Dunces guide to free English language TV anywhere with no VPN or commercials

I have a simple rule when talking about music, movies, or anything that is vaguely cultural in this column. If it is not free for everyone, I do not want to talk about it. Well, OK, if it is a book, you will have to buy it, borrow a copy from your local library or just make do with the reviews of the juicy bits.

I will talk about a free radio station. I will talk about a free streaming platform. I will even talk about a man on the corner playing a bamboo flute or a trumpet if there is no cover charge. But I have no interest in discussing the finer points of a TV drama series that requires a password, a fingerprint, and a credit card.

It is not a moral issue, it is just personal finances. Where I live overlooks Parque Calderon, not Central Park. I have no intention of being billed for eight separate recurring subscriptions while waiting for one detective in a trench coat to think of one more thing that will destroy the alibi of the suspect. If the show is locked behind a paywall, it can stay there as far as I am concerned. Global online has enough free material to entertain until your dying day, provided you know where to look for it.

Which brings me to Bilibili. If you are not interested in watching some of the greatest TV shows and movies ever made on your phone, computer or TV, completely free of fancy equipment like VPNs, subscriptions, or advertising for hearing aids and hemorrhoid creams, and perfectly legal* (more about that later), then please stop reading here.

Now, if you are still with me, try to imagine something like YouTube, only bigger and much less enshittified, and with a few more wok cookery recipes. It is a Chinese video platform that carries millions of documentaries, dramas, concerts, and movies. While most of the interface is in Chinese, the amount of English language material is astonishing once you know how to find it. It exists, and it is called Bilibili.

Much of the English language programming is easy to find once you know the right search terms and once the system gets to know your tastes. The platform is designed for a Chinese audience, but it has no objection to visitors parachuting in from the Andes. In fact, it behaves as if it is delighted when someone in Ecuador starts watching Eric Clapton.

Signing up is easier than most gringos think, but this guide assumes you have an Android phone. Apple phones may not allow sideloading the app in the same way.

First step. On your Android phone, open your browser and go to the Bilibili website. From there, download the Bilibili APK file by pressing the pink button that says “APP” and sideload it. Open it.

Second step. Changing the language to English. Once the app opens, look for the Me icon at the bottom right. Tap it.

Tap the Settings menu, somewhere near the bottom of your screen, looks vaguely like a cogwheel or a six-sided donut.

Tap Language. It should be the 4th items from the top of the menu. It might look like this: 文
Select English.
If English is not visible, tap More Languages to reveal it.

Close and reopen the app and the menus should now appear in English.

Third step. Logging in on the phone. Inside the Me menu, tap Sign Up or Login. The app offers several methods. You can log in using Gmail, Facebook, a regular email, or any mobile phone number. Choose whatever method you use most often. Once you confirm the login, you are inside.

Fourth step. Logging in on a desktop or laptop. On your computer, go to the Bilibili website. If you are using Chrome, Edge, Brave, or Arc, you can right click anywhere on the page and choose Translate to English. Chrome and Arc allow you to pin this so the site will always open in English. Firefox does not support this natively. Opera works if you install a translation extension.

After switching to English, click Login at the top. Choose the QR code option. Open the Bilibili app on your phone, tap the little QR scan icon third from the right in the top menu and looks a bit like this [–], and point it at your computer screen. Your laptop will log you in without a password. Bingo!

(You can watch without signing up, but then the site will not remember anything and you will be back at square one every time.)

Once you have done this prep work, you are ready to explore. You will see many Chinese characters, but do not worry. You only need to copy and paste a few. You do not need to understand or pronounce them. You may even learn that the Chinese character that looks a bit like a crab refers to the United States.

If you want to watch on your TV, the process is simple. Make sure your phone or computer and your telly are on the same Wifi network. Open a video in Chrome on your computer, click Cast from the settings menu, and select your TV. If the TV does not appear, check both devices are on the same Wifi. Once they recognize each other, your living room becomes a cinema.

Searching for content is where the fun begins. You can type English words and get decent results, but it works far better when you use a few special Chinese characters. They can be copied and pasted easily.

Here are some that work especially well. You can paste them into the search bar on your desktop or laptop. (Easier to do with laptop and mouse, IMHO.)

英剧 中字
British dramas with Chinese subtitles. This brings up Broadchurch, Happy Valley, Luther, The Crown, Downton Abbey, Sherlock, and many others.

