The Television Thread

[Mr. Reindeer]

@Stavrogyn, I, on the other hand, LOVE fantasy! Not only glossy, modern (well, if a production 20 years old can still be called "modern") stuff such as LOTR and Hobbit trilogies but all that cheezy stuff from days gone by as well (I'm seriously considering Ridley Scott's Legend as the best movie he ever made ). Needless to say, I lapped up Game of Thrones (no bad seasons for me, just a couple that were too short) and I'm very much looking forward to House of the Dragon (I'll probably wait till its out in its entirety though). Yeah I get what you mean with Star Wars being more fantasy than sci-fi but that one lost me nonetheless (like I said, aliens and spaceships just turn me off, no matter the genre ).

I loved Patrick Melrose a few years back, it's a marvelous show with excellent psychology and the miniseries format fit it like a glove! Speaking of miniseries, have you seen Olive Kitteridge?

Dekalog and Carnivale are both on my to-watch ASAP list for sure!

Oh, man, watch Carnivàle! Be prepared for the fact that it was canceled prematurely (although the creator has spoken at length online about what his plans were and you can also read the series bible). But what a brilliant, atmospheric experience that show is.

 

[Jordan Cole]

I am really interested in watching Star Trek: TNG. I've been craving more 90s television. Way too busy at the moment though. I've watched about a season or so of the original ST, I liked it but I also found it way too slow moving. It felt like episodes were 3 hours long.

What about some shows you think others here haven't seen but that you love?

Two of my cartoon obsessions: Gargoyles, and the Bruce Timm DC Animated Universe.

Gargoyles, the first two seasons (season 3 doesn't count/non-canon) is just an incredible storytelling achievement. It's as inconsistent as you may imagine any 90s kids cartoon might be, but the highs are so high. The thing that impressed me on rewatch is all the fine detail paid to characterization, some really subtle stuff, and all of the foreshadowing and laying of seeds for future stories that are all over the early episodes. Has some of the best character growth and serialization and story twists I've ever seen in any show, cartoon or not. At the time this was pretty unprecedented for American cartoons. The creator of the show had to constantly fight to have the network air the episodes in the right order, etc, etc, to preserve the story flow they were trying to do.

The DC Animated Universe is essentially Batman: The Animated Series (plus the films Mask of the Phantasm and Sub-Zero) --> Superman: The Animated Series --> Batman Beyond (and then the film Return of the Joker) --> Justice League --> Justice League Unlimited. I've watched this entire run over two times (some episodes must be a dozen times.) Each series has its strengths (and there is flat out nothing like B:TAS), but what Justice League and then JLU does is just incredible. These days with superhero fatigue its hard to recommend this kind of stuff to others, but this is generally what real dorks like me always point to as "why can't they make them like THIS??" By the time JLU is randomly paying off (or killing off!) obscure characters that appeared 10 years earlier in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series, I was just in heaven. They tie all the shows together and deliver a hell of a finale (actually several, with each season.) The non-linear telling of the story by going 40 or so years in the future to Batman Beyond, then backtracking to Justice League, is something the show takes advantage of wonderfully.

----

Other random stuff I love:

Review: a bleak and hysterical comedy show about a man who "reviews" life experiences. IE "what would it be like to become a painter?" Things very quickly get dark and despairing when a viewer prompts "what would it be like to get a divorce?" The show, based around a topic-of-the-week format, surprisingly becomes serialized and like a great tragedy, except hilarious. I'm still not sure anybody saw this show.

Search Party: One thing that shocks me is that hipster millennials are not being parodied enough. I think people are too scared to, or something. This show makes it a mission to explore that world, putting a Twin Peaks-esque missing-girl-mystery at the center. What if the only people looking for the missing girl were self absorbed, pretentious, narcissistic hipsters in Williamsburg? Things spiral way out of control over the few seasons. It's hilarious and compelling stuff. Season 2 loses some of the comedy, but then 3 and 4 really deliver. And then I'm in season 5 as an extra! That was exciting.

Fawlty Towers: On a whim I thought hey, I should show this to my fiance. Hope she likes it! I've never seen her laugh so hard and so consistently. It's actually the first time I've ever seen somebody literally "roll on the floor laughing." Yes, she slid off the couch and rolled around on the floor laughing.

My sketch comedy heroes: Kids in the Hall and Mr. Show. The Ben Stiller Show gets a special nod too as a proto-Mr. Show. It's hard to even spell out how obsessed I was and still am with Kids in the Hall, but I'm often amazed to meet people who've never seen it. Kind of speechless. My only thought is...oh my god...watch it! Similar feelings to Mr. Show.

