TV Shows

One of the most popular questions I get asked is what do we watch on TV?

Well, let me take a step back for a minute. For those of you who don't know S and I very well, we had 7 TVs in our house in the U.S. Yes, that's seven television sets for the two of us. In one room, we had two sets sitting next to each other in order to be able to watch TV and play video games at the same time. We also had 2 VCRs and a DVD/VCR combo. By far, the most valued item we owned though had to be our TiVo.

With TiVo, we were able to have it set to automatically record all of the TV shows we watched every week. I can't remember for sure, but I think we had around 30 shows that TiVo recorded for us. Everything from sitcoms to reality shows to cooking shows to dramas were on the list of things S and I watched. In all honesty, we were addicted to TV. Yes, my name is Julie, and I'm a TV addict. Surprisingly, the one thing we really didn't watch much of was movies...probably because we spent all of our time catching up on our weekly TV shows.

And then we moved to China. Talk about going cold turkey with the TV. In Beijing, we received probably around 10 English channels. These including the movie channels HBO, MAX, and Star Movies that all showed movies from the 80s. They only showed about one new movie per month...don't worry though, it you missed it the first time, they replayed it every other day. We also received ESPN, Star Sports, and one other sports channel. Pretty much useless to us as all they ever seemed to be showing was soccer. Even the Super Bowl was dubbed over into Chinese...nothing more annoying than trying to watch something and the sound is coming out in two languages. We also received Hallmark, AXN, and Star World. I think we received a couple of news channels, but they were out of Hong Kong or Australia, so we didn't really watch them much.

Anyway, we ended up watching Star World and AXN the most. On Star World, they showed a bunch of American sitcoms. Great! Except the problem was that they were at least a season behind, and we had already seen the shows. We ended up watching Desperate Housewives just because we had never watched it in the U.S., and so it was new to us. By far the most popular thing to watch though was American Idol. Star World showed it about a half day after it was on in the U.S. At least it was the current season. The only problem was is that if you didn't want to know what had happened, you had to stay off the internet that day, or it would be spoilt for you. Everyone was just happy to have something decent to watch...you didn't dare call anyone or plan any events during the time Idol was on. A friend of ours even threw a big party for the last episode of Idol.

Now, it is very popular in the American expat community to download TV shows off of iTunes. However, we never got into that when we moved to Beijing. Probably because at the time, we didn't own any iPods. Once you miss a season of a show, you find that you really don't care anymore about it. When we went back to Illinois last December after being in Beijing for a few months, we were so excited to be able to watch TV. Well, we didn't end up watching near as much as we thought we would...we found that the shows we normally watched, we had no clue what was going on with them since we had missed so many episodes.

So, now we are living in India. What are the TV channels like here? A little better than Beijing, but still not as good as the U.S. We now get Discovery, Animal Planet, ZeeCafe (shows a lot of sitcoms), Travel & Living (one of our favorite new channels), plus we still get some of the same channels we got in Beijing. Oh yeah, we also get around 5 channels that are dedicated to showing cricket. Also, there is PoGo that shows Bean (British show), Bean animated cartoon, and the Bean movies. I think they should just rename it the Bean channel.

In the U.S., one of the shows that I watched religiously every season was Survivor. Well, imagine my disappointment when I find out that this season is in China. My mom offers to tape all of the shows, and I can just have a marathon Survivor viewing when I'm back in Illinois in December. Well, the other night when I get up to go to the bathroom, the TV is on ZeeCafe, and as I am falling back asleep, I hear the Survivor theme song. Am I dreaming? I'm now wide awake...there is a Survivor commercial on. They are advertising Survivor China and how it is going to be shown on ZeeCafe starting on Sunday night. I'm so excited!

So, on Sunday night, I tune in, and sure enough, it's actually the first episode of Survivor China being shown! So, now every Sunday night, I will be ending my weekend on a great note by watching Survivor. I just can't be having any conversations with my mom about what's going on with the show as I think 3 episodes have already been shown in the U.S. I also can't be checking out the Survivor website, but hey, I can sacrifice these things in order to actually have something to watch...it's either that or cricket. Hmmm....hard decision.

P.S. I will also not except any Survivor spoiler e-mails from anyone!