Germans Love David Hasselhoff / Live-Action TV

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Real Life Examples

• Ask anyone from Britain or America what Rowan Atkinson's most famous role is from, and they'll probably say Blackadder. Ask anyone in mainland Europe and Russia what he's most famous for, and they'll answer Mr. Bean. It helps that the comedy is mostly physical so there is very little dialogue to translate. Mr. Bean is also very popular in Iran, Thailand (as the Mr. Bean-themed cafe in Bangkok can attest to) and Japan. Rowan Atkinson once told that, during his visit to Japan, a crowd of rabid Mr. Bean fangirls tore his suit to bits, and he was lucky to escape relatively intact!
  • Mr. Bean is also very popular in Malaysia to the point where there is a thriving Mr. Bean impersonator industry and a Malaysian ripoff called Bendul. The BBC even holds Mr. Bean lookalike contests frequently in the country!
• American comedian and Saturday Night Live alum Rich Hall has, for some reason, always been infinitely more popular in the United Kingdom, even before turning up on QI, to the point that he now lives in London.
• Pretty much everything Cris Morena produced was extremely popular in Israel for years among tween girls, much to the chagrin of everyone else.
  • Cris Morena shows are MASSIVELY popular in ALL of Latin America and Italy. In particular Chiquititas and Floricienta caused a mania that was off the charts!
• Thanks to Generations, Turkey may be the only country in the world where Kelly Rutherford is as well known as her Gossip Girl castmates.
• 2 Broke Girls has been a huge success in China lately; many young Chinese say that they can relate to Max and Caroline's struggles with poverty and their attempts at setting up a business.
• 24 has a large Japanese fanbase, mainly due to the Memetic Badass status of Jack Bauer. In fact, Jack Bauer was featured in a few of the Calorie Mate commercials, and got action figurines and even his own theme song sung by the Japanese dub voice actor himself!
  • Also heavily promoted in the Philippines first on free channel ABS-CBN and cable channel AXN, and later on Solar channel CT (formerly Jack City) and AXN.
  • It is also very popular in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. One Congolese man even said that if Sutherland showed up in the DRC and told the people there to stop fighting each other, they'd do it.
• The German action show Alarm für Cobra 11 is very popular in other European countries like Spain, Italy and Hungary, where it is treated the same way as most well-known, top-rated American TV series (and on occasions produces better ratings than those).
• ALF:
  • The sitcom has been very popular in Ukraine since the 1990s.
  • It was very popular in Argentina and Mexico, where Alf's Catchphrase (¡NO HAY PROBLEMA!) is still in vogue.
  • In Germany, Alf's iconic voice actor recorded a music album in character ("Tommi Piper singt Alf"). Almost all episodes were turned into audio plays, and there were several audio plays with original stories. The Made-for-TV Movie that followed the series (Project Alf) was released to theaters.
• Allegra's Window was very popular with Hispanic viewers, airing for a year longer than the original English run of the show on Tr3s Jr. Blue's Clues also was this with the same demographic, and still occasionally airs to this day on Tr3s.
• When reruns of American Gladiators were run in Great Britain, the Brits liked it so much they made their own and their Gladiators' version impressed the original's producers enough that they incorporated many of their ideas into the original (even more in the Revival.)
• American Soaps in South Africa:
  • The Bold & the Beautiful and Days of Our Lives are the most popular American soapies broadcast in South Africa. Both have been on air for over 25 years in South Africa. The respective casts visit the country often, and some have made guest appearances on local shows.
  • American soapies which have failed to find an audience in SA include All My Children, Passions, and General Hospital.
• According to this Christian Science Monitor article, American TV dramas are very popular in Japan, but not in America itself. Partly because American shows tend to be about characters who aren't students or salary men.
• America's Funniest Home Videos is based on a segment of the Japanese show Kato-chan Ken-chan Gokigen TV, which ran for six years. AFV has been running for over 20 years and counting.
• The original U.S. version of The Apprentice was a moderate hit in the United States, but the format has proven much more successful in Europe: both the British and Irish versions of the show have consistently brought in huge ratings and are proportionally far more talked about in the local media than the original is in the States.
• Are You Being Served?:
  • Although it was popular enough in Britain, it is well known as one of the most unexpectedly successful transatlantic transplants, being very popular in the United States.
  • It was popular in the state of New South Wales in Australia (The ONLY state!) because until quite recently, the biggest department store retailer in that state was called Grace Brothers. John Inman even reprised his character of Mister Humphries in a short-lived Australian clone of the show.
• Barney & Friends is huge in Latin America. It's the flagship show of preschool channel Discovery Kids, merchandise is more abundant there than in North America and it is featured at a popular kids' resort in Cancun which not only offers live shows, but also a character breakfast.
  • It's also pretty popular in Asia (specifically Malaysia and Singapore) and the Middle East, and the live shows continue to tour in those regions. It is also viewed more positively in those regions.
  • Barney & Friends was incredibly popular in the United Kingdom during the mid-1990s and early-2000s, generating a live show at Alton Towers and exclusive merchandise. Much like in Asia, it has been viewed more positively in the UK.
• Famously, Baywatch was cancelled after one season by NBC due to poor ratings. However, when it was imported overseas, it became a massive success, which prompted Britain's LWT and other international channels to demand more episodes. It was the Hoff himself who helped to revive Baywatch. The show went on for several more seasons/series and it is estimated that over one billion people across the globe watched it at some point. Never underestimate the international language of Pamela Anderson running in a swimsuit.
• Mexicans and Brazilians love Beakman's World. In the United States it was not quite as successful as similarly themed Bill Nye the Science Guy; however, Beakman was a massive hit in Brazil and Mexico, becoming a staple of the networks that aired them (TV Cultura in Brazil, Warner Channel and Canal Once in Mexico), while Nye was completely ignored. To this day, Paul Zaloom himself regularly performs the live version of his show in these countries.
• The Swedish crime series Beck is said to be quite popular in Germany.
• The Benny Hill Show:
  • Benny Hill has been much more popular elsewhere than in his native Britain, where the non-PC nature of Hill's humor is poorly tolerated.
  • It's very popular with the French audience.
  • The Americans must like the show a lot, since it still keeps receiving Shout Outs in American shows all the time. In an issue of Garth Ennis' Punisher, a British character asks an American character why this is the case.
  • Both the guy and his show were wildly popular in Romania of The '80s as well as in the early part of The '90s.
  • It also tends to be very popular in Mexico.
• The 1960s American sitcom Bewitched was popular in Japan. The Magical Girl genre may have arisen from it. And it still airs up to this day on TV Tokyo, right after My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic!
• The American anthology show Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction is extremely popular in Germany where it's called "X-Factor". It's been airing on Sundays for the last 17 years due to its constant high popularity and is a source of nostalgia for kids who grew up in the early 2000s. The show later got its own season that was produced in Germany, which didn't end up being as popular as the original. Now, tv reruns still show the old episodes.
• The Big Bang Theory:
  • It is the number one comedy in Latin America, comparable to the love for House.
  • The Big Bang Theory is the most watched show in Canada, topping the ratings each week. However, the show, as of the last season, has hit serious Hype Backlash, due to the extreme Adored by the Network treatment that Bell Media (owner of CTV, which simulcasts the CBS broadcasts in Canada), which will given any excuse to broadcast marathons on any of its channels (including those where it doesn't fit, like MuchMusic, Space Channel and the Canadian feed of Discovery Channel).
  • It's also extremely popular in China.
  • Though it's not reached total cultural saturation in the UK quite as much as Friends did, you'd never know that from how often it's shown on UK TV, with the number of The Big Bang Theory reruns on E4 comparable that of Friends before they lost the rights to the latter. They regularly run somewhere between four and six older episodes twice a day and have done for years, which seems to be a fair judge of its popularity. Plus, if you've got a British friend who only watches one American sitcom, odds are very high that it's either The Big Bang Theory or Modern Family (and BBT has the added advantage of being on a FreeView channel).
• As of 2010, Big Brother is still popular in many countries despite being cancelled in the Netherlands (its country of origin) back in 2006. It is particularly popular in Britain, for some reason. In Brazil, it had sort of a Popularity Polynomial, where after many years as a big deal the show entered a rut starting in the mid-2010s, and then during the COVID-19 Pandemic lots of viewers were driven back to BBB (due to both enforced home isolation and how unlike TV/movies/sports the reality show didn't need to stop production), leading to the best ratings in a decade, and the following season was just as popular.
• The Big Comfy Couch was big in the United States to the point where it was still on a few public television stations into 2011, thanks to it being a staple of late 90's to mid-2000's public TV programming. ^note  The show was not a part of PBS Kids per se, but rather syndicated by American Public Television to public TV stations outside the PBS system. As almost all public TV stations are PBS affiliates anyway, the difference is basically negligible.
• Big Time Rush has a large fanbase in Mexico and South America. Their social medias have a good amount of Spanish comments, they recorded a Spanglish song with DJ Maffio, and have a Spanish version of their song "Worldwide". The Mexican portion of their comeback tour even sold out within one day.
• Black Mirror certainly got attention in the UK during its first two series on Channel 4, but it didn't become a true pop culture touchstone until it was picked up by the US-based streaming service Netflix, who eventually started producing new episodes (after Channel 4 backed out due to budget concerns) once it caught on with American viewers. The show became so popular in the US and beyond that most people now think of it as a Netflix original series first and foremost.
• The American TV series Black Sheep Squadron was very popular in France, where it was renamed Les Têtes brûlées. The last DVD volume was released in France but not the U.S, and the occasional review or article on air-combat themed works is likely to reference it.
• The Bold & the Beautiful, shortened to just Beautiful, was wildly popular in Italy in the 1990s and still enjoys popularity to this day. It is so engraved in the Italian pop culture that tellings of real-life convoluted stories, not really serious drama or gossip fuel are called Beautiful and sometimes met with an ironic humming of the theme song.
• Much like how Australian soap operas are popular in UK and Ireland, Brazilian telenovelas from Rede Globo are very popular in Portugal to the point that the finale of A Próxima Vítima is the eleventh most-watched broadcast in Portuguese television history. It helps the fact that Globo co-financed SIC when the latter launched in 1992.
• Attempts at remaking the short-lived UK television series Britain's Worst Driver for other countries haven't ended well — with the sole exception of Canada's Worst Driver, which not only had a very successful fourteen-season run, but also managed to spawn two (much shorter) spinoff shows: Don't Drive Here and Canada's Worst Handyman.
• Some vintage BritComs are still vastly popular in Poland, where they used to run on the third channel of public television, many years after they were shot. Examples include Keeping Up Appearances, Yes, Minister, Red Dwarf, Blackadder, The Fast Show, Open All Hours or Absolutely Fabulous.
  • Many Brit Coms are very popular in Australia.
• British TV is adored by the Czechs. In general, Czechs love British dry and black humour and several shows have an extremely strong cult following. Although the audience tend to like similar stuff as other fans from other countries, and it can't be said that the series in question were unpopular among the British audience. Both original versions and dubs are appreciated and they're still shown in re-runs and bought on DVDs. Some of it is caused by the fact that English is a widely studied foreign language and English teachers (Anglophiles by default) inflict their favourite shows on kids at school. American shows have their fair share of dedicated fans as well, but the special love belongs to the British. Specific examples:
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus and their films are amazingly popular and frequently quoted. Monty Python's memes are as popular in the Czech Republic as anywhere else. Michael Palin, Eric Idle and John Cleese are especially admired. In 2012, John Cleese made a series of ads promoting the London Olympic Games, specifically aiming at the Czech audience. It was way too cool.
  • Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. These shows were so popular that one theatre ordered a play to be written based on the show's premise with the beloved characters. The roles were performed by those actors who dubbed them in the series. The play was a smashing hit and it is still on. In The New '10s.
  • Red Dwarf is an archetypal sci-fi and one of the most well-loved Brit Coms. Its characters are insanely popular among Czech geeks. The dubbing was of extraordinary quality, and even people who hate dubbing in general own that the Czech version of Red Dwarf is an exception. "Kosmopako" and "Maa-goor" ("smeghead" was not used consistently) are still used and the source is recognized. Trpasli-con ("Dwarf Con") is one of the most popular conventions, and it is frequented by the voice cast, who not only do Q&A sessions, but also dub extracts from the show live — sometimes improvised, sometimes with scripts. As a proof, read this article called Czech the Difference at reddwarf.co.uk.
  • 'Allo 'Allo!: It had a great translation and amazingly well chosen cast of voice actors, some of them real stars. Some catchphrases went memetic.
    • Related to the Only Fools and Horses example above, Allo Allo is also pretty well known and loved in the former Yugoslavia, if not as much as OFAH, thanks to both being run together in a single slot.
  • A Bit of Fry and Laurie: The show never aired in the Czech Republic, but people still know it and love it very much. For example, there are Fan Vids on YouTube with Czech subtitles. As an example of exceptional love, one cheeky fan translated and provided subtitles for Hugh Laurie's musical number, performing a song called "America". Its only lyrics are intensely pronounced "America" and "the States". If you're wondering, the Czech word for "America" is "Amerika" and "the States" translates as "státy". See it here.
• Canadian TV movie The Challengers, retitled Marie et sa bande, was widely popular in France. It was rebroadcast many times in The '90s.
• Mexican comedian Chespirito's El Chavo del ocho has this status pretty much everywhere south of its home country:
  • The show is absurdly popular in Brazil, nearly 30 years after its run in Mexico ended, thanks in no small part to its Superlative Dubbing. Reruns of Chaves are played on a particular TV channel before the afternoon's soap operas, and they often outdo the soapies in terms of audience. Some actors of the show came to Brazil several times, especially Edgar Vivar. Also, many Brazilians got sad or even cried (even adults) when Chespirito died in 2014. The sadness was almost of the same levels as the death of Ayrton Senna in 1994.
  • It's very popular in Argentina. There was a time that it could be seen on three TV stations at the same time.
  • The show has an everlasting impact in popular culture in Colombia. The show is a staple of morning TV, and the actors are revered as VIPs, homaged frequently and even invited to certain cultural forums and the like.
  • Chilean TV stations still air re-runs of the show (and of Chespirito's normal comedy show), and welcomed Chespirito and Co. warmly whenever they dropped by.
  • The Animated Adaptation has a small following of American fans, mostly teenagers.
  • Just to get an idea how popular the show is in Latin America, when Chespirito died, most of the people who attended his funeral were foreigners. While there were some Mexicans, they were a minority compared with the foreign fans of the show. Some even showed up at the funeral cosplaying as their favorite El Chavo characters.
  • Interestingly, it seems that the show is also a Cult Classic in Japan. The show was dub to many languages since its first airings including Japanese, but it became particularly famous in Japan with the advent of the Internet when it went through Memetic Mutation for how surreal it is.
  • On the opposite side, although popular in Mexico at the beginning, with time a certain Vocal Minority of Mexicans came to, well, dislike the show as they feel it gives a bad impression of Mexican culture and/or question its quality, resenting that this show is what most Latin Americans and other countries associate with Mexico and not some of its other very rich and better quality cultural heritage. This revisionist view of Chespirito's work has became more and more common in recent years, especially among younger Moral Guardians.
• Columbo was perhaps bigger in Japan than it was even in the US. This page details much of what Japan got during the series run and to this day Japan is the only country to get the full series on Blu-Ray - in a deluxe wooden cigar box packaging, no less!
  • Columbo is very popular in Hungary, where even a statue was erected depicting Peter Falk as the titular character. The official reason is that Falk might be related to 19th century Hungarian publisher Miksa Falk, however this is heavy disputed.
  • Romania loved the show so much that when the station ran out of new episodes to air in 1974, the Romanian people threatened to riot and Peter Falk had to give a speech assuring them that a new season was being made.
• American talk-show host Conan O'Brien was so popular in Finland, allegedly due to a passing resemblance to the (female) Finnish president, he toured there to huge crowds. Perhaps it is because he had almost the same haircut as Aki Kaurismaki's Leningrad Cowboys when they toured the US. He often refers to Finns in his jokes.
  • The president thing was made up by Conan himself. Why did he start to make these jokes? A Message Board conspiracy spammed him with postcards to get Finland featured in Conan O'Brien Hates My Homeland and the quantity of mail caught his attention. He was also the only American talk-show host on Finnish TV with any significant amount of following. The Finnish somehow claim they don't know who Jay Leno or David Letterman are, and they don't care.
• The British prime-time soap Coronation Street is very popular in Canada, to the point where stars of the show regularly come to the country on Inside the Actor's Studio-like tours.
• The Crayon Box aired in America with Bananas in Pyjamas and is not remembered that well. In Canada, it was one of YTV Jr.'s signature programs at the time, airing for 5 years.
• Crocodile Hunter was incredibly popular in both the United States and the United Kingdom for years. However, despite its own popularity in its native Australia, a Vocal Minority of Aussies despise it, claiming it to be part of a Cultural Cringe.
• Dallas was very popular in Romania during the 1980s as a result of a plan Gone Horribly Right. The Communist dictatorship at the time aired the show, believing the show's theme of greed, excess and corruption would make the people disgusted with capitalism. Instead, it had the opposite effect: the people loved the show thanks to the main character, the greedy yet charming J.R. Ewing, and wished to have the cool, rich things the Ewings had... and wondered why couldn't they have the same things as well, which, alongside many other factors, eventually led to the overthrow of the Communist regime. The show was so popular in Romanian that when J.R.'s actor Larry Hagman visted the country in the 1990s, many people thanked him for freeing their country.
  • It was also huge in Britain, thanks to Irish DJ Terry Wogan and his obsession with the series on his radio show. However, it was possibly more popular in Ireland, a country already obsessed with Americana, and spawned such unauthorised spinoffs as the Irish country singer Tom Allen changing his name to TR Dallas, and an ice-cream!
• Days of Our Lives is huge in Barbados, even though the series began to be shown there more than a decade after its début. Here's a for instance.
• The Canadian Degrassi franchise of teen dramas had always had a cult following south of the border, where it aired on PBS.^note Kevin Smith notably counted himself among the show's American fans, later becoming a Promoted Fanboy when the show was relaunched and he got to direct, write, and star in two episodes. However, with the creation of The Next Generation (later known as simply Degrassi), it was arguably more popular in America than it was in Canada, to the point where TeenNick, the American channel that airs the show, began to take an increasing (and increasingly controversial) role in its production. Most notably, starting in season 9 they started splitting seasons into serialized "chapters", and for a while they experimented with a telenovela-style format.
  • Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High were quite popular in Australia. Part of the reason is attributed to the character Wheels wearing a sweater for an Australian rules football team in an episode. On a grimmer note, a man from Melbourne was charged with stalking an actress from the show via mail. Even well into the run of The Next Generation, they would re-run Junior High and High quite a bit, and Australian fans continue to travel all the way to Canada to see cast members' public appearances.
• Dinner for One is an 18-minute sketch made for German television in 1963 that has a far bigger shelf life in other European countries:
  • It's a staple in every German New Year's celebration, aired every year since 1963 by multiple stations and the most frequently repeated TV programme ever, always shown in the original English without subtitles. But not until 2018 on British television.
  • It is very popular in Norway, where it airs every December 23 as "Grevinnen og Hovmesteren" ("The Countess and the Butler").
  • In Sweden it has aired every New Year's Eve (2004 excepted) since 1976.
  • In Denmark it also airs every New Year's Eve at midnight and the Danish comedian Casper Christensen even wrote and acted as Miss Sophie in a parody called "The 80th Birthday" ("80-års fødselsdagen").
  • It's very popular in Finland. The sketch is broadcast every New Year.
• Dinosaurs is incredibly popular in Brazil, with constant reruns and the derived comic book lasting longer in the country with locally made stories. For a couple of years in the 1990s, you could hear Baby Sinclair's catchphrases everywhere you went, and the show was far, far more widely watched than The Simpsons, who was seen as more of a cult show for a highbrow audience.
• It should be said that Doctor Who is a widely beloved bit of British pop culture, with speculation over the identity of the next Doctor frequently rivalling that of the next James Bond, and usually surpassing that of the next Prime Minister. However, it is also massive globally.
  • IT regularly achieves ratings of over 7 million in South Korea (comparable with its UK ratings). Series 4 won an award for 'Most Popular Foreign Drama', collected by former producer Phil Collinson.
  • It's also said to have a small fanbase in Japan as well, due to its effects being not too far off from those used in traditional Toku.
  • It's also huge in America, to the point where the famous TV movie was an attempt to relaunch the classic series on Fox. While that never got going, the revived series became massively popular thanks in part to syndication on BBC America, and most recently, a deal with Disney that has amplified the budget. Of course, it also helps that David Tennant, by far the best known of the modern Doctors, took the role after becoming internationally famous for his scenery-chewing role as Barty Crouch Junior in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Now, the series is so big that starring on it is seen as a straight ticket to Hollywood super-stardom for any who are interested, with Who alumni starring in both the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon.
• Downton Abbey has been a huge success in the United States, one which goes well beyond the usual niche market to which British Costume Dramas appeal; PBS, traditionally a collective of non-commercial public broadcasters, was achieving ratings more in line with the main commercial networks.
• Drake & Josh was huge in Latin America, especially Mexico. This is to the point where Drake Bell has held concert tours in Mexico, and much later fled there to escape legal troubles.
• The football Soap Opera Dream Team was successful in its native UK but because it was the early days of Sky TV, not everyone was able to watch it. However in Ireland the channel it aired on was terrestrial - so the show had more viewers in Ireland. Philip Barantini - who starred in the first four seasons - describes UK people being indifferent but he got mobbed by fans when he went to Dublin.
• The BBC's EastEnders is pretty popular in the States, so much so that there was a huge outcry when BBC America pulled it from their schedule in 2003. Luckily, Dish Network stepped in a year later to snap up the broadcast rights and it continues airing on there to this day, even though it's two months behind the UK broadcast. North Carolina is said to be home to America's biggest EastEnders fanclub.
• A escrava Isaura ("The slave Isaura"):
  • This 1970s Brazilian soap opera, set in late 19th-century Imperial Brazil, was a huge success in Latin America.
  • It was an insane, unbelievable hit in parts of Eastern Europe. In Poland "Izaura" became one of the most popular female names for a few years and legend says that at some point people from one country (which one it is varies in many rumors) were even saving money to buy Isaura's freedom.
  • In China, the series is basically synonymous with Brazil. Protagonist Lucélia Santos visited the country a few times, and won both a fan-voted award for Artist of the Year and was honored by the Chinese government.
