I noticed a thread I made about show that might not edge well has sort of popped back up so I thought about doing one about shows that you think are going to age well and will almost be timeless or at least as timeless as any tv show can be. Here is 5 from me" 1 Westworld=The future society is generic enough that it can feel like any modern day and of course stuff set the past actually age better than stuff made in the past because it's done with hindsight involved. Granted it isn't the past but you know what I mean with the Western Setting. 2 Better Call Saul=LIke Breaking Bad it's so character oriented that the setting is almost not important. PLus crooked lawyers isn't a concept I don't see going away in the future. 3 Orville=The beauty of the show is it already feels dated but in a good way. It's not suppose to feel to modern. 4 The Marvelous Ms Maisel=Another show saved by it's past setting. Plus I think social issues like sexism and racism tends to age better when it place in a past setting even if you are commenting on modern society. Those were periods of time when those issues seem so clear and not so complicated. 5 Legion=If their is something that is more timeless than a past setting it's got to be a surreal setting. That is something that always holds up well as well. Jason
I'm trying to think of a modern show currently on the air that I watch... The Expanse I think will age well as the CGI and everything is top notch and space shows always rock.
Comedies like Brooklyn Nine Nine or 30 Rock that have character driven humor rather than ‘lesson learning’ or normative moralizing. I agree about Better Call Saul. I think GoT would age better than Westworld though because Westworld is very specifically targeting our current anxieties.
What you said about character driven humor got me thinking. Isn't that also more of a product of it's time? Take FRIENDS and SEINFELD for example. Both were big twenty five years ago, but today they are laughed at rather than with (so to speak) more often that not. I've even seen it in this forum. What was funny yesterday might not be funny tommorrow, and all that. Personally, I still love SEINFELD though.
Seinfeld is still popular, I have seen more people still quoting it than mocking it. I agree about Friends, and I think a big difference between those two is that characters in Friends ‘learned lessons’. I feel like with Friends the way the characters relate to each other and their problems are a product of the way people saw the world in the 90s. Whereas with Seinfeld it was the way two people, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, saw things which was subversive for the 90s. The difference between writing characters around idealized perception of normal social interaction, and writing them to spite that perception.
Yeah, if anything the Seinfeld reunion on Curb kind of poked fun at it. It was essentially a show inside a show, with the actors playing themselves playing their characters while getting ready for their big reunion that doesn't really exist. It was brilliantly done. That said, I think the comedy still works just as well as it did back when it first aired. The bit where George steals bread? Brilliant. I think that as with any series that tends to refer to specific things, those will be dated, but the scenarios themselves be timeless.
First show I thought of was The Expanse, but I think the Michael Schur shows (The Office, B99, The Good Place, and Parks and Recreation) will age well. I've only seen Good Place and Parks of the ones I've mentioned but it's the same kind of format and it's still pretty funny.
I think most of the comic book shows will age well. Comic book characters are usually timeless and while some of them usue pop culture references they are usually about the stuff that people will know even in the future. a Star Trek reference for example holds up forever because Star Trek will be around forever. Jason
You couldn't be more wrong. There was a huge uproar when Netflix had Friends slated for removal just last month. Seinfeld still makes hundreds of millions of dollars in streaming and syndication. The only issue with the shows now-a-days is everyone points out how fucking white they are. I had a date over for dinner Sunday, twice during it I went "That's a Seinfeld episode!" They just got a post office job and are new to the area so when they brought back the beer cans they thought they got 10 cents because they got back so much money.
Dunno, but I'm of the mind that any sci-fi series will date itself, especially if they are effects-heavy.
Off the top of my head I agree with some already mentioned in this thread. I think Game of Thrones, Westworld, The Expanse and other Sci-Fi and Fantasy shows will age well. I also think that certain period pieces will age well too, like Mad Men and perhaps Better Call Saul (and to an extent Breaking Bad).
I just think The Expanse is done in such a way where the issues it tackles will always be with us, and that stands above what visual effects will be like. I mean look at Babylon 5. Those visual effects leave a lot to be desired, yet the themes in that show are probably more meaningful today than they were back then.
Yeah Ok, but my point is that, to use your B5 example, the effects date it to a point where you can say, "Ok that came from this period". There's no real way of escaping that and it's an unfortunate biproduct of effect-heavy sci-fi.