Freaks and Geeks: Sometimes I toss everything aside and say "Freaks and Geeks is my number 1 show." This usually happens when I watch the series, which I've done maybe 5 or 6 times.

Undeclared: The spiritual sequel to F&G, this time at a college dorm. This is an insanely underrated show. Incredibly funny, and it just gets better and better. The eerie thing about this show and F&G is how specifically relatable they are to me, literally the same plots and names of people as in my teen years. Undeclared begins with the main character off to college, preparing to be an adult, and throwing away an X-Files poster. The exact same X-Files poster I threw away when I tore down a bunch of stuff from my room I thought was too childish when I was going to college. I freaked out.

Whitest Kids U Know: I knew these guys in college and beyond, I did the lighting and sound booth for their weekly live shows, and collaborated with some of them on a lot of student films, and I was even in the troupe for 2 weeks. I'll probably die thinking they were a really underrated and ignored comedy troupe. The live shows were the hardest I've ever laughed in my life, and they pulled it off week after week for years. The television show loses a bit in translation, but there's so much great stuff. Now that founder Trevor Moore has died, which is still a shocking thing for me to type, I want even more people to see their work. Just write the name into youtube and have a ball. Or check out their Civil War comedy on Amazon, Civil War on Drugs.

Person of Interest: This is just a bizarre beast and impossible to recommend, but I never see anyone talk about it. The first like, two whole seasons (and loooong seasons!) are a totally throwaway procedural TV show about two guys who have an AI, called "The Machine", that finds when a crime is going to take place. That's it: crime of the week. But just as you're ready to give up watching, pieces start coming together, characters start getting arcs, the writing and directing start getting good, and then wow, shit goes crazy. This show turns into a funny, risky, weird sci-fi thriller for the next three seasons that stands up to the best of television. I'd call it kind of Whedon-esque (Amy Acker is in it in a really fun role), or a mix between that and LOST (ok, Michael Emerson is in it) and other addictive, fun shows. Christopher Nolan's brother Jonathan led the show, and one of the best action episodes of TV I've ever seen was directed by him. It's so hard to tell people to watch this, because you'd be scratching your head for a very long time.

This could go on forever, I'll pick one more thing I doubt many here know about:

On Cinema At The Cinema. It's a bizarre, ambitious, epic web series by Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington (you may know him as Neil Hamburger.) Here's the joke: two guys review movies but have really shallow, "normy" opinion on films. That's the joke. It sort of never stops being funny. What you don't expect is how this turns into kind of a soap opera, with recurring characters, marriages, births, DEATHS, murder, legal drama, and more. It starts as 5 minute youtube videos (Let's review Jurassic World!) and has spiraled out into spinoffs, music videos, and even a film. They do multi-hour Oscar specials every year, and they even had a four hour court trial for one of the characters accused of murder, which managed to bring tons of recurring jokes to a peak. Tim and Gregg are even in character on Twitter, where the story continues and kind of never will end. We even went to a live show. For anyone interested, there's a youtube playlist that puts most of it in order, and plenty of reddit posts about the way to watch everything. It's worth your time. One of the most fun, funniest, weirdest journeys to go on.

 

[Agent Earle]

I've started watching Gargoyles a few years ago based on recommendations, got through about 10 episodes and very much liked what I saw, but then I stopped for some reason (don't remember, but it had nothing to do with the show itself) and never went back to it. I fully intend to ... one day. Maybe when I'm up there in my 80s

Out of the other titles you mention, I'm only familiar with Batman: The Animated Series, Fawlty Towers, and Freaks and Geeks. Batman I'll probably never watch (can't stand superheroes in any way, shape, or form) but the other two I will; Fawlty Towers especially I have high hopes for, being somewhat of a sucker for British television (comedic and otherwise).

 

[Mr. Reindeer]

I am really interested in watching Star Trek: TNG. I've been craving more 90s television. Way too busy at the moment though. I've watched about a season or so of the original ST, I liked it but I also found it way too slow moving. It felt like episodes were 3 hours long.

What about some shows you think others here haven't seen but that you love?

Two of my cartoon obsessions: Gargoyles, and the Bruce Timm DC Animated Universe.