  • The 2004 remake was also fairly popular in Chile.
• ETC, a channel under Solar Entertainment in the Philippines, is the reason for the smash ratings and huge success for their broadcasts of The Vampire Diaries and its spinoff The Originals, with both shows having huge fans among Filipinos. When TVD aired a Carol Banawa song on a Season 7 episode, Filipinos all over the globe rejoiced, including local viewers. In the TVD series finale, fans nationwide cried together, and the national broadcast was a social media hit. (Chord Overstreet's song Hold On, which was featured during that episode, also brought back memories of ETC being the national TV broadcaster for Glee in its 6 seasons, Chord having played Sam Evans from season 2 onwards.)
• The Eurovision Song Contest is popular in Australia, despite it being on the other side of the planet from the rest of the nations competing and starting at between 3am and 5am, due to time differences. Australians have represented the UK and other nations in the contest on more than one occasion (Olivia Newton-John, Gina G, Jane Comerford), and SBS, Eurovision's Australian broadcaster, has their own commentary team for the event, but only after Terry Wogan retired, since his commentary was so insanely popular in Australia that both initial attempts to replace him and the British commentary team with local versions (in 2001 and '04) sparked howls of protest. Australia, as an affiliate member of the Eurovision network, has been allowed to enter a competitor for several years now.
  • Became an Ascended Meme during the 2011 Junior Eurovision, where every entry got 12 points from Australia (complete with a message from a young Australian). Brought up again during the opening monologue of 2013, which featured a "live" shot of an Australian family staying up to watch the final: they were all asleep on the couch. One of the semifinals for 2014's contest featured an unabashed tribute to the country as the interval act, performed by Jessica Mauboy. The country's love for Eurovision eventually reached its apex in February 2015, when (for the contest's 60th anniversary), the EBU finally gave Australia a chance to participate in the contest. They have proven good studies: their debut entry finished fifth, and all but one of their subsequent entries have qualified for the final (with their 2016 entry actually finishing as runner-up!).
  • The contest is slowly but surely gaining an international audience. Some notable countries include Kazakhstan (who have broadcast the contest every year since 2012 and have a massive desire to compete, to the point where they were invited to the 2018 Junior Eurovision contest and have competed every year since, finishing as runner-up in both 2019 and 2020), the United States (where it briefly found a home on LGBT-themed network Logo, slowly gaining an audience over the years - 2018 winner Netta even managed to top the US dance charts with her victorious song "Toy" - while the 2019 contest was streamed on Netflix and 2021’s on Peacock), and China (although their hopes to keep broadcasting the contest were ground to a halt by censoring some 2018 acts in the first semi-final, leading to their being banned from broadcasting the second semi and the grand final). Recently, a government official from New Zealand said that their neighbor Australia's success has made them consider making a bid to compete, although the contest hasn't been broadcast there since 2016.
  • The USA's interest was piqued again by Will Ferrell's film Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, which was heavily promoted by Netflix and was near the top of the USA's rankings. As a result, an American spin-off was launched in 2020, in which the 50 states, the overseas territories, and Washington D.C. will compete against each other.
  • South Africa also has a small but intrigued fan base, most of whom prefer entries from earlier years of the contest that were Covered Up by popular South African singers in Afrikaans. There was at least one contest (1971) that was broadcast in a surprising number of African countries (Uganda, Mauritania, Mauritius, Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, Sierra Leone, and Tunisia) but there’s no word about whether or not they continued to show it to such an extent subsequently.
  • Some entries find surprising but specific appeals to demographics within the contest you wouldn't immediately expect. In the 2019 contest, San Marino's Serhat didn't really score at all with the Western countries (including San Marino's more-than-neighbor Italy), but scored incredibly well with countries in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, whose sixty-five televote points put him tenth with the public vote. (This could partially be explained by Serhat being Turkish, at least with the Balkans, but I guess the Eastern Europeans just kinda dug it).
    • Diaspora voting also means certain countries will score quite well with places you wouldn't expect. It's not uncommon for Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland to score very well with Ireland, Norway, and the United Kingdom because of it. There were also a few years where Malta suddenly became very fond of Azerbaijan's entries, awarding them top marks for four years in a row.
• Everybody Hates Chris is an absurdly popular show in Brazil. Despite its small North American success, it has a cult following among Brazilian youngsters, with some quotes from the show being normally heard during everyday conversations. The show is aired virtually every day, with nine to 12 episodes in sequence. All the episodes have been aired at least twice.
• The series version of Fame, much like Baywatch nearly a decade later, owed its revival after cancellation to this trope. The series had begun as a Midseason Replacement in January 1982 on then-last place NBC; running for that year and one full season before NBC canceled the show in 1983. However, the series had proven quite popular in Europe and especially the United Kingdom (with several songs from the soundtrack album becoming hits there); which led to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer partnering with LBS Communications to renew the series for First-Run Syndication for four more seasons until its cancellation after the 1986-87 season. Even to this day, a number of the surviving cast members will periodically travel to the UK to perform for charity events there.
• Father Ted is popular enough in the United Kingdom, but an absolute monster hit in Ireland where is endlessly re-run even a decade after it finished, occupying roughly the equivalent spot that Only Fools and Horses has in Britain. After all, it was created by Irish writers, starred an Irish cast and was actually set in Ireland. On the other hand, it was specifically created for British audiences so its popularity in Ireland wasn't intended, or at least wasn't the main aim.
• The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air:
  • Without a shadow of a doubt, it is the most popular American sitcom in Puerto Rico. It has gotten regular reruns since the 1990s, and it contributed to Will Smith being one of the absolute most beloved celebrities for Puerto Ricans. If he ever visited Puerto Rico, he'd get mobbed.
  • It is wildly popular in the United Kingdom, though it's still popular in the United States, too.
  • It's also the most popular series in Guantanamo Bay Prison!
  • In the early 2000s, the German TV channel RTL used to air marathons of the show every week, until the advent of Big Brother which overtook the channel instead.
• Friends:
  • Broadcasting U.S.-friendly newscasts into Saudi Arabia has been unsuccessful in dissuading anti-Americanism there. Broadcasting Friends, on the other hand, proved quite helpful. This is ironic, considering the ensemble tend to have sex regularly and the women wear revealing clothes, both of which are highly taboo in countries like Saudi Arabia, which are run by Muslim law.
  • Gunther was popular abroad despite being only a minor character.
    • James Michael Tyler (Gunther) was so popular in Dubai that he got offered to be the spokesman for a local coffee brand, but NBC botched the deal (they wanted more money).
  • Even years after its ending, the British freeview channel E4 broadcast several rerun episodes of Friends each day, to the point where the channel was nicknamed 'E-Friends'. Since the channel lost the rights in 2011, its content has become more varied and seemingly attracts fewer viewers. Meanwhile, Comedy Central continues to run the show endlessly.
  • As of 2013, Friends and Seinfeld are the two most rerun shows on the Israeli broadcast networks, in terms of cumulative airtime over the past 45 years (i.e., since the first Israeli television broadcasts). Each of them easily outranks any other foreign or local show in terms of total rerun airtime. Geeking out over "Friends" is probably the one thing an Israeli and Arab could bond over (Friends is popular all over the Middle East).
  • It was very popular in the Czech Republic among the young and the older when it first aired in The '90s, and in The New '10s, chances are that one of the TV channels is airing its reruns.
  • The show also has continued popularity in India.
  • Friends is one of the few mainstream U.S. sitcoms that gained a lasting popularity with the general audiences of Hungary.
  • A large portion of its international fanbase comes from it being used as a teaching tool to learn English. English teachers recommend it because of the plethora of episodes that portray everyday situations and colloquial conversation.
• The Speculative Documentary The Future is Wild is actually popular in Japan, to the point that it has its own manga. A theme park was even opened for a while in Japan.
• Game of Thrones is so popular in India that it was found that Indians are the most likely to interact with GOT related content on social media and were the number one viewers of pirated copies of Season 8. Priyanka Chopra's marriage to Nick Jonas, which in turn made her related by marriage to Sophie Turner, only managed to make its popularity skyrocket even further. There were plans for a Foreign Remake of the series in Indian languages in 2015, and after the finale aired, Cadbury Chocolate made an advertisement directly referring to its reception among the Indian fanbase.
• Game Shows:
  • Many relatively short-lived American game shows have had very successful British versions. Most notably Blockbusters, Catchphrase, Strike It Lucky (adaptation of the short-lived American show Strike It Rich) and Play Your Cards Right (adaptation of Card Sharks). Their adaptations of Gambit, Now You See It, The Cross Wits, ChildsPlay, Every Second Counts, Fun House, and Win, Lose or Draw far outlasted their American counterparts. Note, however, that Card Sharks and Win, Lose or Draw were hardly failures in the United States (the former was revived twice), and even the American Blockbusters is a bit of a Cult Classic. Also, the American Gambit lasted four years, had a one-year revival, and was revived again in 2008-11 as Catch 21.
  • Famous magician Paul Daniels hosted three shows that were all an example (as their American counterparts only lasted one season): Odd One Out (based off Knockout with Arte Johnson), Every Second Counts (named that in America, with Bill Rafferty hosting), and Wipeout (based off the one with Peter Tomarken).
  • Going for Gold has faded from British TV and a 2008 revival was not that popular. The French version, Questions pour un champion, debuted in 1988 and still airs to this day. In a meta example, the show was originally based on a U.S. pilot known as Run for the Money, which never made it to air.
  • Double Dare's Brazilian counterpart, Passa ou Repassa, ran for 13 years, compared to the original version's seven. To add, the original version's 2000 revival lasted two half-seasons while a revival of Passa has been on the air since 2013.
  • In a weird case, Hot Streak was an attempt to introduce Britain's most popular emcee, Bruce Forsyth, to American audiences. Unfortunately, ABC put it up against The Price Is Right and Wheel of Fortune at the height of their early popularity, and it was quickly cancelled. Compare that to its German adaptation, Ruck Zuck, which ran from 1988 to 2004.
  • The Russian-Ukrainian adaptation of Brainiest format ran for around 10 years, while Britain's Brainiest Kid, which originated the format, did not even last a year. A possible reason is the fact that it managed to create an entire movement around it, not unalike What? Where? When?, Brain Ring^note  (both original Russian programmes created by the same person), and Svoya Igra^note  Russian, notable for having a more "intellectual" bent, and yes, also highly popular.
    • The Brainiest format is also big in France, to the point there are two spin-offs, in which contestants are television presenters and comedians, respectively.
  • The syndicated Lingo aired in the U.S. for one season in 1987, while a short-lived primetime version aired on ITV in Britain the following year. But the show truly (T-R-U-L-Y) took off in the Netherlands, where its original run on the NPO lasted until 2014, and it returned in a revived form in 2019 on a commercial channel. The Dutch version was popular enough that its producers bought out the rights to the format from Ralph Andrews Productions, and began to sell it across Europe. The Dutch version would later be recursively imported back to the U.S., resulting in the better-known Game Show Network version hosted by Chuck Woolery, which was a fixture of its original programming in the mid-2000's (on the other hand, a Hotter and Sexier reboot hosted by comedian Bill Engvall in the 2010s fell flat, and was canceled after one season).
  • The Supermarket Sweep format was big in Canada and the United Kingdom during the 1990's.
  • Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? has been a Long Runner in many of the 130 countries who've adapted it. India alone has over seven long-running versions, one each for a different language in India. The original UK show has been revived with Jeremy Clarkson, but had been off the air between 2014 and 2018.
• The World War II series Garrison's Gorillas became popular in China years after it was made.
• The French viewers always loved German police series such as Inspector Derrick. All are stereotypically associated with old people due to their airing slots (between 1PM and 5PM).
• While The Goodies were never repeated on the BBC after the series ended, simply because the BBC's main controller of the eighties didn't like them, the ABC in Australia repeated them extensively throughout the 1980s and 1990s, giving them a continuous Australian fan base since the show originally aired. Thanks to digital television, they're still going.
• In China, Gossip Girl enjoys an immense following. While it's popular in its homeland America, the Chinese are absolutely crazy about this show, to the point they plan to make a Chinese remake version of the show. (The Mexicans beat them to a punch though in doing a foreign remake...)
• In the 1960s series The Green Hornet, Bruce Lee played the role of Kato, and was so popular in Hong Kong, the show was called "The Kato Show", which eventually led to Bruce Lee becoming a movie star in Asia before the United States.
• In the 1990s, the Communist Chinese government was very strict about Western shows being aired. The only show that met their approval was Growing Pains. For a generation of Chinese, Growing Pains was their window to American culture, and the show's influence has even been credited to the notoriously strict Asian parenting standards becoming more lenient. When Alan Thicke died in 2016, an outpouring of grief came from his "other family" in Asia.
• The Australian series H₂O: Just Add Water was a big hit in Europe, mostly the United Kingdom, and Central and Eastern Europe. in fact, the third season aired in the United Kingdom before Australia by a year!
• The French version of Here Come the Brides, Cent filles à marier (A Hundred Girls to Marry Off), was very popular in Canada, as Québec had its own well-known bride drive.
• Hogan's Heroes is popular in Germany due to massive Woolseyism in its treatment of the German characters, giving them different regional accents and adding various other cultural references which were played for comedy.
• In the West, the 1978 American series Holocaust was accused of commercializing such a tragedy as it was aired... but in then-West Germany, it was regarded as a sensation and an event and made many German people explore the traumatic period and their historical responsibility. In the words of The Other Wiki:
  "With an estimated viewership of up to 15 million households, the miniseries turned out to be extremely popular during its initial airing, leading to an increased public interest in the crimes committed during the Nazi era. The series was watched by 20 million people, or 50 percent of West Germany's population, and it first brought the matter of the genocide during World War II to widespread public attention in a way that it never was before. There was a companion show where a panel of historians could answer questions from people phoning in. The historian's panels were overwhelmed with thousands of phone calls from shocked and outraged Germans. The German historian Alf Lüdtke wrote that the historians "could not cope" as they were faced with thousands of angry phone-callers asking how these things could happen."
• Home and Away is so popular in Ireland that it's shown twice a day and has two omnibuses at the weekends. There are some people who actually get withdrawal symptoms if they miss any of them.
• Overlapping with Periphery Demographic, Australian soap operas Home and Away and Neighbours are incredibly popular in Ireland. And their biggest fans are college students. So much so that the actors often get booked to appear at Irish night clubs, especially in towns with a big student population.
  • Both soaps are also very popular in the United Kingdom with Neighbours's viewing figures often surpassing the population of Australia. In fact, this is the only Australian series (and the last imported one to date) to have topped the ratings in Britain.
• iCarly is wildly popular in Australia, the United Kingdom and the Philippines, with huge amount of fans following it when it aired in the country, and by Internet streaming or downloading when they air in the United States. If you join the iCarly fandom, you're as likely to encounter someone from these countries as you are someone from the USA or Canada.
• Austrian cop show Inspector Rex is extremely popular in Australia. Its broadcaster, Australia's multilingual network SBS, has aired it at 7.30 p.m. on a Thursday since 1997. It still has reruns of the Austrian seasons as well as Rex in Rome. The spinoff featuring Stockinger also briefly ran. There was even a parody on an Aussie sketch show featuring one Detective Herring. Davide Rivera, while beloved by the fandom, could not save the Italian audience, but was popular in Russia.
• The American TV series JAG was pitched by Donald P. Bellisario to the networks as Top Gun meets A Few Good Men. It was going to be scrapped after only one season due to poor ratings in the United States on NBC, but when Paramount found that JAG was a huge hit overseas, including Australia, Benelux, France, Germany, Hungary, Scandinavia, and South Africa, CBS was convinced that it should be Uncanceled.
• In Tuscarawas County, Ohio, it's "so T-County" to always watch the latest episode of Jersey Shore when it premieres on television.
• South Korea's historical/fantasy drama Jumong was very successful in its home country, reaching ratings of 50% for its final episodes. However, in Iran for some strange reason, it was seen by 70% of the population. One Iranian teenager reportedly attempted suicide when he couldn't meet an actress from that series, and there is a documentary being made regarding the negative effects of the show on the Iranian society. Two years prior, Jewel in the Palace was dubbed and aired, and turned out to be a huge hit after less than 10 episodes. The popularity of Korean dramas in Iran dates back to the early 80s (60s in Iranian Calendar), when they only could afford to purchase South Korean shows. While most of those shows faded away soon after their humble reruns, airing a South Korean show was both nostalgic and interesting for adults, leading to their popularity amongst younger people.
  • Jewel in the Place is also popular in the Philippines which also invoked a huge interest on Korean culture, particularly the food. This is also in line with the insurgence of Koreans, visiting and living in the country to study English.
• The Canadian comedy series Just for Laughs: Gags is popular in Arabic countries.
• Kamen Riders:
  • Kamen Rider Blade: The show is ridiculously popular in Thailand, gaining more viewers and selling more toys over there than it ever did in Japan. It is so popular, a Thai channel even made an after-school special featuring Kamen Rider Blade. In terms of quality, however, it never stood a chance against the original.
  • Kamen Rider BLACK was very popular in the Philippines; many a young person's face or those in their old years who watched it as kids will light up at the mention of Kuya Robert - Kuya is a Filipino word for a big brother figure and Robert was the Dub Name Change for the protagonist Kotaro Minami. It was also the Gateway Series in Indonesia and Malaysia. Black, there known as Ksatria Baja Hitam (Black Steel Knight), is considered the essential Rider, more so than the original. Finally, it's well liked in Brazil. Alas, Black was the only (Showa-era) installment of the entire Rider franchise (not counting the US adaptations) that aired there in the 1990s. It would only be in 2003 when (Heisei-era) Kamen Rider returned, this time on cable (with Kamen Rider Ryuki and its US spinoff) and in 2014 on free television with Kamen Rider OOO.
  • Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, America's adaptation of Kamen Rider Ryuki, is insanely popular overseas despite the show bombing in in the US. Especially in Japan, surprisingly enough; to the point that Japan got a DVD release, a dub featuring many Kamen Rider veterans, a kick-ass theme song, 3 music albums, action figures of the Riders labeled as "Dragon Knight" versions, and a Japan-only sequel in the form of a novel known as Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight - 2World 1Hearts.
• The BBC's Keeping Up Appearances:
  • In the Netherlands, it is still enjoying reruns with excellent ratings.
  • It's very popular in Finland as well. It gets reruns almost annually.
  • It's also fairly popular in the United States, mostly because various PBS stations (which are, aside from BBC America, the best source of BritComs in the States) have been showing reruns of it for quite some time. The result is that many American Anglophiles (even ones who enjoy shows like The Office (UK), Father Ted, Top Gear or Spaced) are quite fond of it.
• The King of Queens and Kevin James: The King of Queens is a wildly popular sitcom in Germany. It's running several times a day for years now and still manages to catch new viewers. It's safe to say that it's the most successful U.S. sitcom in Germany. The main actor of the series, Kevin James, gets invited to prime-time talk shows and draws a huge crowd to the cinema when he's in a movie. His movie (Zookeeper) even has a cameo of - no, not Hasselhoff, but Thomas Gottschalk, one of Germany's most famous show hosts.
• Knight Rider and The A-Team: The over-the-top dubbing used for the shows in Brazil has given them quite a reputation as unintentional comedies. To such a degree that in Portugal, the Brazilian dubs that aired only once on one channel about 15 years ago are still regularly quoted for laughs. Several people were very disappointed when modern reruns of the show were subtitled instead.
  • The A-Team was so popular in the Netherlands that a scheduled appearance by the cast members was nearly canceled for fear of a human crush occurring. It was only by way of Mr. T urging the crowd to calm down that the whole event wasn't canceled.
• Kojak was such a big hit in Soviet-era Hungary that they made their own unofficial black-and-white parody film in 1980 titled Kojak in Budapest, starring Kojak's Hungarian dubbing actor in the main role. In the film, the Greek-American detective finds out he's actually a Hungarian man named János Kócsag (John Heron), while also dealing with the Culture Clash of returning to his forgotten home and solving crimes the Eastern European way.
• In Spain, Kyle XY was a huge ratings winner. While the final season was overlooked in America, the Spanish religiously watched every last episode, and threw a fit when its unsatisfying cliffhanger ending aired.
• LazyTown was a children's TV show produced in Iceland with talent from Iceland, the United States, and the United Kingdom; but its sheer zaniness and positive reinforcement helped it to become most successful in the latter two countries (note that LazyTown is fairly popular in Iceland too). Magnús Scheving often made promotional appearances in the U.K. as Sportacus, and the show had exclusive merchandise in both the U.K. and U.S. The love from American and British audiences furthered following the show's Memetic Mutation around 2016, and even more so following the death of Robbie Rotten's actor Stefán Karl Stefánsson.
• Latin America apparently loved Life After People so much that they made a two-hour spin-off, Latinoamerica sin Humanos, that focuses exclusively on Latin American countries.
• Spanish family sitcom Los Serrano was an unlikely hit in Finland. The show originally aired for one season during the summer, and was supposed to be dropped by Autumn, but come August, the huge demand for more made the network run the series from the beginning.
• According to this article, Lost is quite popular in Iran despite never actually having been released legally there.
• According to this article, the international popularity of Lucifer was what convinced Netflix to resurrect the show following Fox's cancellation of it after three seasons. The series had lukewarm ratings in the US, but it was big in parts of the world, particularly among Catholic countries who saw the show as being funny.
• MacGyver (1985) took Poland by storm, since it's an entire TV series dedicated to the concept of kombinować. It also happened to remind people about the all-time favourite and endearing Do It Yourself TV series that ran for decades on Polish national TV. There are regions in Poland where the Swiss army knife is explicitly referred to as a "makgajwer" to this day.
• Sky One in the United Kingdom treated Malcolm in the Middle much better than its American parent network, showing it just about every day in just before or in prime-time. It's still very well loved (although it's now on Five Star). It is also very popular in Mexico, airing almost uninterruptedly since 2002 on the early primetime slot, and this in an over-the-air channel. May have something with abusive yet genuine friends and family being no rarity in Mexico.
  • It reached cult status in Poland, where you can easily find people having entire scenes and dialogues memorised. It was also Adored by the Network that bought the syndication rights, as they were doing reruns for years.
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was always big and well-liked in the West, but its popularity in Russia was through the roof. Of course, having a Russian main character who was not a crude stereotype but a complex and nuanced character (who was also intelligent, tough, cultured, charismatic and patriotic), helped a lot.
