I’m U.S. American, and all these television shows are popular out here. How popular are they in Europe? And what similar European television shows do you recommend?

29 comments

  1. I’d say most people know about them and watched it at some point, save Hey Arnold.
    Although most 90’s kids would know Hey Arnold as well (I do, at least)

  2. When I was younger (early 2000s), we had a channel called CNBC-e, which aired high quality series (Ally McBeal, Seinfeld, Six Feet Under, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad etc) and they also had a daytime Nickelodeon series where I used to watch SpongeBob, Hey Arnold!, Rugrats, CatDog, Rocko’s Modern Life, and of course Malcolm in the Middle. This was just public TV. They were definitely very popular. I guess quite a few have been forgotten by now, but Simpsons, Family Guy, and SpongeBob still have some viewership, I think.

  3. The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy run on TV all the time and are very well known. Spongebob Squarepants is more of a kids show and it at least used to air very early in the morning.

  4. The Simpsons in Spain are super popular.

    Anyone who now have 20-25 years old has grown up watching them at lunchtime.

  5. The Simpsons used to be extremely popular and are probably the foundation for a lot of peoples knowledge about pop culture in the US.

  6. I have seen The Simpsons. Never seen any of the other ones but i know about them. Dont think their concept or humor is funny at all to be fair. Simpsons on the other hand is good i like it.

  7. Very.

    I loved Hey Arnold, the Rugrats, Dexter’s Lab, Tom&Jerry, Garfield, Catdog and a bunch of other shows growing up. The Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy, American Dad, Rick and Morty, South Park are all very very popular. Futurama is one of my favourite shows ever and my friends were all massive Simpsons fans growing up.

    American TV shows and movies are very popular with every age group as they tend to have the highest production value and there’s nothing really that can compete with the budget and quality. Some British tv-shows and films perhaps can but that’s about it.

    The only other thing that’s popular but isn’t American is trash tv. Telenovellas, soap operas and reality tv.
    The only locally made high quality shows tend to be either documentaries, educational programs, more serious talkshows or hard political talkshows although the latter have been gone for the past 15-ish years as increasing polarization has made everything political very pulpy and superficial.

    There are always attempts to copy American late-night talkshows that combine the serious with the frivolous like Colbert and Jimmy Fallon but when they try to copy their segments and jokes and name-calling and whatnot it comes off as very inorganic and cringe-inducing.

    I don’t think there are any comparable European shows. At least not wildly known.The animation scene in my country is nonexistent.

    There used to be great kids’ shows back in the day, and while one or two are absolutely family-friendly shows that you can enjoy even as an adult, most of them were aimed at children under 14.

    There was a great show called Vízipók csodapók that was about a water spider and its friends living underwater and getting into all sorts of adventures. It was very wholesome and biologically and physically accurate to the point our biology teacher in highschool used it to illustrate stuff about sweetwater biomes.

  8. The Simpsons are still super popular, as well as SpongeBob Squarepants, and you can also find a lot of merchandising (t-shirts, stationery, etc) of them in stores.

    Hey Arnold ! is known here too, but much less popular than the Simpsons or SpongeBob. I am not sure kids below 10 would still know it nowadays.

    Family Guy was much more niche and more a geeky thing here 10 years ago or so; as far as I know, it is not shown on TV anymore (or maybe on pay channels). I don’t think I have ever heard anyone among my friends mentioning it, and I bet that my own children (young adults) have never heard of that show.

    In the same style; South Park is still very popular, you can also find some merch of it, and people will understand the localized version of “oh my god, they killed Kenny”.

  9. The Simpsons, Family Guy and SpongeBob are popular and commonly known in Sweden. Never heard of Hey Arnold though.

  11. The Simpsons are super famous.
    Family Guy and SpongeBob are known, but not as many people watch them.
    Hey Arnold! isn’t popular, or even known for the most part.

  12. my wife is italian and we spend several months a year in italy, i love watching simpsons in italian lol.. its on tv all the time there

  13. Simpsons in the late 90s/early 2000s was one of the most popular shows on TV, I remember being excited all week for it and when it came out on DVD I was so happy. I was also really sad when it started going downhill and I ran out of classic episodes to watch.

    Family Guy was popular among the tween crowd but never really caught on. Today it’s a show you watch when you can’t focus on anything and just wanna watch something mindless and dumb.

    Spongebob is still popular despite having an abysmal Icelandic dubbing.

    Hey Arnold! never aired here to my knowledge.

  14. The Simpsons is very popular and well known, Spongebob is more niche but people of a certain age will know it. Family guy is pretty popular but nowhere near as mainstream as something like the Simpsons. I’ve only ever seen Americans discuss Hey, Arnold!

  15. The Simpsons definitly are the top of the bunch. The others are known if people are young enough, but they are far less popculturally relevant than in the US.

  16. I feel like the common theme for these shows in Sweden is that they used to be popular at one point, but aren’t really anymore.

    The Simpsons especially was very popular during the 1990s, when the show was also at its best. Then, during the 2000s and into the 2010s, there was this tv channel in Sweden, TV6, which was aimed at primarily a teenage and young adult audience, where they every weekday used to broadcast an hour of Family Guy followed by an hour of The Simpsons, and that got a bit of a cult following. Even when it was only reruns, it was quite a nice way to unwind after the day or watching while having dinner. They are no longer on now though, and despite declining audience numbers in later years, some were quite upset when the shows were cancelled. The popularity of both shows have declined a lot, and I feel that especially the interest in The Simpsons has plummeted, especially considering that it started at a much higher levels compared to Family Guy. It seems like basically no one watches the newest seasons of The Simpsons, and I’m not ever sure if they are broadcasted on tv at all anymore. All seasons of The Simpsons are available to stream on Disney+, so I guess those that are still fans will watch it there instead of on tv.