Gargoyles, the first two seasons (season 3 doesn't count/non-canon) is just an incredible storytelling achievement. It's as inconsistent as you may imagine any 90s kids cartoon might be, but the highs are so high. The thing that impressed me on rewatch is all the fine detail paid to characterization, some really subtle stuff, and all of the foreshadowing and laying of seeds for future stories that are all over the early episodes. Has some of the best character growth and serialization and story twists I've ever seen in any show, cartoon or not. At the time this was pretty unprecedented for American cartoons. The creator of the show had to constantly fight to have the network air the episodes in the right order, etc, etc, to preserve the story flow they were trying to do.

The DC Animated Universe is essentially Batman: The Animated Series (plus the films Mask of the Phantasm and Sub-Zero) --> Superman: The Animated Series --> Batman Beyond (and then the film Return of the Joker) --> Justice League --> Justice League Unlimited. I've watched this entire run over two times (some episodes must be a dozen times.) Each series has its strengths (and there is flat out nothing like B:TAS), but what Justice League and then JLU does is just incredible. These days with superhero fatigue its hard to recommend this kind of stuff to others, but this is generally what real dorks like me always point to as "why can't they make them like THIS??" By the time JLU is randomly paying off (or killing off!) obscure characters that appeared 10 years earlier in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series, I was just in heaven. They tie all the shows together and deliver a hell of a finale (actually several, with each season.) The non-linear telling of the story by going 40 or so years in the future to Batman Beyond, then backtracking to Justice League, is something the show takes advantage of wonderfully.

----

Other random stuff I love:

Review: a bleak and hysterical comedy show about a man who "reviews" life experiences. IE "what would it be like to become a painter?" Things very quickly get dark and despairing when a viewer prompts "what would it be like to get a divorce?" The show, based around a topic-of-the-week format, surprisingly becomes serialized and like a great tragedy, except hilarious. I'm still not sure anybody saw this show.

Search Party: One thing that shocks me is that hipster millennials are not being parodied enough. I think people are too scared to, or something. This show makes it a mission to explore that world, putting a Twin Peaks-esque missing-girl-mystery at the center. What if the only people looking for the missing girl were self absorbed, pretentious, narcissistic hipsters in Williamsburg? Things spiral way out of control over the few seasons. It's hilarious and compelling stuff. Season 2 loses some of the comedy, but then 3 and 4 really deliver. And then I'm in season 5 as an extra! That was exciting.

Fawlty Towers: On a whim I thought hey, I should show this to my fiance. Hope she likes it! I've never seen her laugh so hard and so consistently. It's actually the first time I've ever seen somebody literally "roll on the floor laughing." Yes, she slid off the couch and rolled around on the floor laughing.

My sketch comedy heroes: Kids in the Hall and Mr. Show. The Ben Stiller Show gets a special nod too as a proto-Mr. Show. It's hard to even spell out how obsessed I was and still am with Kids in the Hall, but I'm often amazed to meet people who've never seen it. Kind of speechless. My only thought is...oh my god...watch it! Similar feelings to Mr. Show.

Freaks and Geeks: Sometimes I toss everything aside and say "Freaks and Geeks is my number 1 show." This usually happens when I watch the series, which I've done maybe 5 or 6 times.

Undeclared: The spiritual sequel to F&G, this time at a college dorm. This is an insanely underrated show. Incredibly funny, and it just gets better and better. The eerie thing about this show and F&G is how specifically relatable they are to me, literally the same plots and names of people as in my teen years. Undeclared begins with the main character off to college, preparing to be an adult, and throwing away an X-Files poster. The exact same X-Files poster I threw away when I tore down a bunch of stuff from my room I thought was too childish when I was going to college. I freaked out.

Whitest Kids U Know: I knew these guys in college and beyond, I did the lighting and sound booth for their weekly live shows, and collaborated with some of them on a lot of student films, and I was even in the troupe for 2 weeks. I'll probably die thinking they were a really underrated and ignored comedy troupe. The live shows were the hardest I've ever laughed in my life, and they pulled it off week after week for years. The television show loses a bit in translation, but there's so much great stuff. Now that founder Trevor Moore has died, which is still a shocking thing for me to type, I want even more people to see their work. Just write the name into youtube and have a ball. Or check out their Civil War comedy on Amazon, Civil War on Drugs.

