i love canal+

so one of the reasons why living in france is so great is because of canal+. canal+ is a digital cable decoder that you pay for and in addition, you get 5 special cable channels....sorta like hbo or showtime. we mainly subscribe to it because its the only way the boy can watch his football matches (real football...not american). apparently, sporting events are not broadcasted on free national tv stations in europe, unless its a championship league match of some sort. bizarre i know, especially how in the u.s., everyone lives for monday night football on abc (or whatever channel its on)...but i guess the difference is that american broadcasting channels survive only on advertisement (not the case in europe). anywho, now while i sound like a serial couch potato blogging about it, canal+ is one of my favorite things.

now the reason why i like it so much is that unlike american cable channels, canal+ broadcasts a wide variety of movies and tv series that are not just strictly american productions. lots of great foreign films and fabulous BBC productions (tv and movies) and for my benefit, some very very highly entertaining tv series. Some of my new favorite movies are BBC productions like Mrs. Henderson Presents (wonderful performance by Judi Dench) and Separate Lies (Emily Watson).

And I discovered two of my absolute favorite comedies on canal+ : How I Met Your Mother (a CBS production) and Weeds (Showtime). Both are a two thumbs up from me....if you've never watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother, definitely get caught up on the CBS website (the full episodes are available for free online) while they are on hiatus due to the strike. Great show...great writing...and a fabulous performance by Neil Patrick Harris. Yes, the former and now gay Doogie Howser does a great job as the friend you always wished you had and hoped you never dated if you ever went bar and club-hopping in New York :) Its one of the few comedies I laugh out loud to.

i get a good selection of both tv shows and films over here in france because of canal+ and its partly because canal+ has to be pretty selective over which productions they decide to buy the rights to and then consequently dub and/or translate subtitles. so already...it has to be pretty good in the first place.....and while i do miss out on all the new shows in the u.s., though a lot of them are freaky reality shows, i can rest assured that if something is a hit in the u.s., it'll be on canal+ at some point!