Convince Me To Try Your Favorite Show

[Spot's Meow]

Spring Break is coming up and I will have some time to watch a show or two through Netflix. Depends on the length of the show. Anyway, I thought I would ask you all to try and sway my choices. I think there has been a thread like this before, but I don't remember how far back that was.

I would like you to choose ONE show that you think would be a great choice. It can be currently running or ended, doesn't matter to me as long as it is on DVD and available through Netflix (which is most anything).

If I have already seen the show I will let you know and you get to choose another one. Here are some of the awesome shows I have seen already so no need to choose them:

Freaks and Geeks
Dead Like Me
Lost
24
Friends
Rome
Arrested Development


So just state the show, and a little bit about why it would be great to watch. But please, no big spoilers in your descriptions! That would kind of defeat the purpose of watching the show for me. Keep in mind that I am not a huge fan of scifi (already tried Firefly and BSG) so it might be a risky choice, but I am willing to give almost anything a shot.

Hopefully this thread will be useful to others as well.

So convince me!

 

[Seven of Five]

The Wire and Six Feet Under. The Wire is an intricate tapestry of story that builds itself season upon season, and the dialogue is, for the most part, excellent. It follows the lives of drug dealers and users, police, politicians, children and so on, all looking at different sides of Baltimore commuinity ravished by drug problems. It's definately a slow build, but what is does build to is truly one of the best television programmes I've seen.

Six Feet Under isn't as classy but it definately affected me watching it. The lives of a family living at a funeral home is both hilarious yet touching. Lots of different character arcs throughout the show, and one of the best finales I've ever seen. Very good acting.

 

[John Picard]

If you don't watch either Lost or Doctor Who, I will eat a kitten like this:

*nom* *nom* *nom* *nom* *nom*

 

[Spot's Meow]

^I already watch Lost, as I mentioned in the original post.

I have seen two or three episodes of Doctor Who and didn't like it much. But as I said I'm not a huge scifi fan.

 

[Mistral]

^I already watch Lost, as I mentioned in the original post.

I have seen two or three episodes of Doctor Who and didn't like it much. But as I said I'm not a huge scifi fan.

The one season with Christopher Eggleston is worthy-and I hate Dr. Who.

If you are on break, you should watch something fun. Go get the first season of Burn Notice. Trust me. I would never eat a kitten.(I'd wait 'till it was fully grown-more meat that way.)

 

[teya]

"Friday Night Lights."

I'll start this with this statement: I hate American football but I love this show.

It follows a high school team in Texas (where football is king) through the season. Anyone who's ever lived in a small town in the US will recognize these characters as friends and neighbors.

Unique for a TV show, it's largely improvised dialogue--so the characters talk over and around each other. It's also filmed with multiple hand-held cameras--so the actors are never playing to the camera, since they don't know which footage will be used.

And it's filmed on location--in Austin and (for the first season) Pflugerville, TX.

Coach and his wife Tami have one of the most realistic marriages I've ever seen on TV. And God knows, every kid could use someone like Coach in his or her life.

 

[auntiehill]

Dexter.

He is perhaps the most dark, complicated and frightening character to ever have a series centered around him. BUT, because of the wonderful writing and masterful performance by Michael C. Hall, you find yourself caring about and even rooting for someone who is a dedicated and proficient serial killer.

Why? Because in many ways, Dexter is, quite simply, a very good person. He is driven by a sense of justice, learned from his policeman-foster father. Dexter uses his brilliant mind to catch the worst criminals who have escaped or dodged punishment from the legal system. We can understand the sense of duty he feels when he exacts his vigilante justice. Dexter cares about his friends, his sister, his girlfriend. We hear his thoughts as he narrates every episode, and often, what Dexter thinks about himself is not exactly what the audience discovers. We start to know him better than he knows himself. Watching him maneuver his way through daily life is a tense, joyful and thrilling ride.

There haven't been many shows where I've gotten upset when an episode ends---simply because I must, MUST know more, and see what happens next.

This is one of those shows.

Check out this scene of Dexter, pretending to be an addict so he can go to NA and discuss his "addiction."
The Dark Passenger

Or the first few minute of the first episode, where Dexter describes his life.
Meet Dexter


You can catch it on Netflix or Showtime.

 

[sidious618]

The Shield. Just watch it.

 

[The Evil Dead]

I will be lurking in this thread a little bit, hoping to find some ideas for my own viewing pleasure. With Battlestar Galactica ending this week I need a show to dig into.

So far my list of potentials is:
Breaking Bad
Big Love
Eastbound & Down
True Blood
Burn Notice
Rescue Me
Chuck
Legend of the Seeker
Flight of the Conchords
Mad Men
Fringe

I am finding it particularly difficult to come up with a recent dramatic series, a lot of the ones I want to try seem to skew toward comedy.

 

[Spot's Meow]

^There are lots of good choices on the list but at this time I would recommend you watch Fringe because it only started so recently. It is currently on hiatus for a couple of months, so if you can get caught up on the first part of the season before then you can start watching it as it airs. There is some humor in it but it is definitely a drama. And while it may just seem like an X-Files knock-off for the first few episodes, it's really going somewhere good at this point. It also has one of the greatest partnerships on TV, the Bishops.

 

[Roger Wilco]

How I Met Your Mother

It's a sitcom, superficially reminding of Friends, but more modern and edgier. There's a backstory about the main character searching for the woman he's going to marry, but basically it just follows the lifes of these five youngish people in New York. Very funny show.