• Manimal was quite badly received when it first aired and was cancelled after only eight episodes in the States. But oddly enough, it became popular overseas, namely in South Africa.
• Married... with Children:
  • The show was still popular in Germany and Eastern Europe even a decade after it finished. For several years, people in Germany hosted "Bundy parties," where guests dressed up as characters from the show.
  • Poland had a spinoff version that was well received.
  • Argentina has its own version of the show running several years.
  • It was very popular in Hungary. The Hungarian remake, however, bombed no matter how popular the original was in the country.
  • The British version was not very successful. Yes, they do remakes in the United Kingdom as well, less often than in America but usually with the same result.
• The Mentalist has never made the ratings that CBS's other supershows like NCIS or The Big Bang Theory do. It is, however, the most popular TV show in all France.
• Merlin, a British show, is extremely popular in America.
  • It is popular in France as well, to the point that the channel that aired it (Gulli, which is normally a channel for little children) decided to add more live-action to their line-up.
• Metal Heroes series:
  • In Brazil, the franchise was incredibly popular during the 1980s/early 1990s (although with varying degrees of success from series to series). Any Brazilian who was a kid at that time would know about Jaspion or Jiraiya. It's said it was their popularity that allowed the anime boom of the mid-1990s. Takumi Tsutsui, the latter's main actor, has been to the country often and received star treatment from fans, even appearing in talk shows^note not so much the case with Hikaru Kurosaki, who played Juspion, due to him being retired from show business and preferring to run his diving school, Mother Earth Okinawa. Proving Brazil is a toku heaven, in the 1960s one of the first in the genre, National Kid (named after the sponsor, a brand of electronics — nowadays known as Panasonic) became popular in the country, and is still fondly remembered.
  • B-Robo Kabutack: The series is quite popular in Indonesia, China, and Korea. The reason is because the characters are so cute-looking and more importantly, the characters can change into their Super Mode, giving them an edgier look. Even their toys are spreading around in some Asian countries back in 2000s, but the toys are mostly bootlegs and copied from the original Bandai-made ones (Until Bandai made actual legit versions for China and Korea), making this show more popular mostly for its toys than the show itself!
  • The Philippines loves Space Sheriff Shaider, to the point a sequel was made for the country, but ended up more of a sci-fi telenovela than a Metal Heroes show. The 1st in the series, Space Sheriff Gavan, was secondly remembered under the title Sky Ranger Gavin.
  • Space Sheriff Gavan is also quite popular in Indonesia, but all they have left nowadays is the phrase segede Gaban (lit. 'As big as Gavan', referencing the fact that the series featured humongous mecha).
  • Do you know Kidou Keiji Jiban was insanely popular on the 90s back in Panama and Honduras? No? Well, now you do. The dub was mega popular but seen as a bit lacking. In fact there's Spanish fansubs of the show on YouTube because of it! The show also aired in Brazil, too! Jiban also aired in Indonesia in the middle of The '90s to rave reviews and was a big smash hit, that even Jiban appeared in a TV program in 1995 alongside Tokkei Winspector, also another big hit in Indonesian television.
  • The Live Action tokusatsu tv series adaptation of the Message from Space movie is very popular and fondly remembered in Latin America where it is known as Sankoukai.
• The Mole:
  • It was a Belgian concept that lasted for three years. The show had been very successful in Belgium, but the producers didn't want it to overstay its welcome (at least, until they bought it back 13 years later). In the Netherlands, however, the show is still popular after 18 series, being nominated several times for the yearly audience award for the best program on Dutch television. In 2008, members of the broadcasting association that makes the show voted The Mole the best program the association has made in the last 50 years.
  • In the States, The Mole still has a cult fan base for its own version of the show (or at least the non-celebrity versions) despite being Put on a Bus for four years and finally being cancelled in 2008. English Fan Subs for the most recent seasons of the Dutch and Belgian series have subsequently become popular with this cult fanbase, with the Belgian series's host becoming surprised when he learned of this fanbase's existence and being happy to participate in a podcast run by British and Canadian fans about his show.
• Monkey: Ask any Australian who was a kid in the late 80s and early 90s what their favorite TV program was and they will answer Monkey Magic!
• Monty Python's Flying Circus and Monty Python's films are very popular in the United States, usually just as if not more so than in their home country of the United Kingdom. Hilarious in Hindsight is that, back then, nobody believed that it would strike a chord in the USA, because the comedy was so weird, unusual and full of British references that hardly make any sense in other countries. However, its popularity in the U.S.A. is more based on the sheer bizarreness and silliness than the intellectualism. You notice time and time again when Monty Python is referenced in American popular culture or discussed by American fans they talk fondly about the silliness and less about its intellectual, cultural or historical references. Comedian Robin Williams once explained Monty Python's popularity in the U.S.A.: "It basically comes down to men in drag. Any man in a dress is remotely funny in America, and Monty Python features a lot of these." John Cleese credited Terry Gilliam for cracking the American market: "Terry introduced two things in Monty Python all Americans love: tits and violence."
  • However, this pales in comparison to Python's German fanbase. It became so popular in Germany that the Pythons made a series of Monty Python episodes in German. None of the Pythons actually speaks German - they had to do all their lines phonetically.
• Moon Lovers had low ratings in its native country (South Korea), but was surprisingly popular elsewhere (especially in China where it earned 1 billion viewers).
• The BBC's The Musketeers achieved only mediocre ratings in the UK, but is much more popular overseas. In particular, it has fanbases in the States and Italy (plus a smaller fanbase in Chile), where cast members Luke Pasqualino and Santiago Cabrera are originally from. Also a hit in Australia.
• My Babysitter's a Vampire is a Canadian series that is huge in America.
• My Wife and Kids still sees reruns in France and Brazil, and also garnered a huge following in Italy.
• The Nanny:
  • It is very popular in Germany and Austria, and the show has nearly always a weekly or even daily slot on some network.
  • It's well-liked in Argentina, and the Argentinians even have their own version.
  • Australia, too, as The Other Wiki points out.
  • Poland even produced their own remake in early 2000s.
  • It was also very popular in Mexico where a local remake was also made, although it was overwhelmingly panned.
• NCIS: Los Angeles is popular in Portugal, and nearly every news article about the show, as well as nearly all ads and promos, focus nearly exclusively on Portuguese actress Daniela Ruah.
• Australian soap opera Neighbours was very popular in the United Kingdom. There was a period in the late 1980s/early 1990s where the viewing figures for Neighbours were bigger than the population of Australia (it has the honour of being the last imported series to date to top the UK ratings - and the only Australian show ever to do so). At one point there was a rumour in the United Kingdom that the only reason Grundy and Ten were still making the series was that The BBC were still buying it. In fact, the ratings of Neighbours in Australia have declined well below the level that, for Australian commercial TV dramas, generally guarantees cancellation. If the rumour existed, it was proven to be true in 2022 - the series was cancelled not long after Channel 5 (who had bought the rights off the BBC in 2008) announced they would no longer be airing it... but just months later, it was announced that it would continue on Amazon.
• The BBC series The Onedin Line was big in Britain, running nine years, but possibly more so in Europe. Star Peter Gilmore recorded albums especially for the Dutch market, and became a spokesperson for Philips Electronics, and the series became the most popular show in Romania, Gilmore even visiting the country in the late 70s. There was national outcry when Ceaucescu replaced it and all foreign programmes with state broadcasts, possibly fuelling the Revolution.
• Only Fools and Horses is very popular in its home county of Britain, to the point where not a week goes by without it being shown on some TV channel. It is also wildly popular in the former Yugoslavia, especially Serbia and Montenegro. It’s shown with subtitles rather than dubbed, and everyone knows all the show’s catchphrases in English. When Nicholas Lyndhurst, who plays Rodney, went on holiday to Montenegro he got a standing ovation everywhere he went, while John Challis, who played Boycie, visited Serbia several times, and was even considering applying for Serbian citizenship. When he died in 2021, the deputy mayor of Belgrade declared that a street would be named in his honour.
• The Japanese Soap Opera Oshin is very, very well-loved in the Middle East, Peru and, ironically, in South East Asia.
• Pacific Blue is quite popular in Norway, airing every summer there. One summer when it did not air there many of its Norwegian fans got mad and demanded that it should come back.
• Pan Am came and went in the United States, but internationally, the pre-sale rights went extremely quickly and ratings were very strong. It probably helps that the show is about air travel.
• Pawn Stars is really big in Latin America (where it is known as "El Precio de la Historia"), and is the most watched show on the regional feel of The History Channel. In fact, Rick and Corey traveled to Latin America to film exclusive commercials for the region. Not to mention, it's generated a lot of memetic content.
• Perfect Strangers, under the name "Primos Lejanos", was HUGE in Spain in the 90s, to the extent that it still airs on television nearly 20 years later. Much like the Starsky & Hutch example below, the reason for this was an excellent dub. But you don't have to take my word for it.
• The Persuaders!:
  • It's popular in Germany and France due to the German dubbing. (the German dub was so well-received that the French one was based on it rather than the English original).
  • It was also very popular in Hungary in the 1970s.
  • In the early 1970s, its subtitled version was immensely popular in Sweden, so the producers let one episode partly take place in Sweden (episode 19). But they failed to do their research properly, making it odd to watch for the Swedes. Roger Moore had become a great TV star in Sweden some years previously thanks to The Saint, which may explain the success of The Persuaders.
  • Roger Moore: His popularity from The Saint and The Persuaders is also the reason that people in Sweden often see him as the greatest Bond. The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy are often considered to be some of the lesser films in the series but remain famous in Sweden since both of them feature two Swedes. Maud Adams was one and starred in both.
• Surprisingly, Philippine telenovelas are popular in African countries particularly, Pangako Sa Yo, Sana’y Wala Nang Wakas and Kay Tagal Kang Hinintay. They're also popular in Southeast Asian countries too like Vietnam, Cambodia, and even Malaysia! Sadly, despite having at least one Pinoy drama airing in every Asian country, they've yet to penetrate the Japanese market...
  • Speaking of Malaysia, the recently concluded Be Careful With My Heart is also airing there despite the fact that the show hasn't even finished its original run in the Philippines!
  • As of 2016 Philippine dramas from the ABS-CBN network have also been broadcast in South Africa, Mongolia and Peru, the latter to the point of being a blockbuster hit on Panamericana Television as Bridges of Love became the first ever Philippine drama to be broadcast to South America. And recently, they had their dramas now also streaming in India through the MX Player service there.
  • Plans are underway for the current running action soap Ang Probinsyano to be aired outside the country in Spanish speaking Latin America. Before this, the show was memorable for a running meme among Filipinos in the country and abroad (which caught other people by surprise outside the country) using the series theme song (Wag Ka Nang Umiyak by Gary V, originally from Sugarfree) as a background for edited scenes of TV series and movies made internationally as if they were remade for Philippine audiences (some of these videos made by fans, through, feature the slow motion and zooming scenes similar to those used in the series, wile others have included Kyla's cover of Till I Met You (from the drama of the same name), even Vice Ganda and Zsa Zsa Padilla, one even used the current Kayleserye (on GMA-7's Eat Bulaga) theme music God Gave Me You!)
