Transcript

Hello everyone, I hope you are well.

Today, we are going to talk about television or rather television programs. We are going to see together 7 series and TV shows that can be interesting for you to progress in French.

You will see, there is something for everyone. If you prefer general knowledge shows, if you prefer funny series or if you prefer dramatic and even spy series, you will inevitably find your happiness.

Let's start right away with the first series. I'm going to tell you about a series called Fais pas ci, fais pas ça. In English, it's called Desperate Parent. It is one of my favorite series. It's a show that makes me laugh a lot. It's a kind of Modern Family in French. In this series, we will follow the life of two families who are neighbors.

They live side by side. These two families, they have quite different ways of education. There is a family that is rather Catholic, rather conservative, that is strict with its children.

And the other family is what we call in France the bobos. They are much more modern, they are much more lax, we will say, in the education they give to their children. Everything opposes them a little, but at the same time, they will meet on different points. First of all, they have children who are more or less the same age, so they know each other. And we will see a little the life of these two families and also how they cohabit.

You can find this series on the LingoPie platform. I've already told you about it several times. It is a streaming platform dedicated to language learning. I already told you that I think it's great to be able to learn by watching movies, series, shows. It's a very fun way to learn.

So I'm going to show you how it works. If I go to Lingopie, I'm going to run this series Don't Do This, Don't Do That. I'm launching the first episode so as not to spoil anything. On the platform, you can find the first three seasons. In all, there are nine.

You can watch with French subtitles and when there are words you don't understand, you can drag your mouse over those words and you will get the translation in your language. When you click on words you don't understand, they are added to a list of words to review. The site will offer you a game to review these words. You can also use the mashup subtitle feature. So if you are a beginner in French, it's much easier. The subtitles are in your language and only some very important keywords will be displayed in French.

The platform offers a seven-day free trial. It's really perfect to test if this learning mode suits you and especially to start this "Don't do this, don't do that" series. If you then decide to subscribe, the platform offers you -65 % on the annual subscription if you follow the link I put in the description.

The second TV show I want to tell you about is a general knowledge show. I know it exists in other countries. You may have heard of it before. It's called "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"

It is a program that no longer exists in France. It is no longer broadcast on television. It used to be on TF1, but you can find it on YouTube, so on the YouTube of "Who wants to be a millionaire?

You can watch whole programs or parts of programs. I saw that there were 20 minutes or 45 minutes of shows. Why do I think it's a good idea to watch "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" to improve your French?

The candidates will be asked questions, so it's about fifteen questions and they will stay on the screen. The question will be displayed with suggested answers. So you have time to read and understand what we're talking about and if you want to take note of new vocabulary. What is also quite interesting, if you are new to French, is that they will talk a lot about this question. They're going to repeat themselves a lot because they're looking for the right answer. So it's going to make it easier for you to absorb what the presenter and the candidates are saying.

In the shows that you can watch, either you have people like you and me who participate, or you can also have French celebrities who come and play for associations. It's really an iconic show on French television where you'll have to answer questions.

Obviously, there are different levels and if you reach the end of the game, you win 1 million euros. To help the candidates. There are some jokers, for example the call to a friend. So if you get stuck on a question, you have this joker once or you can call a friend for, I don't remember if it was 30 seconds or a minute to help you answer this question.

Let's move on to a comedy series that you can find on Netflix. This series, it's called Funny. In English the name, I think it's "Standing up". So it's a series that talks about stand up and the world of comedians in Paris.

We will follow characters who want to break into the world of humor, who want to become comedians. The stand up is a comedy genre where comedians, comedians are going to do either a sketch, or a whole show without any costume, without any artifice, without any decor. They just tell stories. Often, they talk a little about their own life or their opinion on a news item they have seen, for example, and they take the audience to task.

So they're going to address the public a little bit. For example, in Paris, I know a few bars that do stand up nights. This series is really about the world of stand up. So we follow different characters who come from different social backgrounds. We have for example a young girl who hides from her family. She comes from a very, very bourgeois family, very rich. She hides from them that she has started stand up and she will befriend a boy who comes from the suburbs, from a rather poor family.

The language register of this series is more colloquial language, even slang language, which comes from slang. So it can be very interesting for you. Especially since this series was released this year in 2022. So we will really hear some vocabulary too, which is a bit fashionable at the moment, at least in Paris and certainly in the big cities of France.

Fourth series we will talk about today, it is called "Plus belle la vie". Maybe you have already heard about it. It is really the French soap-opera par excellence. It is a series that takes place in Marseille. The production is going to stop, but this series lasted almost 20 years and it was shown every day of the week, from Monday to Friday, on television. And what I find very good about this series is that it actually takes place in real time. So, for example, if it's April 1ᵉʳ in real life, in the show, it's April 1ᵉʳ.

