Best TV Series

[blas87]

*Can be on basic cable channels or extended packages* and why you think they are the best.

Much to probably everyone's dismay, my vote for second best series (ever) is Sex and the City. I think it was a milestone for women, and even in syndication is important for younger women because it shows how happy you can be as a single woman with friends, the joys and sorrows of dating, the humor in irony and how small the world really is, and that show just makes me feel glamorous watching it. The wardrobe and makeup always had my attention. Some of the older episodes and a few wardrobe choices in them were atrocious, but I still thought it was gutsy. The movies weren't the best, not even comparable to the series, but I still enjoyed them.

There were some storylines I didn't care for, but they pressed those issues because they were important. The abortion thing when Miranda got pregnant forced Carrie to have to come clean with her boyfriend and admit to him that she had had an abortion when she was in her 20s, because she constantly felt guilty about not being honest with him. Samantha was always such a tramp, but I always found her refreshing and amusing. My favorite character is Carrie.

Some people have expressed disappointment at how at the end, all of them except Samantha (naturally!) ended up married and with kids (except Carrie and of course, Samantha). I thought it was sweet that it ended that way, because it gives hope, and it makes me comfortable knowing that I can enjoy my 20s and even 30s being single if I am still single, and I can wait until the right time and the right guy comes along. Life can be fun with just you and the girls, and one day, maybe Mr. Big will come along.

I do have to admit, though, the second movie was beyond funny. I thought the humor in that movie is what made it worth seeing more than anything else.

Very close with SATC is True Blood, also an HBO classic. Every season gets better and better. I will admit at first, I didn't like it, the first few episodes, I wondered how the show had already made it 3 seasons (I was a late bloomer, I didn't start watching until season 3 already had premiered). But I was hooked midway into season 1. I was actually glad I saw it when I did, because I just watched hours and hours of it at my bf's house while he went out and partied, and I never had to wait to see the next episode, until I wanted to stop watching for the moment, because right now, I am more than antsy and excited for season 4.

A lot of people are over vampires, and I can understand why, but I feel True Blood is different. The vampires and their secrets and ulterior motives are just downright evil (this is important for people who haven't seen it or are interested, as the seasons go on, Bill always had an ulterior motive with Sookie), there is a hatred of vampires much similar to homophobic people "God hates fangs" compared to "God hates fags", the usage and marketing of vampire blood as a drug, the religious fanatics of Soliders of the Sun, and as the seasons go on, the introduction of shapeshifters, werewolves, witches, fairies......what's really interesting is that they used real wolves for the werewolves in filming.

I think the actors in this show are splendid and perfect for their roles.

Now, the grand daddy of them all.

Best show. Hands down.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand

This show, unlike any other show, brought so many emotions onto me. I never got so emotional watching a show before. There were multiple episodes that I cried. There were episodes that I shook in anger. At the very end, I rooted for all the slaves as they broke through the gates.

The actors in this show are beyond phenominal. Beyond. It's the saddest and most disappointing thing that Andy Whitfield cannot portray Spartacus any longer. I will probably watch season 2, but I don't know if it will ever be as great as it originally was. The prequel series that was filmed to keep people happy as Andy went through cancer treatment and recovery (this was before his cancer returned and he decided to not do season 2 so they re-casted him with a much younger guy who does resemble him a lot), was not that great in comparison to the first season. Gods of the Arena was very good, don't get me wrong, same great storylines and acting and action/sex/language/gore, but it was still not the same.

It was gripping and exciting to watch the men fight. Of course it's fun to watch these gorgeous, ripped, buff guys almost naked duking it out. The violence and blood and gore is so over the top, but it's amazing. I loved every second of it.

The sense of everything being unfair and people plotting against one another, it was so frustrating and agitating to see people get hurt, punished, tortured, killed, put on for show.........when the magistrate's son was coaxed into forcing Spartacus to kill his only friend, I cried. I cried when he had to kill his only friend.

The sex scenes, for soft-core HBO/Cinemax type sex scenes, were still very sexy. It's intimate, but it's also hot. Men and women can both enjoy it.

You feel so much pain as you watch that his wife is taken away from him in the first season and sold into slavery several hundred miles away. You feel pain as he is taken to be executed, but root for him as he fights for his life against gladiators.......and sit on the edge of your seat with fists in the air as he kills all 4 of them and is given the "thumbs up" from the crowd that he can still live.

You watch him transform into a champion gladiator. You wet the couch and all the pillows in tears when his wife is returned to him practically dead, and she dies in his arms.

You watch slaves fall in love with other slaves, forbidden love, jealously, mistrust, dishonesty, lies........

