Best spanish TV shows to learn the language

Alright I'm so hyped to write this piece, in my last article I explained my whole learning method of Spanish and how I got where I am today. I also talked about some of my favorite resources and how they can be of use to you guys. In case you didn’t catch the previous one, you can find it here. Make sure you read the whole thing because I'm pretty sure you will find it every helpful. Anyhow back to this article, in this piece I'm going to recall some of my favorite Spanish TV shows.

Like I mentioned before, visual learning is one of the best methods of learning there is; it is super entertaining to learn and at the same time very effective. So are you ready to see how much of my teenage years I have spent watching Telenovelas? . A lot of it, I assure you. But hey it was all for an important cause, it wasn’t like I was doing it just to fan girl over hot boys. Ok I was doing it for that too but don’t judge please.

Here are my top favorite Spanish Telenovelas:

1) Física o Química

Alright so this is the first TV show that crossed my mind and now I know it's because this was the first Spanish TV show that I ever watched. I remember watching it without any subtitles and understanding like less than 30 percent of what they said. It was so difficult to understand the storyline properly at first, and then I started hearing the phrases and pausing the show to check their meanings online, that helped a lot.

After about a couple of episodes I started to get a hang of the slangs they used, and they always used certain phrases more than the other, so it became pretty predictable after that. It also helped with my accent and teaching me how to speak fluently like a local.

Now a little bit about the show and less about my experience. The storyline revolves around a group of high school students that attend a school in Madrid, known as “Zurbaran colegio”, this TV show, demonstrates the daily unusual life of these teenagers and their professors from high school drama, failed relationships, drug abuses, scandals and many more controversial topics. It's basically a teen drama, one day this girl is dating this guy, the other day something happens they break up and so much more.

(A picture of the main characters)

Source

My favorite characters would be Isaac, which is shown to be sleeping with his professor from the first episode, well that's not exactly how it happened but it's still juicy nonetheless. I also like Gorka which is somehow shown to be the bad guy of the whole group but later on develops feelings for some other characters and becomes more human. Okay no more spoilers I promise.

It's an entertaining show to watch and it's a production of Spain itself, I say this because most Telenovelas has originated from South America nowadays. They produce some quality TV shows for real. Don’t worry if you aren’t really a fan of teen dramas, I have so many more TV shows in mind.

2) B y B

Okay this show is super good; it's fairly dramatized with the actors going through lots and lots of misfortunes and generally obstacles together. It follows the story of a group of journalists that work for this magazine called “B y B”. It’s a great show because it depicts a lot of different people’s lives and how they are all interconnected with one another. The main characters are Candella, Pablo, Mario, Juan, Martina and Hugo. There are a lot of stories going on at the same time, the show has a lot of characters to be honest, but it doesn’t get confusing as they are all interconnected with each other one way or another.

(B y B cast)

Source

This show isn’t a teen drama, it's just a regular drama and I really enjoyed watching it. There are two seasons to it only and then the show was finished. It was actually made quite recently so it's not that old. It has gotten really high ratings in Spain; again it was made in Madrid, Spain. I'm pretty sure anyone that watches this show will become addicted to it and will finish it up as soon as possible. Their stories are very captivating and juicy so you like to know what happens next.

Oh and they also talk way better than those teens in the previous show, they all talk in a very cohesive manner which is great for non-fluent speakers.

3) Buscando el norte

This show is for the laughs, it's so painfully relatable that I was hooked to it. The storyline follows these two Spanish siblings that decide to move to Germany in search of jobs. One of them is a nurse and the girl, Carol had recently broken up with her girlfriend so she was desperate to escape. Alex which is the older brother is a nurse has to leave his fiancé behind because he was recently fired from his job and now he can’t pay his mortgage. Well I recently watched this TV show and hence that’s why I remember it very clearly. So they move to Berlin and then there they reconnect with an old relative of theirs and meet a lot of other Spaniards going through the same problems as them.

(Some of the Buscando el norte cast on the set of the series)

Source

The show shows the cultural differences between the two countries and shows the bitter truth about immigration and the hardships of settling down in a foreign land. They capture all the details in such a humorous manner but still manage to show the whole truth.

It was actually filmed recently, there is only one season to the show, I'm not sure if a second season is coming out, I hope it does. It's such a great show and I would hate to see it be cancelled. Make sure you watch it, it's fun to learn some more stuff about different cultures.

4) Extr@

Okay well this show isn’t much of a TV show. It's actually a series of very short episodes specifically designed for language learners. It is a great tool for beginners and those that are just getting acquainted with hearing the Spanish language. Now let me tell you what it's all about. It's rather cheesy, the storyline follows two girls who share an apartment and their busybody neighbor who is obsessed with Lola, one of the girls that lives in the apartment and she’s relatively attractive.

(The cast of Extr@)

Source

Then one day Sam, who is an American, comes to Spain, he doesn’t speak any Spanish and the girls and their neighbor try to make friends with him and teach him some Spanish. So the whole story revolves around that, since I said it was specifically designed for language learners, they talk very very slowly and repeat everything a couple of times. Like I said it's cheesy but give it a try. Oh by the way you can find the whole series on YouTube. They have similar skits for other languages too.

5) Malviviendo

Okay so this show I have recently started watching, as you all know I'm a big TV series fan, so I know possibly every shows there is to know both in English and Spanish. This show is rather funny; it's about a group of friends with bad habits, they basically smoke a lot of weeds and make some bad decisions. They talk really fast so I don’t recommend this to you if you are a beginner but it's super cool to learn some slangs from this show. There are a lot of commonly used phrases.

Okay so here is my list of TV shows, hope you use it as a source of learning and practice. Have fun.

Cheers

Photo gallery