    As for Hey Arnold!, it was broadcasted back in the 1990s, when I especially remember it as part of the summer holiday morning shows, but I don’t think it was ever that popular. I think that show was a bit too American for a Swedish child audience – especially back then when most people weren’t quite as immersed in American society and culture as they are now.

    For SpongeBob, I was honestly a bit too old when it was at its most popular to say, but I feel like it was very popular among kids for quite a while, and I know that kids liked it a lot even well into the 2010s, although I feel that its popularity has faded quite a bit too by now.

  17. Hey Arnold was broadcasted but wasn’t that popular

    The others are all fairly popular, with the Simpson surely be the most popular one

  18. Representative of czech republic here. Most people know of the shows (although Hey Arnold never aired here i think). As for the popularity, well, keep in mind that these are mostly 90s catoons. Boomers remember them but dont appreciate the humour. Millenials have grown up watching them so they for sure feel some level of nostalgia. I remember there was plenty Simpson merch everywhere when i was growing up in the 00s. Zoomers probably know they exist but prefer TikTok over any other entertainment. I think the popularity of 90s american cartoons is not a matter of country, but rather gerenation 🤷

  19. The first 3 would be well known and I watched through childhood (im 16 now) but I don’t know if I’ve heard of hey arnold

  20. The Simpsons are so popular in Ireland that Irish Simpsons Fans have their own political party

    I remember family guy being popular, and my sister’s watched Hey Arnold back in the day

    SpongeBob Squarepants I only ever saw on TG4 as a young adult and when I saw it in English I was shocked at how similar the voice actors were

  22. In Greece and Germany all american cartoons and shows are extremely popular. Everyone uses Netflix or some other streamer. And they all watch all the shows

  23. Not sure if it is still the case as I’m living abroad now, but in Italy the Simpsons have been aired at around lunchtime every weekday (when kids go back home from school) for the past 25/30 years, Family Guy at evening (sometimes afternoons) and SpongeBob used to be on TV around 15 years ago

  24. for germany, I think it‘s in this order:

    simpsons (very very very popular, airing 18-19, kinda primetime on the biggest private channel)

    spongebob (kids used to watch this a lot, atleast 90 kods growing up)

    family guy / south park (kinda known, but more niche, older people wont know probably)

    hey arnold (90s kids might have seen it but it was very small, I remember it a bit atleast but 90% of people probably wont)

  25. Today everyone knows SpongeBob and the Simpsons. But the others are not that well known.

    Local TV used to play mostly japanese cartoons, so Dragon Ball Z, Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon were more popular.

    I only know Family Guy, American, Dad Hey Arnold etc. because I was watching german satelite TV as a kid. Most people here never heard of them.

  26. All of the ones you’ve listed are very well-known, except for, maybe, Hey Arnold, and even then most people born in the 90s-early 00s know about it.

    We have a TV channel called 2×2 that airs lots of foreign animated shows, including somewhat obscure adult swim shows (or at least it used to air those).

    Other channels, such as TNT, used to have a Nickelodeon section, where they aired stuff like SpongeBob, ATLA, Hey Arnold, Rugrats, As told by Ginger any many more.

    Ren-TV used to show the Simpsons.

    STS used to show all sorts of cartoons, from WB stuff, to Jetix, to anime.

    And Channel One, now commonly known for its ~~two minutes hate~~ political programs, used to air Disney shows.

  27. They are known. The Simpsons up to a point were huuuuuge. Still shown almost daily on our biggest non public channel. Family Guy used to be more popular than it is today, it never came close to The Simpsons. Spongebob is big with a younger audience than the ones that saw The Simpsons in the 90s. But again, as most things TV it declined with the uprising of streaming. Hey Arnold is a thing German 90s kids for sure often have nostalgic feelings for, I don’t know if it is still running somewhere, but in general people tend to stop watching that when growing older, other than The Simpsons.

    Other shows known among adults: South Park, Futurama (never as big as in the US but has it’s following), American Dad, Drawn Together, Bobs Burgers is still quite new in Germany from what I know, King of the Hill but it has been quite a while since that was on TV here… Pretty sure I forgot about some other big ones.

    Shows we saw as kids in the 90s: Recess, Rugrats, Doug, Pepper Ann, Ned’s Newt, Gummi Bears, all the Disney stuff like Ducktales, Darkwing Doug, Aladin, Chip n’ Dale. Oggy, Tex Avery, Rockos Modern Life, Angry Beavers… we probably had most stuff that existed in the US at some point with few exceptions and had German and European stuff instead of these.

  28. for poland i believe it correlates strongly with english proficiency – would not expect people not speaking english to know them outside of memes.

    As for popularity Simpsons and South park would be most popular and widely recognisable.

    For me i only don’t get references from SpongeBob and AdventureTime. I might be too old (over 30)

  29. The Simpsons lost its popularity over the years but it’s still somewhat popular. Family Guy is not very popular I think. SpongeBob is still pretty popular and Hey Arnold was maybe as popular as SpongeBob back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s but now it’s not aired anymore so nobody watches it. People in their mid to late 20’s and older still remember it though.

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