Brit here, never been to America but would love to go one day.

I know nothing of the states other then what I’ve seen in movies and tv shows

I know it’s very dependant on the area in America and the tv show/movie, which one of the below would you say is most like america?

Friends
Suits
Power
Power books
Big bang theory
Baller
Superstore

If none, any suggestions?

26 comments

  1. My husband is a physician and he and all his doctor friends say that the most true to life show they have ever seen is “scrubs.”

  2. All American lives are exactly like a combination of Entourage, the Fast and the Furious, and Jupiter Ascending

  3. None of them really?

    I mean sitcoms are sitcoms. They don’t really represent real life no matter the premise.

  4. Definitely not Suits. I cannot name one show as most shows have the regional aspect. For example, when I watch shows like Law and Order SVU, Sex and the City, Uncoupled, etc, they are New York. The same goes for shows set in and filmed in California like Dead to Me; and Ozark (rural America).

  5. It’s old but, but it feels kind of timeless; 1990s Rosanne. It is a bit less wacky but still entertaining television.

    Friends is a bit of a fantasy in regards to housing costs of NYC.

    I have only watched the first season of Superstore and it is a “workplace comedy”. There’s been very little mention of home life, the characters all have a wacky twist that are not believable, it’s absurdist humor. I think Michael Shurr worked on it and that’s why I checked it out. I like his other work, The Office, Parks and Rec, Brooklyn 99, now Superstore. They all have that same absurdist workplace comedy formula.

  6. I think every TV show is exaggerated for effect. Typically they live in larger, nicer homes than would be affordable on their character’s salaries i.e. Monica in friends. They’re also more attractive and dress better.

    If you’re looking for a representation of how average, middle-class Americans live, according to Jim, King of queens or Mike and Molly. If you’re looking for a portrayal of small-town life, something like Friday night Lights or Young Sheldon capture that small town feeling

    Lower economic class would be Roseanne, or The Middle. That would be more representative of their homes and furnishings.

    Upper economic class (but not necessarily classy) would be the Real Housewives series. I think the portrayals of the houses they live in are realistic, but the rest of it is a bunch of manufactured drama.
    As far as behavior, nobody on TV is normal.

  7. Malcom in the Middle

    Family Matters

    Home Improvement

    Not the glorious dramas you’re thinking of 😂😂

  9. Not too sure about the shows you mentioned but if you’re familiar with the US version of The Office, the romance plot between Jim and Pam feels very natural and authentic. Yeah there aren’t really bosses as ignorant as Michael or co workers as eccentric as Dwight, but the first few seasons of interaction between Jim and Pam and how they develop feels very “American” per se. They’re two normal people in a kind of boring town in Pennsylvania but manage to find that spark despite being in a dead end office job. Their dialogue is not so try hardy in like how it is in sitcoms. The timing and cadence of their conversations feels like day to day conversations I would hear at work or two people interested in each other. Maybe I’m biased because I’ve been in their position haha. Also when they have marital problems down the road, that hit home too

    [https://youtu.be/CTBJXCJxg30](https://youtu.be/CTBJXCJxg30)

    They’re still my favorite TV couple

  11. The Middle was fairly midwestern-representative, but not on your list. As a former teacher, Abbott Elementary is pretty spot-on. Roseanne pretty well explains the working class that bloomed into MAGA. Go to a Wal-Mart after 9pm and you’ll see how accurate Superstore is. As my best friend’s dad has said “i love Big Bang Theory! It’s like watching you kids grow up all over again.” (My peer group from high school consists of an aerospace engineer at NASA, an archaeologist, two IT directors, a software engineer, a meteorologist, a radio DJ, a cardiologist, a theater professor, and me)

  12. Roseanne, George Lopez, Family Ties, king of queens… those are some that seem the most realistic

    I haven’t even heard of half of the ones you mentioned. Lol

  13. I know you guys don’t like hearing this, but the target audience of American TV shows is Americans. We don’t watch TV to see a direct reflection of our lives, we watch for entertainment and escapism. That means pretty much every TV show, while they might have elements of reality, is going to be overly dramatized to make them interesting to us. Things might seem simpler or more complicated than they are in reality to add drama or to make the plot move in a specific way. Tropes that we’re familiar with might be used to elicit a specific reaction from the audience.

    No TV shows, even reality shows or documentary shows, are going to be super realistic because we don’t want them to be. We live our lives every day, do we want to sit down at the end of a long day and just watch people do exactly what we just finished doing?

  14. The first and third seasons of Friday Night Lights are generally pretty realistic in its portrayal of small town life and the issues people face.

  17. Big Band theory seems the most off. I’ve only seen the show a couple times but – no. I mean Xfiles would be better than that.

    Not friends really. I don’t know a few of them but you also have no punctuation so I am not sure. Don’t know what these are: Suits Power Power books Baller

  19. A kind of specific answer, but I would say Danny McBride shows (Eastbound & Down, Vice Principals and The Righteous Gemstones) get modern day American South right way more than other shows I’ve seen. The *events* of the three shows are often absolutely ridiculous, but the settings and people are spot on.

  20. Roseanne would be the closest pick for me. No other sitcom had that degree of realism. Although that realism is limited to small town in the American Midwest circa the 1990s. As someone who grew up in like that I could have easily believed the Connors were a family in my town.

  21. If you pretend that all the characters on the show are from wealthy families, then the HBO show Girls is a dead-accurate portrayal of a certain type of self-absorbed NYC private-school educated rich Brooklyn/Manhattan New Yorkers—the creator is the daughter of a successful artist and went to the same ritzy private progressive school in Brooklyn that Basquiat and the Beastie Boys came out of.

    Hey Arnold is a pretty accurate depiction of what it was like to grow up in Brooklyn or Queens in the 90s.

    Friends and the Big Bang Theory appeal massively outside the US for a reason: they are culturally non-specific fantasies that bear little resemblance to life in the US or Americans in general. Nothing in Friends looks or feels like it takes place in New York. I didn’t even realize it was supposed to be set in NYC until way later.

    Edited to add: King of the Hill is supposed to be very accurate when it comes to its portrayal of East Texas in the 90s.

  22. I thought Fresh off the boat does a great job. And a better depiction of smart kids than other shows.

  23. Really depends on what part of the country you’re trying to understand.

    For me (as a person who grew up primarily), it was have to be “King of the Hill”. I don’t know what about it rings so close to my liver experience, but it was the first and only time I related to a setting in a TV show.

    I’ve always wondering since there are so many TV shows that take place in New York City, do any of them actually resonate with actual New Yorkers?

  25. “Friends” is damn near 30 years old. Why do people keep looking to it to learn about America? It’s no longer 1995 there.

  26. Friday Night Lights.

    It’s one of the best representations of the culture of high school football and small town Texas life I’ve ever seen. It makes me homesick to watch it.

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