For example the British seem to dominate the historical Naval Fiction genre after the success of Horatio Hornblower, and an endless series of steely jawed Captains have appeared from it, set in the Napoleonic Wars.

America has its Western setting (though I understand that Germany had a period where it was obsessed with the American West) with its largely fantasized cowboys and Indians, or its modern military fiction ala Tom Clancy that doesn’t really appear to be a thing anywhere else.

I’ve heard that Russia has an obsession with detective novels though I’m not sure how true that is, nor the idea that France has an extremely popular genre set in timelines where France turns the tide in WW2.

3 comments
  1. I have a couple candidates:

    – We’ve had not one, but two radio shows about memes with meme page admins as hosts or guests. And many articles about memers too, interviews and such. Wouldn’t call them popular but they’ve been on one of the biggest radio channels, biggest newspapers etc
    – The usual example is crime novels, though. I don’t know how popular they truly are compared to elsewhere
    – The usual YA (teen books, but often read by adults) I see in the English speaking world are quite tame by Danish standards. Imagine if every book for teenagers was like the show Euphoria, that’s basically Danish teen books. Twilight is so mild in comparison
    – Documentaries. Not that specific but god, we have so many of them, it must be the main thing our TV stations produce at this point. A lot of them are about people from “lower” social classes or the opposite -rich spoiled people, prostitutes, psychiatric hospitals. Recently there has been a big wave of documentaries about random Instagram influencer type of teens, basically following young people in harsh cut throat environments, it becomes sort of reality TV esque. Some of the harsher documentaries are sometimes referred to as “socialporno”, “social porn”, referring to how it’s basically pleasurable to gawk at people who are in a “failed” social class or seeing how our social and economic support system “fails”. Super interesting and hard to describe, if I was a film student I’d write a long ass paper about it

  2. … *Horatio Hornblower and the endless series of steely jawed Captains*…. nice😏😏😏

    In Austria and Bavaria, the genre of „Dorfkrimis/Alpenkrimis“ became quite popular in the last 10 years, it’s detective novels usually set in a somewhat idyllic village.

  3. In popular media, especially TV, it’s either policemen or clergy people, and sometimes policemen *and* clergy People.

    [Don Matteo](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Matteo) has literally existed since the year 2000. The story centers about the titular priest and his ability to always be one step ahead of the local Carabinieri – and also beat at chess of one their officers, Maresciallo Cecchini, basically everyday. 😂

    One popular TV series (which is inspired by a series of books) is also a about a policeman, Commissario Montalbano. It’s honestly one of my favourite Italian series ever and the books are terrific too.

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