European TV is a necessary cultural corrective

Slouched on the sofa one night, I was flicking through the various streaming channels looking for a series that I felt like watching. 

When I am tired, I usually plump for something in English because it’s easy. Reading subtitles is hard work and the dubbed voices never ring true. Why look further when there is so much good screen entertainment in my own language? 

Sometimes, however, I decide I have had enough of dramas set in the UK or the US and I venture out of my linguistic comfort zone to see what else is going on in the world.

We live, as you may have noticed, in a golden age of multilingual TV opportunity. Never before has so much 'foreign language' material been so easily available to the viewer. The default terrestrial television around here is, of course, in French, but there is more than that if you are willing to explore.

The major channels in France, and subscription streaming channels, all show films and series in a variety of languages.

There is great satisfaction to be had in immersing yourself in the cultures of the world through the work of their creative filmmakers. 

In particular, here on the European continent we have a chance to observe creative cross-fertilisation. Television viewing can become a way of understanding how other countries relate to each other without the involvement of Britons or Americans.

I will give you an example of what I mean. That night, when I was channel-hopping, I ended up clicking on something I would not normally. 

I was scrolling through the catch-up programming on Arte (a mainstream channel and website available in several languages) when I got bored of pressing buttons and settled on a mini-series called Le prix d’une vie (A Life’s Worth). I was not convinced by the synopsis but I thought: why not? How bad can it be? 

It is a Swedish production about the lives of peacekeeping troops who were sent from Sweden to Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1993 as part of the UN peacekeeping force. 

There was no option for English dubbing or subtitles so I had to listen to the original language and read the subtitles in French at the bottom of the screen. 

Slowly, I was drawn out of my Anglo-centric bubble and into a very pan-European view of recent history. 

These Scandinavian soldiers came from a country of longstanding neutrality and were placed in the very difficult conditions of an incomprehensible, genocidal civil war.

The writing and directing emphasised low-key human stories involving the peacekeepers and inhabitants of the host country and how they managed in the midst of violence, confused authority and human degradation. 

The themes were that almost all human beings have the same aspirations regardless of where we live; how our neighbours can turn into our persecutors if civil society breaks down; and how difficult it is for well-meaning outsiders to intervene and do more good than harm.

As I watched, my mind was racing all over the place: listening to a language I did not understand, describing a conflict that was alien to me, and frantically translating the French words into English in my head. 

It was an exercise in simultaneous comprehension and empathy. I was the outsider watching other outsiders trying to make sense of the mission they had been given.

I don’t want to get too philosophical – this was just television – but surely this was a demonstration of how a popular form of entertainment can contribute to international understanding, if we are willing to suspend our cultural prejudices and venture away from our own familiar language.