 

[auntiehill]

I will be lurking in this thread a little bit, hoping to find some ideas for my own viewing pleasure. With Battlestar Galactica ending this week I need a show to dig into.

So far my list of potentials is:
Breaking Bad
Big Love
Eastbound & Down
True Blood
Burn Notice
Rescue Me
Chuck
Legend of the Seeker
Flight of the Conchords
Mad Men
Fringe

I am finding it particularly difficult to come up with a recent dramatic series, a lot of the ones I want to try seem to skew toward comedy.

Of that list, I like Burn Notice the best. It's action, drama, a little light humor and lots of great characters. It's a bit of an anti-Bond, if you will, and has lots of great "how-to" moments. If you like spies, action, heist-films and/or Bruce Campbell, you will LOVE Burn Notice.

"You know spies---a bunch of bitchy little girls."
--Sam, Burn Notice.

 

[John Picard]

Watch Boston Legal lest I eat *two kittens*.

nom nom doubly nom!

 

[The Evil Dead]

I will move both Burn Notice & Fringe up my To-Do list!

 

[mimic]

The Wire is probably the best show I have seen. It's a tough sell though because you have to invest in it before there's any payoff (you'll be skeptical for the first few eps, and then something will click and you'll think it's brilliant). The language also takes some getting used to.

Some reasons to watch:

• Fantastic characters (Omar, Bubbles, Freamon, McNulty, Bunk, Stringer, DeAngelo)
• No gimmicks. Popular characters die, and it's not played for shock value.
• Lots of the cliches found in typical cop shows aren't here. The "good guys" don't always win, and the crooks they're chasing aren't always the "bad guys"; not to mention there's very little action.
• Arc show that's actually planned from start to finish

 

[LutherSloan]

I am going with Jericho. Although it only lasted for one full season and a second shortened one, it was one of the best shows on TV during its time.

As you may or may not know, Jericho is about what happens to the town of Jericho, Kansas in the aftermath of a nuclear war. It primarily revolves around the Green family and their two grown sons (Jake and Eric) plus their dad, who is the mayor of Jericho. Jake had left Jericho behind for years before returning to try and figure out his life in the first episode. The other major characters are Jake's former girlfriend, a new arrival to Jericho by the name of Robert Hawkins, and several of the local townspeople like the police chief, the woman who runs the town grocery, and a teenage kid who loses his parents in the initial attack, but ends up becoming a crucial part of the town. As the show goes on new people arrive and become more important.

In general the show deals with what it would be like to live in America after a nuclear war decimates all of the major cities in the US, leaving most people on their own. This show DOES NOT go the Sci-Fi route ala 'Fallout', with any kind of mutants or anything. It tries to be realistic about what life would be like after a nuclear attack. For most of the series the townspeople struggle to survive with limited resourses to keep the town going, in addition to dealing with the environment and lawlessness.

I know most people on this board have great things to say as well about Jericho.

 

[archeryguy1701]

I'm another vote for Jericho. It's a real interesting story with some great characters. Most of season one is decent to pretty good, but starting with about the last quarter of season one and all the way through season two, they really tightened things up and got moving on the bigger picture. It was a good show at first, but quickly got turned into a great show the last season and a quarter. And, it's just short enough that on the off chance you don't enjoy it, you'll still have most of your break left to watch something else.

 

[Dorian Thompson]

I concur with the Dexter, The Wire, and The Shield recommendations. All of them are excellent shows. Rome is also quite good, but season one is definitely better than season two.

My own recommendations? Supernatural from the CW--yes, the CW (an underrated gem that actually gets better as the seasons go along. Its first season is its weakest) and HBO's Big Love, the story of the polygamous Henricksens who hide in plain sight in suburban Sandy, Utah. Superrnatural has the most poignant brotherly relationship on television, bar none. Nothing comes close, and it can be darkly hilarious as hell in between all the angst and pathos. Ben Edlund joined its writing team in season two; the man has a delightfully psychotic imagination--live, 6 foot bipolar teddy bears who like porn don't come along on every show.

Big Love isn't the soap opera it sounds like. Some of the characters from the Juniper Creek compound (Harry Dean Stanton and Bruce Dern being two of them) are just crazy!! Both shows are well worth it.

 

[TheMasterOfOrion]

B-5

http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/9199/babylon5thelosttalescl1.jpg

WATCH IT

 

[Kirkman1987]

I concur with Dexter. one of my favorite shows.

my picks....

Twin Peaks- I love this one and think it may be up your alley. Lost gets compared to it now and then, and it has some really quirky humor, which you seem to like (freaks and geeks, arrested development.) anyway, the show is about the investigation of the death of a popular local high school girl in the town of Twin peaks, located in the pacific northwest. The series mixes many genres including soap opera (really soap opera parody), detective show, comedy, and even horror/sci-fi. It's hard to fit into one genre, and features some really great cliffhangers and twists.
If I have one complaint, it's that towards the middle of the series there is a drop in quality and it doesn't pick up again till the last 5 or six eps.

here's a clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9kejvxRokg&feature=related

I also suggest The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett, which is fantastic in every way. if you have any intrest in holmes or mystery stories in general, you owe it to yourself. The period setting is pulled off very well, and Brett is amazing in the part. fun, fun series

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdd3_qx6Eqw