美剧 中字
American dramas with Chinese subtitles. This brings up Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, True Detective, Fargo, The Good Wife, and most of the important cable shows of the last twenty years.

BBC 纪录片
BBC documentaries. This reveals Horizon, Civilisations, Panorama segments, and any nature program where David Attenborough is whispering to a parrot while strolling through a tropical jungle.

音乐会 现场
Live concerts. This includes jazz sessions, rock festivals, and the occasional baby-faced David Bowie on British TV in 1973.

电影 全集
Full movies. This includes British classics, American classics, and international films.

广播剧
Radio dramas. Ideal for quiet evenings when you want a story without looking at a screen.

Searching for Latin American dramas and novelas.
Bilibili also carries a surprising number of Latin American series, often dubbed into Chinese or subtitled. The search terms below can help you locate them.

拉美 剧
Latin American drama.

墨西哥 剧
Mexican series.

阿根廷 剧
Argentinian series.

巴西 剧
Brazilian dramas.

You can also try the word novela combined with 剧, for example:
novela 剧
This sometimes reveals Mexican and Brazilian content that has been uploaded by Latin American fans living in China.

You can also search by name. Try Monty Python 中字. Try The Crown 英剧. Try Sherlock 英剧. The platform does not mind if you mix languages. It simply checks the metadata that Chinese uploaders have added.

Once the system knows you are hunting for British or American content, it begins to recommend shows that match your habits. After a day or two, your front page becomes a helpful librarian who keeps finding new things for you.

The best method, however, is to follow the uploaders. These are the curators who keep entire seasons alive. Bookmark their pages in your Web browser on your laptop or desktop. Once you stumble on a good uploader, Bilibili becomes your own private streaming service assembled by strangers who seem to work at odd hours. The videos are almost always commercial free, unlike YouTube, so you can fall asleep in peace while watching with your eyes shut.

Here is one of the better entry points for American TV.

It looks ordinary at first, but scroll a little and you will see full seasons lined up like food stalls at the Terminal Terrestre. This sort of uploader is golden. You follow them once, and suddenly Bilibili turns into a private streaming service assembled by hardworking strangers.

And if you want British TV, then you might want to try this uploader who even has every episode of all three seasons of Happy Valley, which many people say is the thrillingest TV police thriller ever made anywhere.

The platform is organized by people who clearly love organizing things. Once you learn to follow a few uploaders, the place becomes as easy to navigate as the mercados in Cuenca. Confusing at first, familiar later when you realize the booths have numbers.

People sometimes imagine that high speed internet is mainly for Zoom meetings, sending photos of grandchildren, or complaining about the price of onions in Feria Libre. It is all of these things, but it is more powerful than that. It lets a retired person in Cuenca watch a rock concert from fifty years ago at the same moment as a teenage student in Shanghai. It lets a newcomer fill their evenings with music and movies without paying a single extra centavo.

I am not urging anyone to learn Mandarin or understand that the Chinese symbol for America (美) literally means Big Sheep. I am simply pointing out that the world is full of free channels if you are willing to equip your sofa with a mouse pad. Bilibili is one of the biggest and best. It costs 17 cents less than a preferential rate Tranvia ticket. That makes it exactly my kind of entertainment.

Regarding the legality of using Bilibili: The English language content is almost certainly not licensed by the production companies to Bilibili and is generally free of commercials, but to the best of my knowledge there is no law in Ecuador that forbids end-users from tuning in to the web site of the Chinese equivalent of YouTube.

This might all sound complicated, but it isn’t really, and once you have it all set up, you don’t have to do it again. You can just click and watch, even in the Tranvia.

If you get stuck anywhere, here is an alternative to posting a message saying : “Charlie , you are a fool, this does not work”. You can ask ChatGPT or Gemini AI on your phone for step-by-step help. You can paste in a message such as:

“Please tell me how to get started with Bilibili on my Android phone and computer. I want to find English or Latin American dramas and follow uploaders. I may upload screenshots so you can tell me what the Chinese symbols mean and where I should click next.”

You can take a screenshot on any Android phone by pressing Power and Volume Down together, then upload it to the AI chat. The AI can interpret menu items, identify Chinese characters, tell you where to tap, and walk you through any error messages. It can also help you find the correct language menu if it moves in a future update.