All this talk about series, how network TV Sucks, and how hard it is to find quality shows, and some excellent shows that fly under the radar, I need a comprehensive review of all the series I need to see.
For good entertainment, I would be willing to buy DVD sets. But I've recently picked up HBOGO by kiping it from my parents, and recently got Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Here is a listing of shows that I currently own or have seen all the episodes of. If it isn't on the list, just assume I haven't seen it.
Spoiler!
Great Shows – Must See
Game of Thrones
Mad Men
Longmire
Burn Notice
House
Spartacus
House of Cards
Justified
True Detective
Breaking Bad
The Assets
The Wire
Sherlock (BBC)
The Americans
The Walking Dead
Deadwood
Netflix: Daredevil
Jack Taylor
Luther
Bosch
Good shows
Travelers
Ozark
The Leftovers
Conviction
Medici
The Last Kingdom
Firefly
Dollhouse
The Good Wife
Hell on Wheels
Big Bang Theory
Falling Skies
Suits
White Collar
Agents of SHIELD
Arrow
Boss
Rome
Orange is the New Black
Orphan Black
The Knick
Goliath (Amazon)
Iron Fist
Show Me a Hero
Hell on Wheels
Shooter
Mediocre
Robin Hood (BBC)
Vikings
How I met your Mother
Scrubs
Chuck
That 70's Show
Top Gear
Graceland
Hung (HBO)
Gotham
Conviction
Crap Camelot
Top Shot
Defiance
Legends of Tomorrow
Here is a listing of shows that I'm currently watching
Spoiler!
Great
Good
Boardwalk Empire
Westworld
Mediocre
Crap
Here is a listing of shows on my list to watch (mostly due to this thread)
Spoiler!
The Sopranos
24
Fargo (missed getting it on the DVR :-) )
Band of Brothers
The Pacific
The Comeback
6 Feet Under
John Adams
Battlestar Glactica
Friday Night Lights
I work a fuckton, so it is hard for me catch a series while it is on to get it on the DVR, but I recognize the entertainment value and am willing to go after the Must See shows. Accordingly, I'm not necessarily looking for anything that is still running. I'm up for watching stuff that has run its course.
So what say you, Planet? Which shows should I see?
Originally Posted by TwistedChief:
I'd never heard of this show until a few days ago when my father recommended it as the best crime dama on TV. He's comically prone to overexaggeration but this gets great reviews. How good is it?
It is great. Watch the original series on Amazon Prime first if you can.
I had read a couple of the Bosch books prior to the series being made and it matched up pretty well from what I can remember. [Reply]
Originally Posted by TwistedChief:
I'd never heard of this show until a few days ago when my father recommended it as the best crime dama on TV. He's comically prone to overexaggeration but this gets great reviews. How good is it?
It's not flashy or gaudy, or super action packed, and it's not dour or dark.
It's just sober solid detective work, nuts and bolts, meat and potato, grind it out and stick with the evidence stuff.
Bosch is stern, calm, stoic and principled. You're not going to get a ton of cliched broadcast TV cop stuff. No military style takedowns, or lead investigator putting on sunglasses and staring off in the middle distance. . . A little politicking, some surveillance, some nursing failures over a tumbler of scotch, . . . and some late-night evidence review that finds that crucial clue, etc.
More that the story is about the tech and funding shortcomings of metro policing. When they do work in the precinct, they're sitting in cubicles looking over paperwork, not in a lab hunched over $1B in high-tech machinery. . . That kind of thing. [Reply]
Originally Posted by TwistedChief:
I'd never heard of this show until a few days ago when my father recommended it as the best crime dama on TV. He's comically prone to overexaggeration but this gets great reviews. How good is it?
Bosch on Amazon Prime is really great. I haven't caught the Legacy season yet. But I will. Bosch is really really good. I've never been a Titus Welliver fanboi either.
But I sneaky kind of am now. LOL
My full thoughts on it are in the Prime Video thread, but don't bother. Just watch it.
Originally Posted by Baby Lee:
It's not flashy or gaudy, or super action packed, and it's not dour or dark.
It's just sober solid detective work, nuts and bolts, meat and potato, grind it out and stick with the evidence stuff.
Bosch is stern, calm, stoic and principled. You're not going to get a ton of cliched broadcast TV cop stuff. No military style takedowns, or lead investigator putting on sunglasses and staring off in the middle distance. . . A little politicking, some surveillance, some nursing failures over a tumbler of scotch, . . . and some late-night evidence review that finds that crucial clue, etc.
