What is a popular tv show in France?

What are the most popular US TV show dramas (especially mysteries/detective genre) in Germany and France?

• Not including CSI and House M.D.

• Answer:

  OK - here comes Germany. First let me point out, that I will not refer to "popular" with hard facts like numbers of re-runs or ratings; these numbers would not be very sound because the German TV market changed significantly at at least three "historical" moments in time: The broad acceptance of television as a normal part of ones everyday life in the early or mid 70s; only two public stations on air at that time (ARD and ZDF), color TVs became generally affordable then as well The introduction of private (ad-financed) TV in the middle of the 80s which initially brought up two stations (RTL, SAT1) that doubled (or probably quadrupled) the need for preproduced content immediately The explosion of the private TV in the 90s and 00s that brought many channels that merely had to send away re-runs (the stuff was licensed already, and licenses could relatively cheaply be extended), "so let's broadcast it again and again until it gets scratches!" The one show that made it through all these changes and still comes frequently back on air is Columbo. Apart from the obvious joy created by the very special kind of storytelling of Columbo, there are several other reasons why this show became an evergreen: It was extremely well dubbed (every foreign TV program is dubbed in Germany - not subtitled). With actor Klaus Schwarzkopf, Columbo had a "perfect" German voice (if I may say so: even better than Peter Falk's original one), which created an additional distinctive sound to this show. Schwarzkopf was a leading actor in Germany's most successful crime series "Tatort"in the 70s, too, but when people heard his voice, it was Columbo speaking - not Schwarzkopf. New episodes happened to be shot at the same time, when the new private channels needed content (late 80s). Columbo episodes were longer than any other crime show episodes (60+ mins.), so they were (and are) treated and programmed like feature length films instead of show eps. This had the effect that program guides mentioned them in the "films of the day" section and gave additional exposure to the audience's attention. In the last years, it has become a tradition to bring Columbo back on air during summer - one ep every night. So I guess, it is safe to say that Columbo is "the one". The success of other US TV shows in Germany was very much attached to time, fashion and circumstance: In the late 60s and early 70s, Germany was delighted by James Bond, so apart from the infamous "Avengers" from the UK, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. had an early, but short success over here. Actually, it's hard for me to tell about the 60s … In the 70s, TV shows were not on air during primetime, but before and after. So a whole lot of them was targeted to a younger audience, while others remained somewhat hidden in the night hours. Hugely successful in the family segment were Daktari, Lassie and Flipper - and Star Trek*, which had been given a rather childish tonality in the dubbing process. Also The Odd Couple had a huge fanbase, which was in part again due to excellent dubbing* At night, Kojak had a pretty strong fanbase, as well as The Streets of San Francisco (you see, that seriosity and realism was very much favored by those who bought US shows at that time). Petrocelli was put in one of the few primetime slots on Friday. The more "casual" crime shows with a big fanbase were The Rockford Files and - in the late 70s/early 80s Charlie's Angels. Sundays were blocked for Bonanza, Gunsmoke, The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie familywide (unless airing times happened to collide with soccer which caused a multitude of intergenerational family wars at that time) - which made Michael Landon one of the first TV celebrities over here. --- *Remark: Dubbing was certainly an important factor for the success of a TV series in the early 70s and 80s, because the family of voices was extremely (!) small. The most popular voice over here belonged to Gert Günther Hoffmann, who - fasten seatbelts! - chartered his voice to: Sean Connery, William Shatner, Rock Hudson, Paul Newman, Patrick Macnee, Lex Barker, Michel Piccoli and many more: http://www.synchronkartei.de/index.php?action=show&type=talker&id=291 . He also was the narrator on The Pink Panther Show which had been rewritten and entirely narrated in masterful rhymes all along over here (and therefore was a huge success as well). The reappearance of voices created an additional familiarity and thus significantly contributed to the success of certain shows, films and characters. Some more notes of mine on the effects of "rewriting US shows for German TV" can be found here: --- With the 80s, epics like Dallas and Dynasty became huge while imported crime and mystery shows slightly lost significance. Exceptions were those with exotic and colorful settings like Miami Vice and Magnum, P.I., and another big one was The Fall Guy. The most successful sitcoms of that time had a lot to do with aliens: Mork and Mindy and ALF. Until now - every show mentioned was on our two public channels ARD and ZDF. TV shows were something special until then - not just padding or bombast in the gaps between TV ads (as ARD and ZDF were and still are not allowed to show ads before 5pm and after 8pm). Now we are in the middle of the 80s … and private TV comes alive. But don't worry - I am going to cut myself short now, because from now on the raisins in the cake are much easier to identify. Knight Rider made David Hasselhoff a superstar over here and even encouraged him to sing … and certainly also catalysed Baywatch. The X-Files took off successfully, and seemingly everyone watched Married with Children. Beverly Hills 90210 made German kids believe, that this is what life is about in the US. But before private TV took over and pulled TV shows into their domain, the other biggest import hit on German TV except for Columbo was set into motion by good old ZDF again: The Simpsons. So what about the most popular US shows of today - except from CSI and House MD? Well, in short: their era seems to be over … at least on TV itself. Emergency Room did great, Grey's Anatomy still does, but all of the really big US shows of today have a hard time over here, especially those with long and epic story arcs. "24" and "Lost" are only two examples that seriously failed on TV and that were broadcast inspite of actually nobody watching. They were shifted from station to station, moved to later slots and finally were put on air in blocks of two or three eps back to back - just to get rid of them. But that is just TV - on DVD, these shows did great too and acquired a solid fanbase. Amazing stuff like "The Wire", "30 Rock", "Damages", "Entourage" or "Mad Men" does either not make it to the screen at all or is being shown on very small "special interest channels". I hope I did not deviate too much from your original question - but I think this will give you a solid idea on what Germany cared about as regards TV shows from the US.