true. But movies had more like, power behind them or something like that. Everybody went to the movies. Everybody loved movies. Everybody looked forward to big movies coming out because TV shows were smaller, simpler productions, right? They were a sitcom, an easy show that you can just watch for 30 minutes. However, nowadays, TV shows have become a lot bigger. That's what I was trying to get at a second ago. There's a difference in TV shows nowadays than back in the 70s or the 80s. There still were TV shows and they were often longer, but now they're almost like long movies that take place over 10 episodes or whatever. which is an interesting change. And I'm not super sure how I feel about it. Also, let me give an example. A show like Game of Thrones was massive. What? How many years ago? Like 10 years ago at this point? No, less than that. That's a TV show, but it kind of functioned more like a movie series thing because the episodes were about an hour long and there were only 12 of them. God, I don't actually know these facts off the top of my head, but there weren't that many. And so it was almost like watching a 12 hour movie instead of a, uh, a TV show from like the nineties, which had 150 episodes that were all 20 minutes long, right? Those showed once a week, every week for years, or there's a big difference between trying to tell a large story versus like a recurring, simple sort of show that happens every week. And those bigger shows are now becoming sort of the commonplace, right? There's been a ton of shows from Marvel recently. I can't even name all of them. I completely stopped following all them, but those were sort of bigger. They're trying to tell a story over the course of eight weeks or whatever the number is. And also the rise of streaming and Netflix and individual seasons becoming more common, right? So there's a lot of shows only get one season. And that's a big thing for streaming services like Netflix, Disney plus, uh, prime video, all those streaming services have TV shows because they get people to watch more and that's the goal, right? You want people to stick around on your streaming service to get more of their dollars, right? That's, that's how it works. But with a movie where you can finish a movie in one day and that's it. which I quite like. I think that there's a lot of beauty in brevity. That's a really good word. Brevity is just a fancy way of saying shortness or short. It typically has to refer to saying something or expressing an idea. And so in that case, I was saying that there's a lot of beauty in brevity, which means that I think that stories that are shorter are often in a way more beautiful because Making a shorter story is harder than making a longer story because you have to remove things, you have to cut things out, you have to plan things better in order to tell a complete story over the course of 90 minutes or two hours. I think I talked about this back on the movies episode all those weeks ago, but I think it really applies to TV shows because if you're trying to tell a crisp, clean story, you don't want it to take years, obviously. That doesn't really work for storytelling. And so I think that's part of the reason that I don't love those really story-driven TV shows, because I feel like they often draw on, they drag on too much, they're too long. Not always, there's some that are very, very good, but I tend to prefer TV shows that are a little bit more serialized. Another good word, but that's where each episode is relatively similar. Right, the stuff that I record and make on this YouTube channel is serialized. It doesn't really change that much week to week or day to day. If you miss an episode, you can come back to the next episode and not really even notice that anything was missing. Some of the other series that I do do have more continuity between them. There's more things that carry over, right? So like the comic series, if you miss an episode, you're gonna miss what happens in the comic. But it's still the same format. And that's the format of a lot of TV shows that have been on for a long time, right? Law and Order is like that, right? Every episode is sort of the same idea. And that shows went on for like, 25 years or something insane. I don't actually know how long it's been on. Or some of my favorite TV shows of all time are also very similar to that. For example, Psych. I really love that TV show and each episode is really very similar, right? You're not missing very much if you miss an entire episode. They do add a little bit more about the characters and they add a little bit more to the overarching story, the general story, but not very much and only in certain episodes. The same thing with a show like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which I also really like. And that's the same thing. They slowly add up to the characters a little bit. So like if you miss entire seasons, you'd be like, okay, what's happening? But if you just miss one episode, it's fine. Other really good shows that are completely serialized, that are completely independent are things like Taskmaster, right? Those are one and done TV shows that don't really change. A lot of more real, what are they called? Real, no, reality shows. Yeah, reality shows are like that, where if you miss an episode, you might miss like one main thing that happened, but everything else is really very sort of the same. And in a lot of ways, that's actually pretty good for language learning, because you can get into the rhythm of a show and understand how things happen, right? That's part of the reason that my introduction to this podcast and to almost all of my videos follows a pretty set script, because I like to give people a way to sort of come into something familiar, right? If you're coming into this podcast, you know how I'm gonna start, you know what I'm gonna say, and it's pretty familiar, you can follow along with it. Same goes for the more beginner level things that I record. Because for beginners, having something that you know really well is just so nice. I've really enjoyed it. There's a Czech podcast that I listen to that always starts the same. And I can say it along with it. It feels fun and familiar. And so I like to have that sort of thing. That's also why TV shows have Theme songs, right? There's a lot of really famous theme songs. Friends, one of the most famous TV shows of all time in English, has that super-duper famous... Right, that's the Friends theme song that almost everybody knows. I haven't even seen the show and I know it. But that's also why a lot of English learners love Friends for learning, because it's pretty regular and easy and fun, right? That's one of the key parts. I personally don't watch that much TV unless I, it's like, I don't try to like, I like movies more rather is what I wanted to say there. I do end up watching a good amount of TV, but part of that is because of language learning, right? It's just such a powerful tool for language learning that I just can't ignore it. I watched so many TV shows in Spanish. I've been watching a bunch of TV shows in Czech and they're just so, so powerful. So. If you haven't figured out or found a TV show that you like yet, I highly recommend that you find some TV shows that are interesting to you because especially in English, there are so many great options from this century, last century. There's just so much stuff out there. I really recommend that you explore some. If you haven't yet, I recommend the show Avatar, The Last Airbender. It's animated and it was originally made for kids, but it's a really good story. And it's not too long, it's really digestible, and it's just such a good show. And it's also not too hard. And that's actually my first recommendation for almost all English learners, because it's just such a good show. Everybody that I've shown it to has loved it, and they've all been native English speakers. And so I definitely recommend that as a show. I don't have any other great suggestions right now. If you like friends, that's a good option. There's just so much out there, honestly. So go find what you enjoy and watch it in English with subtitles if you want. But the biggest thing is to have fun, engage with the show, with the characters, and see what you learn. But that's everything that I have for today on TV shows or shows. And I hope that you enjoyed listening to this. Um, and I want to know what your favorite show is. Let me know down below in the comments, but I'm going to leave it here for today. Thank you so much for listening. Make sure you're subscribed and I'll see you again tomorrow. Have a good one. Bye.
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