More that the story is about the tech and funding shortcomings of metro policing. When they do work in the precinct, they're sitting in cubicles looking over paperwork, not in a lab hunched over $1B in high-tech machinery. . . That kind of thing.
Succinct Explanation. They don't lean on gimmicks, they lean on goddamned good acting. [Reply]
So my wife got a subscription to Starz because she likes Outlander. Don't bother. I caught 5 minutes and it's gayer than cum on a moustache.
So since she got it, I binge re-watched Black Sails. For those that haven't seen it's essentially a film-prequel to Treasure Island. Kind of a Long John Silver origin story. But it's got all the big names in it.
Anyway, I liked it a lot more when I saw it back when it was on weekly. I thought it did a lot of things right.
1. Jessica Parker Kennedy is hot as the surface of the sun. End. Holy shit.
2. There really wasn't a weak performance in the bunch. First time through, I wasn't in love with Charles Vane, Blackbeard, Jack Rackem or Hornigold. But watching them all in succession changed the dynamic. They were all really good. Especially Vane. He was just goddamned compelling. And Rackem was charasmatic as hell. I think the deal is it was a long enough time between seasons that some of the continuity of the story got fuzzy enough some of the stuff seemed out of place or inexplicable. This is my problem, not the story. It is a really goddamned good watch straight through. Flint, Silver, Eleanor Guthrie, Max, Vane and Rackem are all incredibly compelling.
3. Early on, I thought they leaned a little too hard into the calm understated exposition before the big scenes. It seemed tired. That is wrongheaded. They did a lot to lean on the crafting of a story being an important part of what they were trying to do. (Again, since it was a long time between seasons I probably missed it) But given the fact that they were tying it to a book, it was really kind of beautiful.
4. All the boat stuff was really good. I'm far from a sailor, so you could throw a lot of shit out there and I'd not know the difference. However, the little bit I do know, this show put a lot of nice detail in it. Between the rigging of the boats (most pirate movies don't have even close to enough rigging because its busy and hard to film around. But they put a lot of detail into the ship sets. It was really good. Also, the tactics they used at least faked me out. It was nice details they put in there. I was goddamned impressed.
Overall, it was a much more cohesive, compelling story on a straight though watch. If you subscribe to Starz for anything, watch it. [Reply]
Dirilis: Ertugrul on Netflix. Loooong running Turkish show. But it's beautifully done with a small budget. Ya, it's sub-titled, if that's not your thing you'll need to move on cause you'll hate it. Each season has close to 100 episodes lol
I love this show, been watching it for about a year and am into season 3, now. [Reply]
I just started Gomorrah based on recommendations from this sub. I'm into it so far but have a question for watching it. Do you all watch the English dubbed version with shows like this or the original language? I can't do the dubbed version but the subtitles are difficult to read when watching in Italian. Is there some trick on HBO Max to getting a black box outlining the words? They blend into the background in all sorts of different scenes and its tough to read half the time. [Reply]
Originally Posted by blake5676:
I just started Gomorrah based on recommendations from this sub. I'm into it so far but have a question for watching it. Do you all watch the English dubbed version with shows like this or the original language? I can't do the dubbed version but the subtitles are difficult to read when watching in Italian. Is there some trick on HBO Max to getting a black box outlining the words? They blend into the background in all sorts of different scenes and its tough to read half the time.
I watched in English subtitles. I tried but couldn't adjust to the dubbed version. Maybe if I'd of started with it dubbed it would've worked for me, but halfway through a season and it ruined the characters for me so I switched back to subtitles. YMMV.
Its been a bit but I don't remember the subtitles being difficult to read or having/not having a black box around them. [Reply]
Originally Posted by blake5676:
I just started Gomorrah based on recommendations from this sub. I'm into it so far but have a question for watching it. Do you all watch the English dubbed version with shows like this or the original language? I can't do the dubbed version but the subtitles are difficult to read when watching in Italian. Is there some trick on HBO Max to getting a black box outlining the words? They blend into the background in all sorts of different scenes and its tough to read half the time.
I'd never done dubbed before until this. I didn't think I could watch multiple seasons closely enough with subtitles to catch everything. I actually found it completely fine but others here were turned off and I totally understand that. [Reply]