• Most Americans today are unfamiliar with The Phil Silvers Show, or remember it only vaguely. It remained popular in the United Kingdom, thanks to reruns being broadcast on the BBC until 2004. In fact, it is even considered one of the top few classic sitcom imports there. Some attribute this to the British affection for the "loveable rogue" archetype, which Bilko fits to a tee. One measure of how big Silvers was in Britain is that he was the only American comedian to appear in a Carry On movie (Follow That Camel).
• Power Rangers:
  • Disney continued to produce episodes through 2009 because Jetix Europe needed them to do so, despite being Screwed by the Network. Power Rangers RPM would not have happened if PR weren't so popular in Germany. If Saban listened exclusively to the German fanbase's demands after reclaiming PR, The Hoff would have to star.
  • Another big market for the franchise that was instrumental in getting RPM made was the UK. And even later on during the Neo-Saban and Hasbro eras the show is still massively popular, with huge ratings on Pop, a local kids channel, and kids poll's show its beloved by Netflix watchers in the region.
  • PR also has its fair share of popularity in the Arab world, along with a few other shows similar to PR (such as Miniforce). This is most likely due to series creator, Haim Saban, being of Egyptian-Jewish heritage.
  • Power Rangers Wild Force is a very divisive season amongst the English-speaking fanbase. Not so much in Latin America, where it's one of the most beloved seasons in the region, partially thanks to an excellent dub and Ricardo Medina (Cole's actor) being of Puerto Rican descent.
• Prison Break: In the US, "that show on before 24". In China, a legitimate phenomenon.
• According to the accompanying DVD booklet, the short-lived Fox show Profit was apparently a much bigger hit in France.
• Queer Eye is very popular in its' home country of the United States, but in Japan, it's so popular that it's made the country understand the LGBTQ community more.
• The Red Hand Gang originally aired on NBC in the United States and was not very popular. The series has been broadcast often by BBC1 and BBC2 in the United Kingdom, where it is considerably better known than in its home country.
• Riverdale is surprisingly popular in Australia, with each new season consistently rating as the no.1 most watched show in the country on Netflix. All this despite Australians having very little familiarity with the original source material.
• The Samurai: Ask any Australian who was a kid in the mid-1960s what his favorite TV program was; he will probably answer The Samurai.
• Santa Barbara:
  • It is a somewhat obscure soap now in America, but was extremely popular in Russia, leading to any Love Dodecahedron and/or Tangled Family Tree story getting nicknamed “Santa Barbara”.
  • In Croatia, it reigned over the airwaves in the early 1990s, and despite the flood of telenovelas and a thriving domestic TV industry, is still often thought of as the archetypal Soap.
  • In France, Santa Barbara was at least as famous as Dallas.
  • In South Africa, Santa Barbara and The Young and the Restless were the afternoon equivalents in popularity of Dallas in the late 1980s to mid 1990s.
• Saturday Night Live is very popular in Australia, of all places. Huge amounts of fans follow the episodes as they show there, and the show is a major talking point for many Australians.
  • This actually extends to NBC in general. Shows like Parks and Recreation and anything on their late-night lineup really are extremely popular on Australian TV.
  • Speaking of SNL, it is also loved in the Philippines, and has a separate edition aired in South Korea, starring the country's best TV stars and K-Pop talents.
• Scrubs:
  • As John C. McGinley can attest, Scrubs is far more popular in Ireland than America. In Ireland, during the 2000s, it was regular for Radio DJs to mention it, friends to mention it as their favourite sitcom, and at one time, for people with digital TV, it was common for a Scrubs episode to play on more than one station at the same time. It helped that Scrubs got an extremely favourable timeslot (9 p.m. on Mondays, right in the middle of RTÉ Two's comedy night).
  • It's ridiculously popular in Australia.
  • The show is a hit in the United Kingdom.
• For more or less obvious reasons, Seinfeld is extremely popular in Israel. When the show's finale was aired in the United States, it was simultaneously aired in Israel with no subtitles at approximately 6 a.m. due to the time difference, a rare honor for any entertainment show that was previously reserved for world-scale events like the Olympics or the Oscars. Since the early 1990s up until around 2005, reruns of the show had been airing daily on at least one channel. You can even buy Seinfeld-related yarmulkes there. And they sell like hotcakes. As of 2013, Seinfeld and Friends are the two most re-run shows on the Israeli broadcast networks, in terms of cumulative airtime over the past 45 years (i.e. since the first Israeli television broadcasts). Each of them easily outranks (by a wide margin) any other foreign or local show in terms of total rerun airtime.
• Selfie: This 2014 romantic comedy is popular in China even years after the original U.S. broadcast. It also has a higher audience score on Douban than IMDb.
• When S4C (Channel 4's Welsh counterpart) premiered its sports (but eventually just football) show Sgorio in the late 1980's, it gained a cult following among English-speaking viewers because it aired highlights from other European football leagues (such as Germany's Bundesliga, Spain's La Liga, and Italy's Serie A) that were not yet seen on British television before the advent of pay TV. Channel 4 would get the memo and debut its own international football show in 1992.
• Sharon, Lois, and Bram's Elephant Show was successful in Canada, but it was even more successful in the United States thanks to its' airings on Nick Jr..
• Sherlock has a huge Chinese fanbase drawn to its exotic British setting and its Ho Yay.
• During its first three seasons, Smallville enjoyed widespread mainstream popularity and acclaim at home in the United States; the ratings were the best in the entire history of The WB network, the show was referenced in several other shows, actress Kristin Kreuk became the face of Neutrogena's North American ad campaign, Michael Rosenbaum was getting hired to cameo in several movies, and in general the show's stars were frequently featured on TV Guide and other magazines. This three-year golden age culminated in the show achieving a syndication deal with ABC Family at the end of Season 3. And then during Season 4, the domestic ratings began to decline (the reasons why are the subject of much intra-fandom bickering, although most people agree that it probably was at least partially due to the "will they, won't they" Clana subplot boring people). By Season 5, the show had become a cult-level show. But in Latin America, the show remained a remarkable mainstream smash sensation up until the very end in Season 10.
• Small Wonder was once so popular in India, that a copycat series was produced in the Hindi language with Indian actors. Compare that with America, who see that show as either a joke or the very reason why American TV is considered "the vast wasteland". It was really popular in some countries of Latin America as well, where many people in their 20s and 30s will refer to this show as "Vicky".
• Spectreman is a Japanese tokutatsu, but has a loyal following amongst older demographics in America thanks to the Ham and Cheese English dub, and is popular enough to be referenced in cartoons like The Powerpuff Girls (1998) and Batman: The Brave and the Bold.
• Starsky & Hutch:
  • Starsky and Hutch was definitely big in America, but it was massive in Britain. BBC1 ran the series well into the 1980s (and it was one of the few imported series to top the ratings), David Soul made more visits to the upper reaches of the pop charts than at home (including having two #1s), Channel 4 had a night devoted to the series in 1999 (including running the pilot and the never-before-shown-in-Britain episode "The Fix" - omitted because of its depiction of heroin use), and the show regularly turns up on cable channels.
  • David Soul eventually relocated to the U.K. and became a naturalized citizen.
• The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Take Me Out To The Holosuite" is more popular overseas, where foreign audiences would have been less familiar with the sports movie cliches it used, as well as being less familiar with baseball in general, therefore viewing it with fresher eyes. Another possibility is that its "play sport to have fun, not to win" Aesop is pretty much heretical in the USA, but remains a common opinion elsewhere.
• Star Trek: Voyager was very popular in Hungary in the early-2000s, compared to the franchise's other series. It's still the best known Star Trek incarnation in the country. A definite reason it hard to pinpoint. It may be because Star Trek shows only got released there at the end of the 90s, so the previous series would have been seen as old-fashioned and boring by most viewers, while Voyager was new and fresh. It received a very good dub to boot, with many fans vastly preferring the dubbing actors to the original cast's actual voices. The show also got some media attention when the tv network made the misstep of outsourcing the final season's dubbing to a low-budget Romanian studio that did laughable work. The season was redubbed with the original voice actors due to viewer demand. Whatever the reason for its popularity, it's near constantly reran on television, gathering further fans.
• Stor I Japan, translated as Big in Japan, was a Swedish one-season reality show which put the Big In Japan phenomenon to the test, by sending two forgotten Swedish ex-celebrities to Tokyo for a month, with the mission to acquire nation-wide TV airing time, a record contract, live performance gigs and a fan base. The result? Success at every point.
• If social networks are an indication, Netflix's Stranger Things has quite the following in Brazil and the Philippines (the latter up to the point that months after the site's Philippine launch, one cast member visited the country). In 2017, Netflix Philippines released a Facebook video to promote the series' second season in time for Halloween, which was well received and highly shared as it featured elements from ABS-CBN's defunct Saturday public affairs program Magandang Gabi, Bayan, particularly its Halloween episodes (this was aimed at viewers who were born or were kids in the 90s who watched the program). It turned out to be a social media hit and was featured on TV Patrol, ending up with up to 3 millions views currently and tons of shares. That promotional video furthered local fan interest in the series.
• Street Hawk was launched in India in the late 1980s, and ultimately proved a big hit in the country. G.I. Joe Snake-eyes and Rapid Action Motorcycle toys were retooled and launched as a Street Hawk package, and several bike and bike tyre ads imitated elements of the show ("The Man...the machine...the tyre...MRF Nylogrip", night shots, black bikes, black suits). Knight Rider, when launched in the 1990s, was barely promoted and ultimately ended up as "a show like Street Hawk", and has never reached the popularity of Street Hawk in the late 1980s or early 1990s, despite being the longer-running and more successful show.
• Sunset Beach was far more popular in Britain and Sweden than it was in the United States.
• Super Gran is a pretty obscure campy British children's television series, but is huge in Cuba for some reason.
• The recent trend of superhero shows are already mildly popular among Americans, but don't usually top ratings (with the exception of Arrow and The Flash, which are doing wonders for The CW). In Canada however, many of these same shows are usually in the top 10, if not top 30 of the week, mainly thanks to CTV, Canada's largest television network, moving away from reality programming to scripted shows, a move which has deemed very successful. It helps through that the DC TV series are US-Canadian co-productions.
  • When Philippine cable channel JACK TV debuted Arrow in 2012, no one expected that the show, plus the other DC superhero programs, would make a hit among Filipino viewers. Today, Arrow, together with The Flash and Supergirl (2015), have Filipino fanbases, and Colton Haynes from Arrow came for a visit to the country in 2015. (The same goes for Legends of Tomorrow, which airs on cable station Warner TV.)
• Supernatural:
  • It is popular in Australia. It may have something to do with the fact that the show uses a lot of classic rock in its soundtrack, including AC/DC, the biggest band to come out of Australia — the members of AC/DC watch and enjoy the show, apparently.
  • It's quite popular in Japan, as it got its own anime there. The producers (Madhouse) aren't exactly no-names either, and neither are some guest-voice actors, known from e.g. GACKT.
• Super Sentai series:
  • Choudenshi Bioman: While it's just another Super Sentai series in Japan, it is extremely popular in France. One kids' show host even made a cameo appearance in Choujuu Sentai Liveman. It's also dearly loved in the Philippines. Other Sentai popular in the Philippines are Hikari Sentai Maskman (Ryosuke Kaizu, who played Takeru/Red Mask, even moved there following his retirement from acting) and Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman.
