This week I chose to end my journey in Australia. I really wasn’t sure what would be the best place to end, so I grabbed my trusty map chose the one continent I had been overlooking the whole time. 

I started with my search into the most popular television shows and discovered that it is filled with various doctor shows, historical shows, sci-fi shows, and crime shows. This is a similar result as I had when searching for Canadian shows.

As I was scrolling through the list to find something unique and well voted for, I found that there are a lot of shows that are geographically based. There were mermaid shows, lighthouse shows, shows about shark bites, and shows about living in the outback, amongst others. Besides that, I noticed an abundance of romance shows as well as shows with female leads.

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I decided to start off with the show Offspring

This is a show about a obstetrician and her family, who she ends up taking care of whether she really wants to or not. This show was actually based off of a successful TV movie and currently has seven seasons. 

What struck me the most about this show is how it feels like an HBO show of some sort due to how it is structured. I say this because of how this show is themed, the topics covered, and the quality of the film. 

Similar to other television shows on this journey, there really is not much advertising. The cars on the show are older, there’s a general lack of branding around most of the items used (except one apple computer), and there is really a lack of pop culture references. I feel this may be due to being focused on Nina the main character and there may be more references as the show goes on. 

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Please Like Me is a comedy about this man in his twenties that is dumped by his girlfriend because she thinks he is gay. Josh is left to discover himself as the series progresses. 

What is really interesting about this show is that he random becomes involved with a guy and the main characters of the show treat it like any other relationship. He is even still friends with his ex-girlfriend throughout the series.

One thing that stood out about this show is how old the hospital and the cars looks. There is more advertising within this show compared to the last one. Some of the ones I noticed were google, windows, and a small ad on the bags the main character brought in.

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These shows definitely give off a more British vibe than the television series I have watch so far. I may be saying this because of the accents. In addition to that, the topics discussed feel more like the Brazilian television series I watched for my previous blog post.

Thank you for coming along with journey with me!

So I started my journey searching for the next culture that I want to explore, with really nothing in mind. I ended up look at a map to see if there is a place that I haven’t thought about in a while but is still super cool and I landed on Brazil! Brazil is actually my first blog about television in South America!

Right off the bat I noticed that there was a lot of female leads in the most popular television series. There were 9 shows with female leads on the top twenty list!

Most of the top twenty shows are romance or drama, but there are a few animated shows on the list as well. It was really interesting to see that while typical shows, like police shows, are popular there are also shows about superhero drag queens, call girls, and casting agencies. With all of these options, I decided to go for a milder shows, mainly because some of these more interesting shows are hard to find or require a movie channel subscription.

The first show  I watched was Samantha!. This is a comedy about a child star from the 80’s who is trying to become famous again. 

The first thing I noticed about the show was how strong the female characters were! Samantha herself is a bossy single mom who does it all. Alongside Samantha is her daughter that embodies feminism and acceptance.

Besides the awesome role models, this show had a decent bit of pop culture references. This could possibly due to the fact that this is a Netflix show. There were some Brazilian references may have gonna right over my head, as there were a few scenes where the characters said something that threw me off guard or just generally did not really make sense.

The second show I watched was The Mechanism. This is political drama that is loosely on the corruption in Brazil’s oil companies.

This show actually has a pretty male heavy cast, but there is one awesome girl cop who is influenced to pursue the case by the main character. Actually, as the episode progresses the girl cop becomes the narrator.

What really stood out in these shows were the strong female leads and presence in the shows. Even the male heavy cast focused a good bit of attention on their female characters.

As always, Thanks for Reading! and until next time…

This week I have decided to focus my cultural explorations on Italy. I chose Italy for a few reasons but mainly because that is my dream vacation spot.

First, as always, I started with research. The first thing I noticed was the amount of crime and historic genre shows on the most popular list. There are five shows about the mob and organized crime, three other crime shows, and five shows set in a historical time out of the 20 most popular shows in Italy.

The first show I chose to watch was My Brilliant Friend

My Brilliant Friend is based on a novel written by Elena Ferrante. The novel shows a friendship of two young girls in 1950’s Naples. This show actually is an Italian-American production. This would be more alarming, but majority of the most popular Italian shows seem to be a collaboration with another country.

