As a gent born and raised in Texas, and has never seen the show - I am pleasantly surprised to see these comments about how popular WTR was internationally. If I had been asked to bet, I would have lost money on this one.

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pafje 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As others have said, WTR is very well-known in France while most people have never heard of Seinfeld.

Same with Dallas and The Dukes of Hazzard.

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kelnos 38 minutes ago | parent [-]

Assuming this sort of phenomenon extends further than France, this quite well explains many of the misconceptions Europeans have about the US.

Thinking WTR, Dallas, or TDoH are representative of American culture is... hilarious.

But I guess shows that hit the big American cultural stereotypes hard are maybe the ones that do better abroad?

	▲	riffraff 22 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think Hazard didn't sound stereotype at all, like, nobody had a clue why the car was called General Lee, or what the confederate flag meant. It was just a fun show. Magnum PI, Different Strokes, McGiver.. were just as popular.
	▲	karel-3d 22 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		From my memory from the 90s: Baywatch, X-Files, that speaking car one, Beverly Hills 90210, Ninja Turtles. Some dumb sitcom named Step by Step? edit: oh and ALF Oh and Married with Children, but it was always very late night and I was not allowed to watch it. And our teacher always played us ET on VHS. (and that dog playing basketball.) that's america for me when I was a kid

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MBCook an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah. As an American I would’ve absolutely never guessed it was that popular.

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pessimizer 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I've got the impression that the big US exports are ones that play into big American stereotypes, e.g WTR, Baywatch, Friends. Not even that they see these shows and get programmed with these stereotypes, but that they have these stereotypes (Texas, California, NYC) and shows like this feed their imaginations and give them detail.

Exported media is weird. Like the huge proportion of British/BBC output (usually period, but also often detective in a way redolent of Christie) that is made primarily for export to foreign consumers who think of British upper-class culture as aspirational.

	▲	VTimofeenko an hour ago \| parent [-]
		There is US exported media that just randomly becomes popular in a specific demographic. Case in point: Adventures of Ford Fairlane, a flick with Andrew Dice Clay that got a razzie the year it came out. IIRC it got a cult following in Norway because the voice over was done by a popular radio DJ.