Person of Interest: This is just a bizarre beast and impossible to recommend, but I never see anyone talk about it. The first like, two whole seasons (and loooong seasons!) are a totally throwaway procedural TV show about two guys who have an AI, called "The Machine", that finds when a crime is going to take place. That's it: crime of the week. But just as you're ready to give up watching, pieces start coming together, characters start getting arcs, the writing and directing start getting good, and then wow, shit goes crazy. This show turns into a funny, risky, weird sci-fi thriller for the next three seasons that stands up to the best of television. I'd call it kind of Whedon-esque (Amy Acker is in it in a really fun role), or a mix between that and LOST (ok, Michael Emerson is in it) and other addictive, fun shows. Christopher Nolan's brother Jonathan led the show, and one of the best action episodes of TV I've ever seen was directed by him. It's so hard to tell people to watch this, because you'd be scratching your head for a very long time.

This could go on forever, I'll pick one more thing I doubt many here know about:

On Cinema At The Cinema. It's a bizarre, ambitious, epic web series by Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington (you may know him as Neil Hamburger.) Here's the joke: two guys review movies but have really shallow, "normy" opinion on films. That's the joke. It sort of never stops being funny. What you don't expect is how this turns into kind of a soap opera, with recurring characters, marriages, births, DEATHS, murder, legal drama, and more. It starts as 5 minute youtube videos (Let's review Jurassic World!) and has spiraled out into spinoffs, music videos, and even a film. They do multi-hour Oscar specials every year, and they even had a four hour court trial for one of the characters accused of murder, which managed to bring tons of recurring jokes to a peak. Tim and Gregg are even in character on Twitter, where the story continues and kind of never will end. We even went to a live show. For anyone interested, there's a youtube playlist that puts most of it in order, and plenty of reddit posts about the way to watch everything. It's worth your time. One of the most fun, funniest, weirdest journeys to go on.

Gargoyles was the show that first gave me my love for serialized storytelling as a kid (and also got me into Shakespeare). It still holds up, and what a great cast. Also second your recommendation of Review, a hysterically funny and oddly sad show. As for Fawlty Towers, it’s easily one of the best sitcoms ever made, but it kills me that Cleese recently announced he intends to make new episodes. He’s been in “angry grandpa” mode for decades at this point, and I really don’t relish the idea of him tarnishing the show’s legacy.

 

[Tulpa]

More on Showtime's pivot towards letting go of anything vaguely interesitng:

‘Ripley’ Showtime Limited Series Starring Andrew Scott Moving To Netflix

Ripley, an upcoming Showtime drama starring Andrew Scott, has found a new home at Netflix.

deadline.com

Steven Zaillian, co-creator of the outstanding HBO series The Night Of, has seen his new show fobbed off to Netflix mid-production.

The relocation happened pretty fast over the last few days, sources said. When Deadline revealed last week that another upcoming Showtime series, drama Three Women, was being shopped after the network had opted not to proceed with it ahead of its integration into Paramount+, Ripley, which is in early stages of post-production, was still targeting a late 2023-early 24 launch on Showtime. (Three Women, whose first season is completed, is closing in on a pickup at Starz.)

 

[Jordan Cole]

I've started watching Gargoyles a few years ago based on recommendations, got through about 10 episodes and very much liked what I saw, but then I stopped for some reason (don't remember, but it had nothing to do with the show itself) and never went back to it. I fully intend to ... one day. Maybe when I'm up there in my 80s

Oh, definitely just watch the rest of season 1 and then season 2 of Gargoyles. That story goes in wild directions. There's so many standout episodes in season 2 (there would have to be, the season is like 60 episodes long.) I've never seen an animated (American) cartoon with so much story ambition. It takes huge risks.

 

[Mr. Reindeer]

Oh, definitely just watch the rest of season 1 and then season 2 of Gargoyles. That story goes in wild directions. There's so many standout episodes in season 2 (there would have to be, the season is like 60 episodes long.) I've never seen an animated (American) cartoon with so much story ambition. It takes huge risks.

And Michael Horse pops up in there! As well as David Warner, Ian Buchanan, Jim Belushi and a few others.

 

[Count Alto]

What about some shows you think others here haven't seen but that you love?

I've noticed that no one brought up The Young/New Pope, it's one of the few TV shows since The Return came out that I quite liked. I'm not that familiar with Sorrentino's filmography overall, but I do like the Felini-esque style he has going and it suits the setting of Vatican bizarrely well. The way the show tackles the notion of God or lack thereof without crossing the line of being too preachy/edgy about it is quite commendable. Jude Law also knocked it out of the park in the lead role.

