France Channel

I’ve been using this for 2 years. It’s great watching French content on a very navigable site with all-English descriptions. There are plenty of movies, series, documentaries, and news options. Almost everything has English subtitles available. Strangely, many selections don’t have French subtitles, which I would like for improving my French. The downside is that a lot of the content is weak— C-grade. I’ve been unable to finish countless movies because they’re so silly and/or boring. When I’ve looked up the reviews on sites like Rotten Tomatoes, they’re often rated very low—if they even got reviewed at all. There are definitely some good ones, but you have to be willing to sort through them. There are only a handful of children’s programs, and they are all bad: screeching characters, shallow storylines, poor graphics. Kids’ shows are an enjoyable way for all ages to learn French, so I’m hoping they get better qualify content soon. One personal annoyance is that I’ve gotten into the French serial Ici Tout Commence (Here it All Begins) on this site, which is currently in production. There are well over 1,200 episodes (and counting) of this show, but France TV randomly releases between zero and three episodes per week for a grand total of only 210 episodes currently available. At this rate, they will never come close to catching up with the show, which means you can’t read anything online without getting spoilers for years to come.

There is a good amount of content on here, but many people subscribe to the channel as an aide in learning French. There needs to be 1) The ability to change the speed of the videos. I often slow videos down to 3/4 speed to help me in understanding what’s being said. 2) The ability to download the videos to my device so I can watch them when I’m away from an internet connection (i.e. on an airplane). 3) Have subtitles for all of the content. These three things would make learning French with France Channel a lot more useful.

I finally found a way to watch authentic French shows and movies without having to worry with a VPN. I love that it’s also an app so I can watch it on my phone. There are subtitles available for a lot of the content. So many interesting things to choose from! J’adore!?