Great TV Shows!

arkmundi

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Jul 8, 2012
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Worcester, MA USofA
My 100 or so Top Shows of All Time (linked to IMDB)
↑↑↑Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey
↑↑↑Penny Dreadful
Game of Thrones
North America
Northern Exposure
Treme
True Detective
Vikings {Season 2}
↑↑↑Bates Motel
American Horror Story
Fringe
Friday Night Lights
Life
The Colbert Report
Rome
Da Vinci's Demons
Battlestar Galactica & Caprica & Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome
The Borgias
The Tudors
Peaky Blinders
Smash
Once Upon a Time in Wonderland [wikipedia]
House M.D.
Hell on Wheels
Spartacus: Gods of the Arena & Spartacus: War of the Damned
Carnivàle
Sons of Anarchy
Hannibal
Breaking Bad
Better Call Saul
The Pillars of the Earth
True Blood
Deadwood
Boardwalk Empire
Mob City
There Will Be Blood
Dune & Children of Dune
The X-Files
Tin Man
Dead Like Me
Bob's Burgers
The Wire
Six Feet Under
Dexter
Louie
Shameless
Grimm
Mad Men
The Killing
Copper
Luck
The West Wing
Firefly
South Park
Seinfeld
Jericho
Boss
The Shield
Rescue Me
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Justified
Sherlock
Grey's Anatomy
Twin Peaks
Star Trek & Star Trek: The Next Generation
Doctor Who
The Good Wife
The Pacific
M*A*S*H
Warehouse 13
Hill Street Blues
Southland
Once Upon a Time
Bones
Elementary
Scandal
Continuum
Parenthood
666 Park Avenue
Farscape
Damages
My So-Called Life
Robot Chicken
Boston Legal
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Wonderfalls
John Adams
Hatfields & McCoys
Alice
Nova
Cosmos
The Blue Planet
The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
The Bridge
V
Sanctuary
Oz
The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
Wallace and Gromit's World of Invention
The Outer Limits
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
The Newsroom
Big Love
Mildred Pierce
United States of Tara
Enlightened
Kings
Pennies from Heaven
Ripper Street
Supernatural
Pushing Daisies
Magic City
Arrested Development
Parks and Recreation
Lost
Frasier
Friends
Eureka
Downton Abbey
Orphan Black
Top of the Lake
Being Human
Broadchurch
Mr Selfridge
TRON: Uprising
Haven
Monday Mornings
Cheers
Brothers & Sisters
Ray Donovan
NYPD Blue
Banshee
Legend of the Seeker
The Legend of Korra
Torchwood
Avatar: The Last Airbender
House of Cards
The Lost Room
Perception
Orange Is the New Black
Brotherhood
Picket Fences
Bonanza
 
Peaky Blinders
The story starts in 1919 in the poor and crime-ridden neighbourhoods of post war Birmingham. Returning First World War sevicemen, political revolutionaries, and criminal gangs all fight for an existence in an industrial landscape engulfed by economic problems. Firearms smuggled home from the trenches via Birmingham's canal system find their way into the communities, Communists are planning for a violent revolution. and Parliament is expecting it. Winston Churchill mobilises this Metropolitan Police's Special Branch to deal with these threats...
S01E01 just showed up Sunday 15-Sep-13. This has all the right ingredients to make a great TV show.
[youtube]bMRylW0H-kM[/youtube]
 
So what network would that be on? BBC, PBS? Netflix or Hulu?

Soon as the last episode of Breaking Bad airs, we're cutting the cable. I watch( or perhaps just listen to) way too much TV, but have had it with commercials and big cable bills so we are going to Netflix and other streaming. PBS online is great, since I can watch the good stuff anytime.

I'll miss Turner movies, the channel the TV was on 90% of the time.
 
I'd like to recommend some maybe more unknown series (especially for the non-Europeans)

total nonsence, mayhem and violence: Bottom
peacefull: Doc Martin
total nonsence but more peaceful: Allo Allo
bit more up-to-date: IT crowd
 
Sons of Anarchy NCIS NCIS LA Arrow is about it for me as far as the non documentary type shows i watch...

