thomas4cinema

Great post at 3guys3movies, made me think about which tv shows I was not only addicted to when I laid hands on them, but could imagine watching all over again at some point. The immediate candidates may sound a bit conservative, but I cannot remember having been as enthused about anything on tv before or after.

Masterpieces:

• The Wire
• Sopranos
• And Tony Soprano’s evil twin at Deadwood (I still cannot get over the fact that a tv company is unable to finish this amazing show, co*%su@#ers!)
• Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom (technically a tv show, even though it was screened in cinemas internationally … I spent some nice seven hours in a row in a run-down arthouse theatre… time of my life!)
• The Killing (Forbrydelsen, Danish original): wow, fantastic, and the Danish original is so much better than the US remake
• The Thick of It: Malcolm Tucker is the most fun tv character I can remember, seriously!
• Twin Peaks: just watching it again, oh I love David Lynch for what he is doing to network tv here!
• Life on Mars (UK version, of course, should anybody wonder)
• Kir Royal: no that’s a German Special.. I have no idea whether it makes sense outside Germany, but it is the greatest thing I have ever seen coming out of German tv. A short series about the life of a Munich gossip columnisthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kir_Royal_%E2%80%93_Aus_dem_Leben_eines_Klatschreporters; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090465

Flawed Masterpieces:

• Battlestar Galactica (even though it has its periods where it loses track of its goal, but recovered quite well)
• West Wing (half of the show is outstanding, even though it might have run a bit too long, and suffered from staff changes)
• Lost: yes, sure, all what’s wrong has been discussed, I still loved 90 out of the total 100 episodes
• South Park: just watch all episodes again on their website, and agree that this is not a tv show, but it is a cultural phenomenon without equal. And fun!
• 24: give them the honour – this was a great format, and great cast. Maybe two seasons too many, of course.

Honourable Mention:

• Let’s not forget the first season of “Heroes”, which after many years of annoyed absence brought me back into checking out tv shows. TV can be that well written and produced?
• Dexter also reshuffled the tv show deck of cards quite a bit, and even though I felt a bit annoyed around … cannot remember, was it Season 3? … I am now on it again with old vigour.
• Jericho: the uncompleted masterpiece, could have become a classic

Too early to tell:

• Newsroom
• Breaking Bad: I very much enjoy it at the moment, not sure whether I will go back to it in some years’ time, though
• Boardwalk Empire: but let’s see where this goes…

I remember I made some notes on the phenomenon of tv shows when realising that I, well, started to like them…

https://thomas4cinema.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/tv-shows-and-other-reflections/

https://thomas4cinema.wordpress.com/2008/03/13/disoriented-tv-shows/

All the TV notes I took can be found here