Anybody else watching The Returned on Channel 4?

[sleepyduck]

It's rather good. Very stylish. Totally baffling. Extremely creepy.

[Chrissie]

I saw the write up for the first episode & really liked the sound of it, but was put off watching/recording it due to the subtitles

[Perpetua]

I tried to watch the first episode, but the sub titles did my head in Sleepy . . . so I gave up.

Shame as I like to frighten myself witless before going to bed.

[kurotoshiro]

I'm watching it. It's really very good.

I watched the film that it's based on a few years ago, and I have to say, the TV series is a massive improvement.

[Mev]

Same as above I was intrigued by the storyline but my excitement was short lived when I realised it was French language.

[kurotoshiro]

What's the deal with everyone refusing to watch something because of subs? Do you guys seriously never watch foreign language films or TV???

[vereybowring]

I know many people who refuse to watch foreign films, silent films or films in black and white. I once said to a film & media student (after being asked) a good film to watch was Citizen Kane as it was a masterpiece, he came back to say he only watched 5 minutes because it was B&W. Needless to say he dropped from that course and ended up doing a modern media course instead (and didn't do well on that either).

I will no doubt get round to watching this as the french do tend to make rather good tense drama.

[kurotoshiro]

Jun 26, 2013 6:06:22 GMT vereybowring said:

I know many people who refuse to watch foreign films, silent films or films in black and white.

I can see how people might think of silent or b&w films as "old therefore boring", but I don't understand the refusal to watch films with subs. It just entails a bit reading. What's the great difficulty?

(Admittedly, I did struggle with a Japanese anime tv series called Tatami Galaxy. The dialogue was constant and hyper fast, meaning that the subs were a wall of rapidly flowing text. It was impossible to read the subs and follow all the action, especially as there were tons of details in the animation.)

[vereybowring]

In general I prefer subtitles to dubbed soundtracks in films. The Seven Samurai is absolutely brilliant with subtitles but the dubbed version I saw came over far more comical than it should have been - voice actors hamming it right up.

[Kaaru]

I`ve watched it and it`s been OK up to now...was a bit confused at the end of the last one (ep 3) not quite sure what happened there....but hopefully it will all come to light.

^^^ Dubbed films usually drive me mad...much rather have subs, but sometimes they dub one Asian language over another and you have to deal with subs as well

[kurotoshiro]

Yeah, dubbing is awful. I've walked out of screenings because they showed a dubbed version instead of subtitled. You miss out on all the expression and intonation in the original language. I think people fail to realise that even if you can't understand a language, you can still pick up a lot of the emotion and intention from the sound of it.

[Perpetua]

Jun 26, 2013 5:50:05 GMT kurotoshiro said:

What's the deal with everyone refusing to watch something because of subs? Do you guys seriously never watch foreign language films or TV???

Yep . . . mainly because I don't actually watch a program, rather more listen to it. So if I can't understand the language it's a no hoper for me Kuro.

And I do find sub titles distracting.

[kurotoshiro]

Jun 26, 2013 6:53:59 GMT Perpetua said:

Yep . . . mainly because I don't actually watch a program, rather more listen to it. So if I can't understand the language it's a no hoper for me Kuro.

Lol, well, yeah, if you tend not to actually look at the screen, I can see how you might have trouble with foreign language programmes!

Jun 26, 2013 6:53:59 GMT Perpetua said:

And I do find sub titles distracting.

There's no denying that subtitles do distract attention from the on-screen action. But the extent to which this matters varies from one film or programme to the next. "The Returned", for example, is relatively easy going. The action/direction is not fast-paced by any means, so you're often not missing any crucial details when your eyes shift down to the subs. And the dialogue is quite sparse and slow-paced as well, so it's not as though you have to attempt to speed-read a ton of text.

[kurotoshiro]

By the way, here's a short clip on youtube of Tatami Galaxy. Look at how fast the subs are and how much detail is actually in the on-screen animation. Impossible to follow properly!

[vereybowring]

Yeah it wasn't ripped/shown very well so there are sections where it sounds like it has been speeded up by at least 15% which wont help. I mean the voice acting even speeds up then slows down again so a better quality copy may be better for you.