You tend to watch a lot of television when you're cooped up in a French industrial park and the nearest village is a 30-minute walk away. Consequently, I gleaned a lot of valuable insights into European cable programming. Surprise, surprise, it's exactly like US cable programming; reruns of bad comedies, too much news, sports, and game shows. So much for the average american's perception of the French as a bunch of effete, intellectual snobs reclining languidly on the divan, munching escargots, while they watch Jean Cocteau films on the telly. Instead, I was treated to such dubbed american fare as: Daria, Star Trek, Hogan's Heroes, and Married With Children. Granted, those last three were all on the German-language channel.

Hogan's Heroes dubbed in German, how weird is that? I guess they love those wacky, bumbling Nazis as much as we do. Al Bundy of Married, With Children has become something of a folk hero in Germany, appearing on everything from T-shirts to (presumably) dirty underwear. Star Trek auf Deutsch is a particular treat:

Spock: "Das würde ziemlich unlogisch sein"

McCoy: "Verdammt Jim, bin ich ein Doktor nicht ein Wunderarbeiter!"

Kirk: "Schpock, hilf mir, SSSSCHPOOOOCK!"

One night, I happened to catch a live-action film version of French comic-book superstars Asterix and Obelix, featuring none other than hygienically challenged, cheese-eating surrender monkey, Gerard Depardieu as the dimwitted Gaul strongman, Obelix. They must've saved a fortune by hiring an actor who didn't require elaborate fat padding. The film reviews (at least the ones in English that I could read) were uniformly negative.