I could go on for hours. It is the best show I have ever seen. Ever.

[Ladeeda]

"Sherlock" on the BBC. Only 3 eps in season 1, probably only 3 in season 2, but it's glorious. Written by some gents off the Dr. Who writing staff, and they've read the books! It's clever and funny and exciting and Mark Gatiss plays Mycroft.

The actors are awesome, and the references to the stories are fun and make sense. Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) is gorgeous and physically just about perfect for Sherlock Holmes. His acting is spot-on as an obnoxious genius with no social skills. Also he's gorgeous.

Martin Freeman is one of my favorite Watsons. He has a very Everyman look (Arthur Dent much?), his excellent sighs and "how the hell did I get here?" expressions are perfect for someone trying to deal with an obnoxious genius. He also does the Secret Badass thing very well, making this Watson every inch a retired soldier. Also he wears these seriously adorable jumpers.

Rupert Graves makes a great Lestrade. Rather exasperated, but more interested in getting the case solved and perpetrators behind bars than following the rules to the letter. Not a pushover or an idiot as many versions show the character. Also, Rupert Graves is delicious.

... I swear I don't 'watch it for the eye-candy. >>

[AdminAssistant]

I can't really speak to those, as I've never had HBO. I have seen the occasional episode of Sex and the City, but those have been in syndication on regular cable and therefore edited, not giving the true picture of the show.

I still think that one of the best TV shows that has ever been on was M*A*S*H. It practically invented a new genre of television (the 30-minute dramedy). It was funny, but it didn't ignore the fact that war was going on next door. It did perhaps get a bit heavy-handed towards the end, but I still love it. Watch the last episode with Col. Blake or Radar's last episode and try not to cry. Hell, the last image from the very last episode gets me every time. A lot of people hate on Alan Alda for having so much creative control, but I like him as an actor, writer, and director so....yeah.

One of my favorite TV shows to watch for the past few years has been NCIS. It's a formulaic cop show (with a military twist), but the writing is clever (and surprisingly funny), the acting is solid, the characters are more developed than in most cop/legal dramas. But....they've jumped the shark a couple of times in the past few seasons, and I no longer watch regularly. It's been renewed for another season, but I really think that it's time for them to go.

I don't really watch many scripted TV shows these days, sticking mostly to the Animal Cops series on Animal Planet and the Travel Channel. Other than goofy animated shows - Family Guy, Bob's Burgers, American Dad, oh, and Archer, which is just hilarious. The only really good new thing that I've been exposed to lately is Gurren Lagann, and I'm pretty sure you weren't looking for animes. (Seriously, though, it's amazing.)

[blas87]

I never saw SATC on HBO, we didn't have those channels while I was growing up. The brief time we had digital cable, it was already over, and I watched mostly movies. HBO, Stars, and Showtime didn't have major tv series back then really, after SATC, save for Sopranos.

At least they still show Carrie smoking on syndication. I was worried they'd cut all those scenes out.

I don't have digital cable now, either. I watch it all at my bf's house, and I bought the first season of Spartacus at Wal-Mart.

[anakhouri]

I have to say, I watched a couple episodes of Spartacus but just couldn't get into it.

There are very few shows that I think are great all the way through. I loved The X-Files, but the last couple seasons are crap. It's still my favorite show ever, though.

Right now, the show we are watching (on Netflix, as we don't have cable) is Sons of Anarchy. The writing is simply amazing, in fact one episode of season 2 made me cry- and that's damned hard to do!

[Greenday]

Scrubs was by far the best show on TV before the later seasons involving JD knocking someone up and custody crap and it got too serious. Then they brought in the new cast and it sucked completely. A couple funny jokes here and there, but that's it. Just got too serious.

[muses_nightmare]

I fangirl over so many shows, it's ridiculous really. But for shows that are still on, I'd go with True Blood, Smallville, Grey's Anatomy, and House. I also really love Glee, but I'm not as big a fan of that show as I am the others. Grey's is seriously addictive, me and the bf started watching after they had aired the season 6 finale, we'd seriously sit and watch hours of episodes at a time.

I did the same thing with True Blood, I didn't start watching until after season 2, so I got the DVD's and couldn't stop watching.

For shows that are no longer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel are my top two shows ever. Also Firefly, I really really don't know how it wasn't picked up for another season, I mean really! But I suppose that's the problem a lot of fans have. In general, I'm a huge fan of anything Joss Whedon has done I've just started watching Dollhouse, so far it's really good, too bad there were only 2 seasons.

And I really loved Dark Angel when it was on.

Oh and I almost forgot Dexter, which is still on. Excellent show!