The biggest thing I noticed about this show is the close quarters the families seem to live in. It seems that all the families live within a mile from each other, which indicates there is a closeness in the town. With this closeness, comes enemy-ships. There are a few enemy-ships seen in the first episode of the show.

The first enemy-ship is from a disgruntled dad who had to sell his business and a mysterious powerful man. The dad is seen yelling about his issues in the town square right above where the man lives, later the dad is taken away from a funeral and beaten close to death. The second enemy-ship is the infamy of one of the main characters Lila. It seems that everyone talks about Lila but they are either scared to talk to her or beat her up. The only child that talks to her is Elena actually. The last enemy-ship seen is with two ladies in the apartment building. One lady is gossiped about and called crazy by almost everyone. This ‘crazy’ lady is seen inking the others clothing up, throwing things out of the window, and fighting the other, yet the two continue to interact.

The characters continue to be apart of their enemies lives for some reason; whether it is forced due to how close everyone lives or whether it is chosen because in a small town everyone helps/hurts everyone else.

The next show I watched was Suburra

Suburra is a show about politics, the Vatican, and organized crime. These aspects all blend to create a drama-filled town. Some of the things I noticed was the mix of cultures shown. There is a very western vibe in the scenes in the ‘rich’ clubby area of town. There is also a very old country vibe in the family scenes shown. This highlights a little bit of the generational culture clash, as the clubby scenes are mainly with the younger characters.

Another thing I noticed is that a character on the show is given a task in order to be set up in an arranged marriage. The character does the task but actually does not really want to be set up in the marriage. His mother ends up convincing him to go through with it. Before the engagement ceremony he stops at a bar. The bar actually looks like a mix of a diner and convince store, which was a little shocking to me. I always imagine bars to be dark and not the cleanest, so this bar was a little confusing. Basically, (before I went on a tangent) there is this interdependent, family is first vibe throughout these scenes.

In another family, there is a sense of respect towards their late moms business. The child wants to purchase and renovate a business because it was his mothers, and not for any other reason.

Some side notes: There was a decent bit of advertising that was not seen in the Canadian television series, but not as much as an American television series. In addition to the little amount of advertisement, the subtitles were interesting in these shows. In Suburra, the captions were actually a little off, but I noticed they took out all of the cultural phrases that were used to make it more universal. In My Brilliant Friend, I am unable to tell if the captions cut out some words or cultural references to be more universal due to the fact that it was shot in Italian with English subtitles.

Thanks for reading! And I hope you will continue this journey with me as I gain more cultural insights!

Hey guys! I am back this week with a new cultural exploration, Canadian culture. I have always loved television shows from Canada like Degrassi and Trailer Park Boys, and some of the television shows I watch now are even filmed in Canada. With all the mixture of culture that surrounds sharing one border, I felt it was time to give myself a challenge and check out what’s going on over there.

So I started my journey with research. I looked at blogs, IMDb, and other various sources to attempt to find a popular and representative television show. The search started off with a little problem, most of the popular television series were either an American show, a crime show, or a sci-fi futuristic show.

I assumed that Canada with its large land mass and various reigns would be similar to America. By this I mean, breaking up Canada by region may have given me a better sense of what each area actually enjoys. Since I really don’t know much about Canadas culture, and wanted an in general look no matter what, I chose to watch two popular television programs that are a little different than the type of shows I wanted to watch starting out this journey.

The first show I watched was Schitt’s Creek.

Schitt’s Creek is about a rich family who turns poor and must live in the town they purchased as a joke. Surprisingly, this television show is very generic, as it really does not have too many pop culture references, music, or anything that could make someone like me feel like I am missing something. For example, it was shocking to see one of the characters talk about social media with no name brand or a view of the screen, just a in general “Look at the photo they posted” kinda of speech.

Highlights of the show include:

• It was fun to watch and pretty funny
• There is an over the top nature to the show
• The only pop-culture reference I heard was in regards to Martha Stuart

Next, I watched Continuum

Continuum is a sci-fi show where some terrorist in 2077 escape their death sentence by traveling back in time to 2012. As they are in this process, a cop gets dragged in and travels along with the terrorist group. What surprised me most about this show is the lack of advertisement.