KiM
 
I have lived sans TV for about 9 years. Haven't really missed much. Anything we do watch is off the net, and that was mostly ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) stuff anyway. Gruen Transfer and it's various incarnations are great, anything by the Chaser guys is pretty entertaining too. On the commercial networks, I have always liked Mythbusters - still watch the odd episode on the web. As far as best TV shows of all time are concerned - The Simpsons has to win hands down. Think of another TV show which has achieved as much as it has, and has been mostly entertaining for 20 years. To be fair, it jumped the shark in about 2003. After The Simpsons, I reckon Futurama, Family Guy and South Park are honourable mentions.
 
My family watches a lot of TV, but I only watch Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, most of which I watched on Netflix through someone else's account.

I'd love to dump my TV and direct TV, but my family likes it.

I wouldn't miss TV a bit. Not even a little.

I do listen to a lot of music, though, through my Iphone. Love heavy metal, hard rock, and anything with a beat that makes me want to move.
 
Favorite show, why I'm watching it right now: LA Dodgers baseball. 8)
All time favorite TV show, The Real Mc Coys. It ran for just six years. In the first episode, Walter Brennan plays a tune on the banjo, then rests it near the fireplace and never touches it again. Some San Fernando Valley history and very funny to watch. Close behind would be the episode of The Beverly Hillbillies where Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs sing their version of The Wreck of the Old Southern 97, which many years previously had been the first million-selling record in history; and the artist Vernon Dalhart never got a dime from RCA. :x I still sing ten verses of that 100+ year-old song as a warm up to clear the crud. :lol:
 
Some of that old stuff is priceless.

I've kept bloodhounds for 30 years, it's all Jed's fault. One dog was actually a great great granddaughter of duke.

Part of cutting the cable, was getting a digital TV and hooking up to an antenna again. One channels secondary broadcast is all retro tv shows. First thing I see, Episode one of the Beverly Hillbillies. 8) Hoo doggies.

First watch on Netflix, all of breaking bad, without the commercials in our home recorded DVD's. :D Then on to the really bad sci fi movies, providing our own MST 3000 commentary. My backyard in the shot every time they show that V2 launch footage.
 
This was one of the best:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unforgiven_(TV_series)

(link may not work, dunno why. Article does exist)

I like British drama. When it"s good it"s really good.
Real life drama with couple poltergeist scenes. Document feel with fiction bits mixed in very nicely.
One of those very few shows that you remember rest of your life.
I watch TV very little. Around one hour per day, and half of that is usually news :)
 
Speaking of British and Sci Fi. Used to really enjoy The Prisoner. Baked of course, it was about 1968 then.

Funniest thing I ever saw, was a Ma and Pa Kettle movie while on LSD. Stomach hurt for days after that one.
 
Lebowski said:
I'd like to recommend some maybe more unknown series (especially for the non-Europeans)

total nonsence, mayhem and violence: Bottom
peacefull: Doc Martin
total nonsence but more peaceful: Allo Allo
bit more up-to-date: IT crowd

+1 on "IT Crowd". Loved it!
Will have to try the others.

Re Breaking Bad... Great show but I had to quit watching it after first few episodes. I'm pretty much pro legalization of all forms of pharmaceuticals and biologicals ... except meth and pcp. Those two just too damn much damage all around.

Cut the cable ~5 years ago, now watch Netflix a few hours a month. Tough at first but happy we did it.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unforgiven_(TV_series) It's breaking the parenthesis off the end. I wrapped URL around it.

So let's just say someone on this board made a (Sort of) career in television, and could find a way to get something in production: What would you say you'd like to see?

I don't mean 'More cops and robbers.' I mean, 'Well, I just liked how the extraordinary was all around going unnoticed on 'X-Files.' '

An old tv show called 'Sea Hunt' started off just slipping a little underwater footage into each episode, but they learned that the audience just wanted to see the underwater, so there came to be less story and more diving.

A network chief asked Desi Arnaz if he'd maybe figure out a way to depict a Bell helicopter in an episode of 'I Love Lucy,' that led to a spinoff of the successful 'Whirlybirds,' as well as the derivative 'Rip Cord' (Sky diving) because the audience demanded it.

All seems hokey now, but this was stuff no one had a way to see. Just as they couldn't see Elvis Presley or Chuck Berry until Dick Clark came up with 'American Bandstand.'

So I wonder what I could come up with that would get me working for REAL again. . . .
 
dogman said:
Funniest thing I ever saw, was a Ma and Pa Kettle movie while on LSD. Stomach hurt for days after that one.

I always liked Ma and Pa Kettle, but what I find is that when you watch an old funny show back then and watch it now some of the humour has gone like Jerry Lewis or Max Smart, but have to agree with Chris J about the Simpsons, but my all time favourite is Fawlty Towers, Doc Who too and liking National geographics Mega Structures, so doco's about the past wins and nature like David Attenborough etc. Geez turn it off!
 
The Simpsons was good, especially the first few years. Matt Groening grew up in Albuquerque, so a lot of the stuff in the Simpsons is actually poking fun at New Mexico. The three eyed fish for example, downstream from Los Alamos.

50% of what I watch is history or science programs. Best of which are on PBS, or PBS on line. One reason I am cutting the cable is the Discovery and History channels have become the bigfoot and ufo channels.

The rest is old movies on Turner. Wish I could get that on line, but Netflix has some. And I've been recording a lot of the best old movies on DVD's. Stuff like Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Searchers, Laurence of Arabia, etc.

Not a TV show per se, but I also recorded a stack of old Zatoishi movies when IFC was showing them, and some Kurosawas of course like 7 samurai. Love the good samurai movies.

Have been watching some very good new movies from China on Netflix.
 
Very cool, thank you!
Based on the ones I know and have enjoyed... I'll check out the others on the list.
Interesting you included Lost. I enjoyed each of the seemingly 7000 or so individual episodes...
though when they resorted to the device of time travel somewhere along they way,
I realized their scriptwriters really were desperate for some way to make sense of it all :wink:
 
Re the top 100 list.

Northern Exposure. +1 Great characters, the big native American girl way too much like my wife. And you could tune in just to get lost in those big blue eyes. The first episodes, you could tell the writers had read their John Nichols. ( Milargo Beanfield War)`

Off to look for it on Netflix, see those eyes in HD. I forgot to mention that was the really great thing about Netflix, getting modern stuff and film shot old stuff in HD for cheap. 107 bucks a month and Comcast serves it up all blurry. Frockers.

HD programming free off the antenna has been a trip. That Diane Sawyer on the news has some FREAKY eyes. Couldn't tell before, even on the new TV.
 
Alright! So had to put a link in here to Only four more episodes of Breaking Bad. What will happen? as its definitely the hot show of the moment, with only two episodes left. My 100 or so list was concocted in reflection of just where I'd put that show in the line up. These next two may force it up or down in the list - I intend on keeping it uptodate. Please fire away, especially shows you believe deserve it in the top 100. It's likely not there because I haven't seen it yet, and will if you say I should! Best!
 
I like to think of how TV has influenced modern culture. While I can't speak about other nations, I can say that American TV has a lot of day-to-day influence on American culture.

What do you think?

Here are some examples of, well, quotes that have stuck with us for decades after the show ended:

One example is the word "grasshopper" to identify (or pretend to identify) someone who is new at something. For instance, if you are teaching a friend to use a powertool and he or she begins to get it, you would say, "Now you are learning, Grasshopper."

Most adults understand that.

Another thing I say a lot is "Sorry, Charlie" when telling someone "no." It's from a Starkist Tuna commercial that ran for several years. A tuna fish wants to be chopped up and put in a can, but he's not good enough, so the spokesperson says, "Sorry Charlie." It's similar the Trix cereal commercials, which is another thing Americans say a lot, "Silly Rabbit, Trix are for kids." It's a way of saying, "This isn't for you."

Like if a kid grabs a wine cooler because he thinks it's a kids' drink, an adult would take and say, "Silly Rabbit; Trix are for kids."
 
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