  • Two series were really liked in Brazil, Dengeki Sentai Changeman and Choushinsei Flashman, the former moreso than the latter due to being, along with Kyojuu Tokusou Juspion (mentioned below), a Gateway Series for tokusatsu fans there. Flashman is very well liked in Peru as well.
  • Speaking of Flashman, it was also was a huge hit in South Korea. It aired under the name: "Earth Protector Flashman" (지구방위대 후뢰시맨), and it was a huge hit in the country. This was the very first Super Sentai series to air in the country with an Official Korean dub and it was insanely popular. It came out three years after its' original Japanese release (Japan: March 1, 1986, South Korea: July 10, 1989) and this was during a time when Japanese TV programs were very limited to air in the country. Touta Tarumi (Jin/Red Flash's actor) said that the reason why it was so popular there was because the series has a setting where the main protagonists are looking for their parents and this appealed to South Koreans as the country is one of the best known for valuing empathy.
  • The Gateway Series of Sentai in Indonesia Dai Sentai Goggle Five remains well loved there, being considered 'Indonesia's essential Sentai'.
  • Juken Sentai Gekiranger, like most of the more "experimental" seasons of Super Sentai, was not very successful in Japan. However it is highly regarded among most Western Sentai fans.
  • While Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger isn't exactly adored internationally, Japanese people believe this is the case with how much Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers media there is, particularly with the release of Power Rangers (2017).
    • It's not so much that Zyuranger isn't adored, but rather that it's sandwiched between two very beloved seasons that get high marks with Western audiences as well.
  • Gosei Sentai Dairanger is also loved by Western audiences, to the point that some consider the suits to be honorary Power Rangers. One of the biggest complaints of Power Rangers Megaforce among fans of both series was that, given that the series mark on the Power Rangers and the zords/monsters being particularly iconic to many long time fans, their dismissed use in Megaforce was a big waste. Many felt that they could have been used as a send up to the ties between Super Sentai and Power Rangers.
  • This trope is Invoked by the trailer for Chouriki Sentai Ohranger The Movie (1995) which makes sure to boast that Super Sentai is now popular not only in Japan but in America too. For context, this was during the third season of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.
  • Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger was so popular in Vietnam, 18 years after its run, there are many people who still watch it through DVD and Gaoranger is the first series comes to mind when a non-Toku fan think of "Japanese superheroes series" .
  • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger is very well received by Western audiences. Helps that it kicked off with a fight sequence involving every single ranger up to that point.
• Australian dating show Taken Out may have only lasted for one year in its home country, but its format was sold to various others. Most notably China, where it spawned two versions, one of which is known as Fei Cheng Wu Rao and has become a major ratings success, with twice as many viewers as its nearest timeslot competitor. Bizarrely enough, Fei Cheng Wu Rao is broadcast in Australia (with English subtitles) as If You Are the One.
• Mexican Soap Operas, known as "telenovelas":
  • They make up most of the telenovelas shown in Latin America and the United States, despite often being extremely regional in their tropes, premises and conventions. (Or maybe because of that) Brazil in particular loved Carrusel and Rebelde - both of whom had local remakes - plus María la del barrio, and Deceptions - both of whom had seven reruns.
  • They're also popular in the Balkans and the ex-USSR. A reporter for Televisa once reported that during the Balkan wars, soldiers from both sides stopped fighting just to watch telenovelas, and likewise, Georgian and Abkhazian troops made informal ceasefires to watch soap operas.
  • In Russia, the telenovela Los ricos también lloran caused such furore that workers skipped work so they could watch the female protagonist's pains; and the actress that played her - Verónica Castro - became so popular that when she visited Russia, the people crowded the streets just to get a glimpse of her.
  • They're also wildly popular in some African countries. For example, in Niger, Daniela is currently (2013) the most popular series. Kenya also loves shows like En nombre del amor.
  • Marimar is extremely popular in the Philippines, enough that it even got two Philippine remakes. Thalia, who played the titular character, got a huge Filipino fanbase, huge enough that when she visited the country, she was being treated like a foreign head of state. Her next show, Rosalinda, also became a hit and had a Philippine remake too.
• Teletubbies is huge in South Korea. The show got boatloads of exclusive merchandise there, still airs on South Korean TV to this day and has been spoofed in a recurring segment of the Korean version of Saturday Night Live.
  • They were also popular in the United States back in the day, becoming one of the most popular shows for preschoolers and spawning several pieces of exclusive merchandise, most notably dolls that interacted with the television show.
• Tequila And Bonetti is a forgotten flop from 1992; it didn't even have a page on this wiki. When it aired in Italy in 1993, however, it found unexpected success also thanks to the dub of Tequila (the dog was given a strong Neapolitan accent and was voiced by a popular voice actor). In 2000 a series called Tequila & Bonetti was produced in Italy, with actor Jack Scalia reprising his role as Bonetti, going to work in Rome as part of an exchange program and assigned a new Tequila dog. It lasted 22 episodes, 10 more than its original American run. In many ways, it anticipated what would later happen with the more successful Inspector Rex, another series centered on a police dog that got an Italian revival.
• Most Toku shows:
  • Despite not airing in many countries outside Asia, Super Sentai, Kamen Rider, and to a much lesser extent Metal Heroes and other Japanese tokusatsu shows, have a somewhat moderate if underground cult following in the States as well as elsewhere abroad, with fans relying on fan subbing groups to subtitle the show in other languages.
  • In India, the live action Giant Robo series is almost universally adored amongst Gen X-ers and early Millennials thanks to it being broadcast around the mid 80's on the only television station in India at the time. It was so popular that it was rebroadcast repeatedly well into the 90's and toy watches imitative of the one Daisaku Kusama/Johnny Sokko had were reportedly the best selling toy in India in the mid 80's. When Indians think of Tokusatsu, they tend to think of Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot because of its sheer popularity.
  • Toei is likely aware of this as Bandai's Tamashii Nations' USA Branch partner, Bluefin (not Bandai America, sadly), is starting to release their Super Robot Chogokin line based on the amount being imported by third party merchants.
  • Tamashii is also starting to release their S.H.Figuarts line. Initially they imported Shinken Red and Shinken Gold to Toy's R US in the states (Through Bandai America); this is likely also based on the popularity of them being imported as well. In fact Bluefin released Red Hawk and Black Condor from Choujin Sentai Jetman in the States as well as Akaranger from Himitsu Sentai Gorenger despite both Jetman and Goranger not having a Power Rangers counterpart.
  • It's also been revealed that Figuarts based on Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger a.k.a. Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers will be released in both Japan and the United States in 2013 to commemorate Power Rangers' 20th anniversary.
  • Initially, Toei didn't believe there was enough interest to start importing either subbed or dubbed DVDs and Shout Factory (who handles most of the DVD distribution for Power Rangers) revealed that they had no plan to release any Super Sentai shows on DVD... until 2014, when they announced plans to release subbed DVDs of Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger. Shout! Factory did later state they have intentions to eventually release all Super Sentai series in North America should the series stay popular enough. (And the plan worked- Gosei Sentai Dairanger is coming out in November 2015 because of it, with more coming in the following years.)
    • In September 2013 Toei announced Toei Japan Channel, a paid web service that would operate in the United States, airing several Toei Channels. English subs were planned at some point in the future, but the service was quickly canceled two months later, due to its parent online service suddenly shutting down.
  • The Ultra Series are extremely, extremely popular in Malaysia, being one of the first toku/kaiju TV series to make it to the country back in the 1970s. Most people in Malaysia are at least aware of one version of the Ultras, including the American and Australian remakes. This is to the point where the quality of the Malay dubs are only second to Doraemon.
    • This was also the same case for the Philippines. At least one of the series and its spin-off programs were broadcast here at one point. ABS-CBN was the first channel to broadcast the franchise in 1988.
    • Ultraman is the most well known Tokusatsu hero in China, with Hong Kongers giving him the nickname "Salted Egg Superman" (咸蛋超人) due to the fact that the eyes of the Original Ultraman (And others that are based on him) Have eyes that resemble 2 Eggs. The Specium Ray gesture is also a trademark of the series that it is known for there.
    • The original Ultraman was huge in Latin America during the late 60s and early 70s, especially in Argentina, with merchandise being produced for Spanish-speaking audiences in the region like this comic.
  • It seems that Italians and Chinese love Dinosaur Corps Koseidon, a Toku series produced by Tsuburaya in 1978, more than the Japanese did. In fact, in Youtube when you search for the Koseidon opening theme or even the series itself, you are more likely to get the Italian version than the original Japanese one.
• The presenters of Top Gear once discovered this during the Middle East Special when they found out that their show was extremely popular in Syria by seeing themselves (dubbed into the local language) on the television in the restaurant where they had stopped over. This presented a bit of a quandary since they also had to pass into Israel, and the political situation meant that they couldn't have it be known they'd been in Syria even if they went through Jordan in between^note the usual solution was to have two different passports to obscure this. Fearing that their popularity and/or media coverage would blow their cover they proceeded to try Hiding in a Hijab, which, being Top Gear, failed miserably (though they eventually got into Israel anyway).
  • Top Gear is also hugely popular in the United States, where it has had several iterations of a local version of the show. It was also popular enough to have local versions made in Australia, South Korea and Russia.
• New Zealand's The Tribe was hugely popular in Sweden, to the point where school kids painted their faces with the tribal face markings that featured in the show.
• Tropical Heat, being one of the few foreign series that aired in Serbia during the 90's as they were unable to buy any more because of international sanctions due to the Yugoslav Civil War. As such it was endlessly repeated and has achieved cult status there due to Serbians becoming enamoured with the exotic tropical setting, gorgeous cast and Nick Slaughter's adventures at a time when they were suffering through chronic shortages and fighting for democracy. A Serbian band has even made a song about Nick Slaughter, the main character of the show]. There was a national movement to establish Nick Slaughter (the protagonist) as a symbolic national hero. "Slaughter" even became a local term for hairy chests. Apparently no one associated with the show had any idea of its popularity until 2008 when Rob Stewart accidentally found a Facebook group in honour of his character.
• The Brazilian telenovela Tropicaliente was very popular in 1990s Russia under the name Tropikanka, possibly due to its beach setting. Then-candidate Boris Yeltsin even used it to help him win for president, by convincing the network to schedule some extra chapters to run on election day to make sure more people would stay home and vote instead of travelling.
• If you read Swedish media, you are excused if you initially thought that Alexander Skarsgard was the star of True Blood, since every article either called it "Alexander Skarsgard's new show" or commented on how Stellan Skarsgard's (one of Sweden's few international mega-stars) son has struck it big time.
• Turkish television series:
  • The Turkish soap opera Gümüş was mostly regarded as a So Okay, It's Average melodrama in its home country, receiving mediocre ratings at best. Upon being dubbed in Arabic, however, it became a smash hit in the Arab World, with its depiction of liberal Muslim characters having a Western-style relationship breaking tradition. It made its lead actors Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ and Songül Öden into superstars around The Middle East, and is widely credited as the show that paved the way for Turkish dramas becoming popular abroad.
  • They are wildly popular in Middle Eastern countries. They are typically dubbed into Arabic. One such series is "Aşk-ı Memnu", a soap opera that plays continuously on a number of Jordanian channels.
  • A few of them are translated to Persian. They became more popular than Syrian and Lebanese TV Shows dubbed to Persian.
  • They are really popular in Uzbekistan as well. Not much of a surprise considering the two nations share a good part of their origins and have quite similar languages.
