Why Can’t the English (learn to speak)?
The Australians, not the British, first made life rough for Barb and me.
Let me explain. About four years ago, after months of “encouragement” from our daughter, we finally streamed and enjoyed Friday Night Lights. Once we finished the semi-soaper we looked for a new familyish-type drama to turn to and stumbled on Offspring.
The show was broadcast on the little-known Acorn Network. It centered on Nina Proudman, a slightly kooky obstetrician, her even kookier sister Billie, and the rest of their eccentric family. We were hooked by the scene of Nina delivering the baby of an old acquaintance, only to discover mid-forceps that her own daddy was also the daddy of the new baby.
Our only problem was that the show was a 100% Australian production. We could not understand a single word that half of the characters were saying. We found their accents impenetrably thick. After almost every line of dialogue Barb and I looked at each other and said “What?” Finally, after much fumbling with the three remotes that control our TV, we managed to activate closed captioning.
And the Proudman world opened to us. We were able to enjoy every moment of Nina and her family’s hijinks. We became so proficient at merging the sensory input of the picture, the voices, and the subtitles that Barb could still do her craftwork, I could still do my crosswords, and neither of us would miss a single beat.
After Offspring we moved on to A Place To Call Home, a slightly heavier Australian drama. Closed captioning was again a staple of our viewing, as it was for the New Zealand comedy Nothing Trivial that followed.
And by this point, we were permanently hooked. No, not just on Australasian TV, but on closed captioning. CC On is now the default setting on our television no matter what we are watching. We get to digest every word of dialogue, we see the lyrics of the background music, and on episodes of 1883 we were even told repeatedly that there was “German background chatter” that was totally inaudible through the TV speakers.
Admittedly, for live sports and news shows the subtitles lag behind the action. And in those live settings, the subtitles are often painfully (or laughably) inaccurate. In rare situations, the text covers up some key visuals. But it is a trade-off we are glad to make.
So Nina, please give us another kooky Aussie season of Offspring. Netflix, throw your Emily in Paris French accents at us. Queen Elizabeth, torture us with your hoity-toity enunciation on The Crown. As long as we have our trusty CC we can handle it all!
This is episode 2 of our My Fair Lady project, using a title or lyric from each song in the original Broadway cast album to inform or inspire a blog post.
Previous Posts in the series:
Getting More From Les 