Unfortunately, I remember season 2 i.e. The New Pope being a bit more sloppy in comparison but there were still a lot of good parts that made up for some of the downsides. Might rewatch it one day to see if I still feel the same about it, especially if the rumored third season ends up happening.

 

[Jordan Cole]

We watched all except the final episode of season 1 of Young Pope. I totally ran out of patience for it. It's kind of exactly what I was thinking in my previous post about a lot of arthouse flexing but forgetting to draw you in to a story episode to episode. To be honest, the show confounded me, but unlike Lynch's work, which confounds me, the entertainment value just wasn't there for me along with it.

 

[Mr. Reindeer]

I loved both The Young Pope and The New Pope. While neither was perfect by any means, the ambition and ballsiness, as well as the combination of Lynchian pacing/ambiguity with schlocky “palace intrigue”-type Vatican politics storylines really worked for me.

 

[baxter]

Fawlty Towers is nowhere near the high point of 70s sitcoms imo. The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin is much better. No-one else would make a sitcom about a businessman having a nervous breakdown and make it so funny and touching at the same time.

I know most people have seen The Prisoner (original 60s show), but if you haven't you should. That and Twin Peaks ruined TV for me. Nothing else comes close, and The Prisoner is a massive influence on Mark Frost.

 

[Agent Earle]

If we're talking sitcoms, I can't very well go without mentioning Mother and Son, an Australian sitcom that ran for about ten years (@baxter, you should be familiar with it?), coming to only 42 episodes (seasons were done in accordance with the British model and were just seven episodes long) and deals with efforts of a long-suffering bachelor to care for his ageing mother whose dementia (or "dementia") is often just a handy excuse for her to get her way with him while constantly favouring her other son, a despicable money-grabbing weasel and a chronic wife cheater, who's out to get his hands on family estate. It's actually more depressing real-life drama, enlivened with streaks of black comedy, than a traditional sitcom, and I love it all the more for it - the characters and writing are just over-the-moon good and wonderfully identifiable and down-to-Earth, without an ounce of exaggeration (except the one that stems naturally out of situations and is totally believable). Come to think of it, the majority of sitcoms I've enjoyed over the years had to have realistic elements in them instead of over-the-top humour.

 

[baxter]

Yep, I have some of Mother and Son on DVD. It is indeed genius!

 

[Agent Earle]

I own the entire series on DVD for about 15 years and watch it at least every couple of years. Never gets old!

 

[MasterMastermnd]

Anybody seen Yellowjackets? I haven't but the No Doubt cover Florence Welch did for it is so good it's almost singlehandedly interested me in the show

 

[Ickles]

Anybody seen Yellowjackets? I haven't but the No Doubt cover Florence Welch did for it is so good it's almost singlehandedly interested me in the show

Yes, I love it. Season 1 is fantastic. Season 2 is also great so far. Tonally it's a bit different than S1 but it's still probably my second favorite show currently on TV.

Number 1 is "Perry Mason" on HBO, by the way. If you're a fan of detective fiction and 30s period Hollywood settings it's a must watch. Absolutely gorgeous cinematography, the best looking show on TV by far. Performances are stellar, great story. Really addictive stuff.

 

[Jordan Cole]

I have been interested in Perry Mason. I've never heard of Yellowjackets.

We're currently watching The Shield for the first time. Just finished season 1 and it's incredible so far. No spoilers or I'll kill you. For light comedy stuff we're watching The Mindy Project, which my wife loves. There's some very funny bits, it's basically a fun rom-com.

I've also been watching The Staircase, the (pointlessly??) dramatized version of the documentary The Staircase. It's OK...But I don't get why the show exists when you can just watch the actual incredibly well covered real events in the documentary. Parts of it seem kind of fucked up too.

On top of that are tons of shows we put on hold or check out here and there. Boardwalk Empire. The Rig. 12 Monkeys. All of Beavis and Butt-Head in order from the beginning. Etc etc etc.

 

[MasterMastermnd]

All I'll say about The Shield is if you think it's good now just you wait. The last three seasons are truly Shakespearean.

Perry Mason was good. Love Tatiana Maslany

 

[Ickles]

Perry Mason was good. Love Tatiana Maslany

Season 2 is finally out now, first 4 episodes anyway. If you liked season 1 I highly recommend it. I might even like it more than S1 so far.

 

[eyeboogers]

I am angry at "Perry Mason", they spend the entire first season gradually building up the iconic theme music episode by episode, only to dismantle it again in season 2. It's the "I am the FBI" equivalent of 2023.