Highlights of the show include:

• The focus on futuristic technology
• While they are exploring 2012, it is a very in general look at it
• When the cop is going around the city, a lot of the businesses have bright lights but it is as if the show blurs over the stores
• There was only one song with lyrics that played on this show

Somehow, even though it was vague, I learned a decent bit about Canadian television. I learned that there is a general lack of popular culture from advertising to music in these shows. It seems every show I watch now in days has some advertising in it from somewhere, whether it be a car, food products, or technology, its always there. The lack of pop-culture may be due to funding purposes, laws, or it may be for a different purpose. As mentioned earlier, the most popular shows are crime and sci-fi shows and all these shows present a universal etic or relatability. The idea behind these shows may be inclusivity rather than finding a niche.

Thanks for reading, and check out these shows!

My cultural journey of watching television programs from major cultures ended up starting with a major problem.

I couldn’t figure out how to access current television and get English subtitles for the Hindi shows I was trying to watch!!

So after extensive googling and finding the perfect current television show I was met with streaming services that could not be watched due to my geographic location, or did not have any closed captions whatsoever. This was a major set back! (Some of those shows looked really good too!)

I ended up changing my search to just watching the most popular shows of all time and found two shows from the 90’s. This is a blowback as is, but I decided that an older television program could still give me some good insights.

The first program I started was Mahabharata. The original series aired in the 90’s but amazon prime had short animated videos, with a narrator telling the story as it goes. I acknowledge that I am missing a bit of the story as I am watching a very English version of this television program, but It is still based on an ancient epic.

The story starts at the beginning, or according to the narrator karma entails what happened before and what follows. I have found other renditions of this story do start at a different point in the story, which is very interesting.

The main themes that felt different to me than my current culture:

• The amount of secret children that each women seemed to have
• A sons sacrifice for his dad’s happiness
• The idea that a woman giving up her sight for her blind husband is an injustice
• The property factor over women– in which I mean that once a women is claimed she cannot belong to anyone else
• The idea that dying can come as you wish if you are a Demi God

So what most struck me was the differences in choices made by women in the same situation, based on where the story was from. In this epic, a woman summons a God, who in turn gives her a baby. The women is unmarried and has no idea what to do with the child, so she gives the child away. This theme continues throughout the epic. On the contrast, Christianity focuses on a woman who raises baby from God.

Another part that interested me is the son’s sacrifice to never marry, never have children, and never control the throne, for the sake of their dads happiness. While I did not finish the program, I am anxious to see what happens next, and if the theming underlying this event includes the idea of personal selfishness over the greater good of the kingdom.

This leads me to the next television series I watched: Malgudi Days

Malgudi Days focuses on a 9 year old boy named Swami and his journey through schooling and life. This story is relatively similar to popular shows on American television as it entails a young boy who does not like school, deals with drama between friends, and is playful when he wants. Some things that struck me about this show are:

• The Christian teacher is the bad guy
• The recognition of the lost life of the ant
• Sticking with the eldest friend because of the age of friendship
• The idea that being a man starts around 9 years old

So as I was watching this show, I noticed the Christian teacher was telling them all the reasons their religion was Bad so this kid was like “Our God doesn’t eat meat and drink but yours does” and the Teacher is portrayed in such a villian-like light. This is a drastic change to what you see on American television.

The next moment that struck me was when the boy had a small paper boat floating down the river, he placed an ant on the boat for a ride. A tree limb falls down and the boat gets submerged. The child frantically looks for the ant and when the ant is not found, the child recognizes the lost of life. This is a drastic change from a program we would watch in America. Some television shows plot lines entail an ant farm dying without any thought to commemorate the life of the ants.

The next theme that struck me was the eldest friend told the Swami that he needed to stop talking to this other child and Swami immediately said you are my oldest friend and I respect your choice. With the individualized culture in America, it is common for television characters and people in real life to actually ditch their longest friend for a boyfriend, or for a new friend. Although the Americans eventually learn that the eldest friend is typically their best option, this story line was not even considered on this show.

That is my take on these two television programs. I believe that as my journey progresses I will make more and more comparisons. As it stands, the biggest cultural difference I’ve seen is the value on the independent and interdependent self. Both of these programs highlight what people do for other peoples happiness. As this weeks blog post comes to a wrap, I hope you have a great week and

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton