Your top three TV series of all time are?

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 12:37 pm

I agree with Fringe being a good show. It was not on the top of my list, but it is a very well made show, indeed.
I also found myself enjoying "Castle" quite a bit. I like murder and "whodoneit" mysteries. It is a bit like "murder she wrote", but a male protagonist. As a Whedonite, I of course appreciate Nathan Fillion

My favorite whodoneit crime series of all time though must be the Miss Marple series with Margaret Rutherford. So much charm, they just dont get that right anymore today.

krenshala · Post by **krenshala** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 10:48 pm

Skipjack wrote:I agree with Fringe being a good show. It was not on the top of my list, but it is a very well made show, indeed.
I also found myself enjoying "Castle" quite a bit. I like murder and "whodoneit" mysteries. It is a bit like "murder she wrote", but a male protagonist. As a Whedonite, I of course appreciate Nathan Fillion

My favorite whodoneit crime series of all time though must be the Miss Marple series with Margaret Rutherford. So much charm, they just dont get that right anymore today.

The TV shows for Ms Marple (and Hercule Poirot) were spoiled for me because I'd already read as many Agatha Christie books I could lay my hands on, and reread a few of them, before I ever got a chance to watch the shows. I tend to get stuck on the inevitable changes, and it takes away the enjoyment of the show for me (and those that have to listen to me whine about it

). This is the reason I'm both awaiting and dreading the Enders Game movie I've heard rumors about.

Jccarlton · Post by **Jccarlton** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 1:19 am

olivier wrote:My selection is definitely old-fashioned.

From the US:
+++ The Invaders (1967 - The nightmare has already begun)
++ The Wild Wild West (1965 - Esp. Dr Loveless's episodes)

From UK:
+++ The Avengers (1968 - Esp. Diana Rigg's seasons)
++ The Persuaders (1970 - For Roger Moore, Tony Curtis and John Barry's music)

From France:
+++ Les Rois Maudits (The Accursed Kings - 1972 - The jewel of 70s French TV)
++ Jacquou le Croquant (1969 - The series that made a whole country cry)

Oldies, but goodies, At least the US and Brit series. I haven't seen the French series.

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 3:42 am

Diana Rigg on the Avengers. That is some Lycra and Vinyl I could watch all day long...Black Plastic Rocks!

I can;t remember the name now, but there was one Brit show I liked way back when Dear Old Dad or something of the sort. I also liked Monty Python and Faulty Towers.

Of course, we can't leave out Benny Hill.

Diogenes · Post by **Diogenes** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 3:21 pm

ladajo wrote:Diana Rigg on the Avengers. That is some Lycra and Vinyl I could watch all day long...Black Plastic Rocks!

I can;t remember the name now, but there was one Brit show I liked way back when Dear Old Dad or something of the sort. I also liked Monty Python and Faulty Towers.

Of course, we can't leave out Benny Hill.

I loved "The Avengers". I wanted to grow up to be John Steed. What dashing and daring! Now that I think about it, I also wanted to be James West. I wonder what they have in common?

Benny Hill was great, Loved Monty Python, Loved Poirot. (I have an autographed photograph of David Suchet)

"Fringe" is my favorite current TV series. It started out weak, but got better and better as the plot developed. One of my favorite lines was from a discussion of a "Ghost" in an apartment building.

Dr. Bishop declares there are no such thing as "ghosts."
Peter responds, " All the weird stuff we've seen and you draw the line at "Ghosts"?

That cracks me up!

choff · Post by **choff** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 6:32 pm

I forgot about "The Avengers" and "The Invaders," both topnotch.

seedload · Post by **seedload** » Tue Apr 12, 2011 12:10 pm

Diogenes wrote:"Fringe" is my favorite current TV series. It started out weak, but got better and better as the plot developed.

"Fringe" - I didn't make it past the weak part. Maybe I should tune back in although I will probably be lost.

Clearly the best show on now (if you count shows that are between seasons) is "The Walking Dead".

Feeling kind of lonely that I got little support for "The Wire" as one of the best shows of all time. Probably because not that many people have actually seen it. If you haven't, you don't have to look past the opening of the first episode of the first season, which tells the story of Snot Boogie, to realized the genius of this show. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmIvu1yg3bU

D Tibbets · Post by **D Tibbets** » Tue Apr 12, 2011 4:03 pm

Reading through the list I repeatedly changed my mind. My mutable list would be Cheers, MASH, and All in the Family.

I also liked Wild Wild West, Man from Uncle, Dr Who- with the tall guy, not the fuzzy haired guy, Mission Impossible, The Prisoner (though I could never figure out what was going on, Secret Agent Man, Leave it to Beaver, etc. etc.

What I detest most is the reality shows.with the assumption that using a hand held camera and shooting over peoples shoulders somehow makes them real nonscripted events.

Dan Tibbets

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Tue Apr 12, 2011 5:09 pm

I'll throw my hat in with The Wire, that was a good show. Well done.

Diogenes · Post by **Diogenes** » Tue Apr 12, 2011 5:21 pm

seedload wrote:
Diogenes wrote:"Fringe" is my favorite current TV series. It started out weak, but got better and better as the plot developed.
"Fringe" - I didn't make it past the weak part. Maybe I should tune back in although I will probably be lost.

Clearly the best show on now (if you count shows that are between seasons) is "The Walking Dead".

Love zombie movies! Unfortunately they are unrealistic, especially when you see partial skeletons moving. Let's face it, unless you are going to invoke magic, there is no plausible way to animate corpses in the manner of most zombie movies.

This plot hole is handled much better in the "28 days later" and "28 weeks later" movies. In these cases, "zombies" are people who have been infected with the "RAGE" virus. "Carriers", (an excellent movie!) uses a similar concept.

I enjoyed watching "The Walking dead" but as is usually with most zombie movies, no one seems to deal with the situation in a realistic manner. To be fair, if they did it wouldn't be very entertaining as a movie.

Anyway, I tell my kids to watch all the zombie movies they can. It's a good teaching tool for dealing with our future fellow citizens when the long term Liberal policies in our Nation finally reach their all too predictable consequences.

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Tue Apr 12, 2011 5:25 pm

World War Z

CaptainBeowulf · Post by **CaptainBeowulf** » Tue Apr 12, 2011 8:31 pm

BSG reboot was religious from the beginning, but so was the original series, surprisingly. I found it entertaining, but was disappointed when they capped up the whole series as nothing more than a Luddite morality play. I haven't watched Caprica yet, or the spinoff made-for-tv movies.

I felt exactly the same way. Plus, having them arrive 150,000 BCE and find humans which have evolved so similarly that they are genetically compatible with the humans from Kobol makes it an "intelligent design" story, which I find ridiculous. I get the impression that the show producers did this inadvertently - they'd just lost control of their own story so badly by the end that they didn't realize what they were doing.

Also, as some people on other fora pointed out, if the whole story was a result of "God's will", it meant that God had to want the genocide of 12 human planets totaling billions of people in order to just get the Colonials to interbreed with the Cylons and the Earth humans. So, offensive from the religious aspect as well as from the scientific perspective. Generally, a very disappointing ending to what was a very, very good show up to the end of season 2 (when they settled on "New Caprica").

The thing is, I thought it wasn't being religious at the beginning. It was ambiguous whether the religious scrolls were really a prophesy, or whether it was just that they could be read a lot of different ways, thereby simply "appearing" to predict events.[/i]

CaptainBeowulf · Post by **CaptainBeowulf** » Tue Apr 12, 2011 8:33 pm

BSG CENTRIC POST - don't bother to read this if you don't like the show.

Since there seem to be some others who like the show here, and everyone here has some knowledge of physics, I thought I'd float my own reinterpretation and see if anyone wants to comment:

It can all be resolved by the following quasi "hard sci-fi" thought experiment:

1. The show tries to be hard sci-fi, except for magically invoking an FTL drive which allows short jumps between solar systems.

2. However, an FTL drive is actually also a time machine. If you FTL jump into a frame of reference that is different enough, and then you FTL jump again from that frame of reference to another one, and so on, you can construct a pathway where you end up in your own past.

3. The Colonials and Cylons have only been FTL jumping around locally, between relatively close star systems moving through the galaxy at similar speeds, and they never get their ships anywhere near light speed using their sublight drives. Therefore they never experience any significant time travel. Ships might actually "gain" or "lose" up to a few hours with FTL jumps, but nothing in their experience significant enough to result in real "time travel." They don't bother to mention it in what we see on the show because they're used to these sort of minor temporal discrepancies.

4. However, the humans from the future of Earth, as well as from Kobol, could have had more advanced tech and ranged much further.

5. As a result of a war between machines and humans in our future, a bunch of people run away as far as they can, getting into a different reference frame. They end up settling on Kobol in what is essentially our past as seen from the reference frame around the Colonies.

6. Then they end up on the Colonies.

7. They then end up on Earth 150,000 BCE.

Basically, this explains the idea that there is a cycle which happens again and again. At least a portion of humanity is stuck in an approx. 200,000 year long closed timelike loop, governed by the Novikov self-consistency principle. It has to always happen basically the same way.

It explains genetic compatibility between Earth and Kobol humans.

It can also explain the "religious" prophecies by having them turn out to be a scrambled version of some record produced on Kobol when some scientists figured out that humanity was in a closed timelike loop.

It can also explain other things, like:
- why they speak English
- why they wear suits with ties
- why there is a star map on Kobol with the constellations as seen from Earth today

By explaining the show this way, I can at least partially redress my disappointment with the ending, but I doubt that the show producers ever considered this sort of thing.

choff · Post by **choff** » Wed Apr 13, 2011 1:53 am

Another reality tv based movie worth watching was 'Series 7, The Contenders.'

kunkmiester · Post by **kunkmiester** » Wed Apr 13, 2011 2:32 am

Exosquad was a cartoon, but had a heavy influence on me watching it as a kid.

Firefly was wonderful.

I also enjoyed Sonic "SatAM," or what little I could catch of it. I've downloaded and rewatched all three, they'll eventually end up in the DVD collection.

What's it say that two of the three are cartoons I watched as a kid?

I did like some of Monk, and stuff like Mythbusters.