Yes, like I said, I fangirl over a lot of TV shows. I do go outside! Really!

[Mytical]

NCIS would get my vote. I like a lot of shows, but others will get deleted/erased/skipped if they go up against NCIS.

Randy Jackson's America's best dance crew..what..I like dancing.

This list could go on .. and on...

[Andara Bledin]

I like a ton of different shows.

Dexter, Lie to Me, Castle, Bones, Eureka, Burn Notice...

Was rather impressed with the way True Blood was/is handled as I've been a fan of the series since about the time book three came out. It's a shame The Dresden Files didn't last.

^-.-^

[Mytical]

Like all but Dexter in your list . Never got into True Blood.

[telecom_goddess]

True Blood has my vote. It portrays vampires in their best light, sexy and alluring but not in a campy way. The books are well done too, I'm up to book 5 and have seen True Blood since it started.

Another favorite is Star Trek (surprise!) The original show, and Enterprise are my two favorites. I'm going to catch up more on the others.

I loved Queer as Folk and The L Word. They were innovative and brought a lot of private stuff out in the open.

Current favorites include House, Nurse Jackie, Californication, In Treatment, basically the cable stuff.

[lordlundar]

My personal favorite has to be Babylon 5. Just so much was well done with that series. The storyline(s) played out like you were reading a novel. The characters had more depth than <insert generalization>, and that it was done with the vast majority of characters, not just the main ones. The camera and effects really had a punch, were never overused, and had a reason for their use apart from "everyone's using it". Finally, most of the show, if not all of it, was a sci-fi reflection of actual events that have happened in the world's history. It gives the entirety of the show a depth and understanding that cannot be accomplished with another means.

[muses_nightmare]

Oh I forgot about Bones and Star Trek:TNG . Also, X-men The Animated Series.

[Andara Bledin]

Oh, yeah, speaking of animated shows, pretty much everything done by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini is exceptional, which includes Batman: The Animated Series (including the creating of Harley Quinn) and at least a billion other animated series (Dini was the writer for Freakzoid! and wrote for the Batman: Arkham games).

^-.-^

[ExRetailDrone]

We haven't had cable for almost a year, so I have to wait for things to become available on Netflix or find it streaming online. Even when we did have cable, though, I was obsessed with reality-type shows rather than scripted shows. But there are some that I've been able to see that I've fallen in love with.

True Blood is amazing! I kept hearing all this stuff about it, and since I haven't had HBO forever I wasn't able to watch it when it was newly aired. But we got it through Netflix and I was shocked at how well done it was. The characters are believable, even in such a fantastical world, and the drama isn't overdone like some shows succumb to.

I also loved The Tudors. I'm a sucker for historical dramas, especially set during ancient times or during the medieval/renaissance period. King Henry VIII has fascinated me since childhood, and it was really neat to see his life played out throughout the series in, as far as I can tell, decently accurate portrayal. Some details were changed, but for the most part the major parts were kept intact.

Another historical drama I ended up really liking was Rome. I enjoyed the way they created the city and the character development. It was really engaging throughout the 2 seasons it ran.

The Pillars of the Earth is yet another one that is just fantastic. I believe it's set in the 12th century and shows all the political and religious corruption through a fantasy storyline. The characters are marvelous and the storyline really draws the watcher in.

Sci-fi is another genre that interests me, and one such series that I really like is Stargate SG-1. It was neat to see the worlds that the crew got to explore and the ideas of being able to travel through a wormhole in order to interact with worlds across the universe. It's something that I wish could happen because I would love to go on such missions

The Walking Dead is absolutely incredible. I still have to watch the last episode of season 1, but the storyline is wonderful! There's nothing like a well-done zombie story to engage the mind and survival instincts

An old show, but The State is one of my all-time favorites. It was a sketch comedy show on MTV back in the mid-90s. There's seriously a line from that show that can be found to be used in any type of situation! And they touched a lot on societal problems and the like, and one can still see correlations today with some of it. I was finally able to buy the whole series because after years of planning it was finally released on DVD a couple years ago. There was a lot of copyright issues that needed to be worked through (since they weren't nearly so strict in the mid-90s and they incorporated images and songs and such that needed to be blurred out or redone if permission couldn't be gotten) so that took a long time. But watching through it again and taking what I remember from seeing it back when it was new, and it has thoroughly stood the test of time. It kind of reminds me of an American grunge version of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Speaking of, I love Flying Circus! I own that whole series, too. Well worth it with its amazing replay value

I'm sure there's many others, but those are the ones that I've watched most recently that are freshest in my mind.