  • Starting in late 2000s, with 1000 And One Night, and continuing with Suleiman the Magnificent in 2010s, Turkish soap operas formed a pretty strong fanbase in Croatia, particulary with middle-aged women.
  • At some point in 2014, Turkish television dramas became extremely popular in Latin America. It started in Chile when a local TV station aired Binbir Gece, which was followed by series like Fatmagül'ün Suçu Ne? and Ezel, then another TV channel got Magnificent Century, and soon afterwards television networks across Latin America took notice and began importing Turkish television dramas as well.
• There used to be a Russian channel called TV6, which was very popular in India for one reason: porn. The channel, known to locals as "TB6" because they couldn't clearly distinguish Cyrillic from Latin lettering, is considered a myth by most Indians, who believe that the channel is still around (it ceased broadcasting in 2002 due to a severe bankruptcy). REN-TV was also popular for the same reasons.
• While David Lynch's primetime crime drama Twin Peaks is well-regarded as one of the greatest TV shows of all time in the USA, it's become something of a Cult Classic in recent years. However, the show was huge in Japan, spawning coffee commercials starring the shows cast, references in various Japanese media, and it even influenced the creation of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening! Later there was a cult classic video game based heavily upon it.
• The British TV standby University Challenge is a direct borrowing from the U.S. General Electric College Bowl series. The American one disappeared from TV long ago, while the British version remains a national icon.
• The Untamed is very popular in Thailand. So much so that it became a trending Twitter topic in Thailand and there was even a fan-meeting when the actors visited Thailand.
• Veronica Mars was very acclaimed in the US, where it aired on UPN, but it was also the definition of a rating flop, earning only 3 million and thus became a target for Screwed by the Network. It however became an internet sensation in The Netherlands after the channel Nederland 3 aired it and canceled it after one season, after which plenty were streaming the show from the net, attracting attention from Dutch internetters everywhere. It also rose to even more acclaim and love in Belgium, where there is a DVD release of all 3 seasons. Similarly, it was beloved in Germany, to the point where it was one of the few European countries to get Season 3 on DVD (most places only got seasons 1 & 2 until the release of The Movie in 2014 prompted a re-release under "The Complete Series").
• According to the creators, Walking with Beasts was more popular than its predecessor Walking with Dinosaurs in a handful of European territories, like Germany. The fact that the first and last episodes both centered around European fauna, with episode 1 focusing on the famous German Messel Pit fossil site, most likely helped. Prehistoric mammals have also historically garnered a lot of attention in continental Europe, since spectacular giant reptiles, such as those found in the Americas and featured prominently in the majority of WWD, were relatively rare in the continent's fossil sites.
• The West Wing: It is almost more popular in Britain than in the United States and there was a noticeable spike in the uptake of digital TV when The West Wing moved from terrestrial broadcasting (the series was actually first shown on Sky One before moving to Channel 4). While the States obviously loved the show enough to give it 19 Emmys, Britain appears to consider it one of the greatest American exports of all time, as mentioned in John O'Farrell's An Utterly Impartial History of Britain:
  John O'Farrell: However, the Americans would go on to produce The Simpsons and seven series of The West Wing, making it all worthwhile in the end.
  • Oh, and when an actual legislature used the tactic to prevent passage of a bill first posited in Season 6's "A Good Day," it wasn't Congress that did it, but Parliament at Westminster (the Tory Opposition used the tactic in order to force passage of their preferred version of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006; they thought the Government version cut dangerously into free-speech protections).
  • It was also one of the most popularly pirated shows in China, of all places. Who knew that the minutia of the American democratic system would be interesting to the Chinese?
• The cause of the growth of basketball in Turkey can be attributed to reruns of The White Shadow.
• In the US, WKRP In Cincinatti was a respectable sitcom best remembered for the Thanksgiving "Turkeys Away" episode. In Canada, it was immensely popular both in its initial run and in reruns, appearing on the CBC every weekday well into the 1990s.
• The Hotter and Sexier Brazilian telenovela Xica da Silva (based in a real life story) was very, very popular in Portugal and specially in Latin America as a whole. It was also beloved in Angola, with main actress Taís Araujo being very well-received there.
  • The Trope Codifier regarding Hotter and Sexier Brazilian telenovelas in historical settings, Dona Beija, was adored in the Chile of The '90s.
• You Can't Do That on Television was at its peak of popularity in the United States from about 1984 to 1987; for much of that time it was actually off the air in Canada, having been cancelled by CTV in 1984. New episodes were produced for Nickelodeon after that, which were unseen in Canada until YTV was created in the late '80s.
  • It wasn't just that Canadian series which became a hit on Nickelodeon during that era. Today's Special, Sharon, Lois, and Bram's Elephant Show and Fred Penner's Place were also big hits during that era, with the former two show's reruns lasting longer on Nickelodeon than they did in Canada.
• British sitcoms Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister were hugely popular in India, viewers identifying with the comedy generated by inept politicians and scheming bureaucrats which they saw in their own government.
• You Rang, M'Lord? became enormously popular in Hungary after the fall of communism, as it was one of the very few series shown on TV at the time. Viewers fell in love with the way the show portrayed British aristocracy. It also had a very elaborately produced dub that reruns endlessly on TV. On the series' 30th anniversary, still living cast members were invited to a massive Hungarian celebration.

In-Universe Examples

• 30 Rock: Jenna Maroney has a "dance pop techno hybrid" called "Muffin Top" (literally about her muffin top and she tries to make this "sexy"), which is popular in Israel and Belgium. According to "Reaganing", she's also had a single that was Big In Japan.
• Bones: A Victim of the Week was a Starving Musician, who had just discovered that he was actually a radio sensation in the Philippines. Unfortunately for him, his landlord's boyfriend thought it was a ploy to steal his girl. He got it half right. He was trying to lure her away, but he wasn't lying.
• Castle directly references this trope, concerning a murdered child star named Charlie Reynolds who was apparently pretty famous in Russia, with one character even comparing it to Hasselhoff's popularity in Germany.
• In Chuck, Jeff and Lester's band Jeffster gets the chance to be big in Germany.
• Citizen Khan: According to Mr. Khan, Pakistanis love British sportscaster Clare Balding because she "loves her sport, she's very healthy, and friends with Mo Farah". He admires her so much that he gives a signed photo of her pride of place in the living room.
• Dancing with the Stars: Played literally with David Hasselhoff's introduction lampshading his popularity in Germany.
• Entourage made use of this trope in-universe, when Vinnie Chase starts to run out of money, prior to being cast as Aquaman (which would go on to be the highest-grossing film of all time). He's only done a couple of small films at this point, but still garners some ungodly sum of money to do a commercial in Japan, because they love him there.
• Friends: One episode has Joey make a commercial for, of all things, a blue lipstick for men in a "big in Japan" version of the trope.
• Full House: In one episode, Jesse's Fake Band's cover of the Beach Boys' "Forever" does poorly in the US but hits #1 in Japan, where he's invited to perform. He was eventually forced to make a Friend-or-Idol Decision on whether or not to go on a year long pan-Asian tour; he turns down the opportunity. However, when the show's sequel series has the family travel to Japan they find out Jesse's "Forever" is still big enough that 20+ years later he's still able to make money off of it.
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • Lampshaded in the episode "Field Trip" when Ted tries to take his new architecture class on a field trip and somehow picks up a German family. Barney notices the diversity of his group of students and decides to make them a focus group for their debates. One question Ted asks is "Who thinks David Hasselhoff is awesome?" When only the German family raises their hands, Ted says "Hm, it's true."
  • Ted learns that videos of his drunk-crying wedding toasts have gained a sizable fandom in Finland.
  • The Wedding Bride, the movie loosely based on Ted and Stella's story, is so popular all over the world that it's well known even in North Korea (it's Kim Jong's second favorite movie).
• In one episode of The Kids in the Hall, Kevin, after being shut out of a group conversation, tries to sell the viewer on the idea that "they love me in France." Cue a documentary about the beloved comedian "Le Poopie"... but by the end of it the narrator realizes that he has the wrong script and Kevin isn't popular in France.
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: Craig Ferguson sometimes joked that in Japan, his show was re-named Super Happy Fun Time Hour with Robot and Old Man, implying his robot skeleton sidekick Geoff Peterson was more popular than him there.
• In the Monk tie-in novel Mr. Monk Is Miserable, The Randy Disher Project is big in France (at least among the police, with the exception of the Inspector who, as their boss, is the "man" in the "stick-it-to-the-man-itiveness" of the RDP's only song).
• NCIS: The team runs into a washed-up rock star named Manheim Gold, who was the target of a murder attempt from his ex-agent about royalties for the unexpected popularity of his music in Equatorial Guinea (but not the target of the murder attempt that initially led the team to the case, as the bomb used in that murder attempt was planted a week before it went off and Manheim switched rooms a mere two days before said bomb went off in what was now his dressing room.)
• Newsradio ran a subplot one episode about Jimmy James' new book of business tactics, an unmitigated disaster in the US due to its "Blind Idiot" Translation from the original Japanese (It Makes Sense in Context), but popular enough in the Rising Sun that the credits roll over a scene of him deplaning in Tokyo to be greeted by a crowd of cheering admirers waving giant paper-mache replicas of his smiling face from the book's cover.
• In Nümberwang, the German export of Numberwang, the grand prize is a stein of beer and a signed photo of David Hasselhoff.
• Only Murders in the Building: In season 2, it's revealed that back in the 1980s, Charles-Haden Savage did a song called "Angel in Flip-Flops", which did very well in Germany.
  Oliver: You know, this is hil... You know, I'm such a huge fan of terrible music. How have I never heard this?
  Mabel: [laughs, glancing at the picture of Charles on the record cover] Do you have a perm?
  Charles: Yeah, well, make fun of it all you want, but it was a big hit in Germany. It went to number 83 on the charts. And then the Berlin Wall fell, and that stopped its upward momentum.
  Mabel: Wait, why is this so familiar?
  Lucy: Oh. Wait for it.
  Charles: This was sampled by, like, 50 rap stars.
  Charles (on the song): ...on the beach (pitta putta, pitta putta)
  Mabel: My god, that is you! I know this!
  Lucy: Yeah, it was used by, uh, by Post Malone and, uh, Missy Elliott.
  Charles: Yeah, and Del the Funky Homosapien.
  Oliver: Good God, how much money have you made from this?
  Charles: I made about, uh... $200,000 a year.
• On Seinfeld, Jerry and George attempt to invoke this by pitching their failed NBC sitcom Jerry to a Japanese TV station. They got this idea because a two-second clip of Jerry was used in the opening credits of a Japanese game show, which got him hundreds of royalty checks that were worth about 10 cents each. Unfortunately, the events of the episode's B-plot interfered and made their efforts unsuccessful.
• In an episode of Slings & Arrows, Jack, an American movie actor playing Hamlet in a Canadian theatre festival, gets mobbed by Japanese tourists as he exits a showing of a movie he's in. He remarks, "I'm huge in Japan."
• In Up All Night, Ava is a minor celebrity but she's really popular in the Red States. She needs a large security detail when she performs in Branson, Missouri.
• In Cybill, Cybill discovers she is unknowingly a star in Eastern Europe due to an old TV series she made called "Island Cop" which is hugely popular there (just as Tropical Heat was).

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