If it's Valentine's Day, it's Valentine's Day. So when you're learning a language, it's quite interesting because you're really going to have vocabulary adapted to everyday life, to the subjects that are going to surround you at that time. So, in this series which takes place in Marseille, we will follow the life of the inhabitants of a district.

So that's also very interesting in terms of vocabulary because obviously they all do different jobs. Since the show has been running for a very long time, for example, for two or three weeks we will concentrate on one character. After that, we'll focus on another storyline that involves other characters. Obviously, there is the police station, the hospital, the bar of the district where they will all meet. And so, it really allows us to discover a wide spectrum of vocabulary.

Also. What's interesting is that there will be teenagers as well as older people in the series. So we're going to see different registers of vocabulary, more of a slang vocabulary when we're following the teenage characters going to school and when we're following the older people we're going to have a more sustained language, so it's really interesting for you.

If you decide to start this series, you don't need to go back and watch the episodes from 20 years ago. Of course, the storylines are pretty straightforward. You can start this series at almost any time. Since there are always new little stories in the big series, you can start whenever you want. As I said, this series stops airing next month but you have many online platforms that offer it in replay where you can watch it.

Now let's talk about a TV show that I love, that is always on, so it comes back every year more or less around January February. This show is called Top Chef. It's a cooking competition. So this is really great for learning more vocabulary about food, about food.

The principle of the show is that there are three or four brigades, i.e. teams of cooks, who will be coached by a famous chef in France.

The participants are not beginners in the kitchen, they are not amateurs, but they are people who already work in the restaurant business. So they either have their own restaurant or they work for chefs.

Every year, there are participants from all regions of France. So for you, it's very interesting because you will be able to hear the different accents or even the different regional expressions. I think that you need to have a little bit of French to be able to understand everything because they also speak very quickly. As they are often in a hurry, they have to make their dishes quickly.

But on the other hand, it is really enriching for you and for your learning. You will also be able to discover the specialties of the different regions because, as you can imagine, if we have for example a candidate who comes from Normandy, he will prefer products that come from this region, so for example apples.

If we have a candidate who comes from the South-West of France, he will for example make a lot of recipes with foie gras because it comes from there. So that's really nice for you. To travel a little bit through the cuisine in France.

The sixth series we are going to talk about, I am sure you already know it because it comes up very often in the programs we advise foreigners who are learning French.

It's "Ten percent" or "Call my agent" in English. This series too, you can find it on Netflix. So if you don't know Ten Percent yet, I'm going to explain to you what this series is about.

We will follow the daily life of movie stars' agents. They are the ones who will take care of the actors or actresses. Who will help them, for example, to find their new film, to negotiate their contracts. What I find great in this series is that they take care of movie stars who will be played by the real stars themselves.

That is to say that French actors, for example Jean Dujardin in the series Ten Percent, will play his own role. For example, Virginie Efira will play the role of Virginie Efira.

And that gives a really nice side to the show and really original. In each episode, it's different actors who will intervene. The actors who play their own role don't do the whole season. They intervene during one or two episodes for a particular intrigue.

It's a comedy-drama, so sometimes you'll laugh out loud and sometimes you'll almost cry. For you what is super nice is also that you will discover in each episode real French celebrities.

The last TV choice we'll talk about today is also a series called "The Office of Legends".

This show, it's far from being funny. You're not going to laugh much, but it's still very, very interesting. It's a really well-made series that plunges you into the world of secret agents, of spies. This series, it speaks enormously about geopolitics, therefore about the conflicts between the various countries.

You are really immersed in the world of the DGSE. The DGSE is the French equivalent of the CIA and therefore the French intelligence services.

We will see in particular the life in the office in France, but also we will follow agents under cover, agents who operate with a false identity. These are agents, for example, who are sent to Syria and who are passed off as French teachers but who are in fact spies.

We'll see how the agents, so these spies will do secret missions. One thing that I also love about this series and that I find really exciting is that we're going to see how the secret service recruits new agents and how they train them, how they make them into real spies.

This series is really super interesting, super captivating. It's really hard to stop at one episode and not watch the next.

A little anecdote about this series, I have a friend who lives right next to the real DGSE offices and she has already seen that there were film crews who filmed the buildings to put them in the series, so that it looks real. The interior, I think it was reproduced in studio, but to have the frame they really filmed in front of the real offices.

That's it for today. Feel free to tell me if you liked this video, if you like this kind of video.

Please comment if there are any other French TV shows or series that you like and that have helped you improve your French.

I say to you very soon and on my side, I will go to watch a small episode of series I think.