TV Shows Discussion

[Fiach]

I just wanted to start a thread to discuss TV series', eg thoughts, opinions, recommendations etc.

There are many very worthy TV series, but I tend to accumulate a series on DVD and then watch a number of episodes back to back, I find it difficult to make myself available for couch occupation for up to 20+ weeks at a certain hour. I think that such a long wait between episodes also does the narrative a great injustice.

I would like to start the ball rolling, not with one of the main TV series, but with one that may have passed beneath peoples radar.

DEADWOOD
This is a series I have sort of avoided since its release, I have only started watching it recently, it is currently on its third season. I never paid it much attention, I saw the name, watched a little of an episode, looked at the bizarre colour palette used by the cinematographer, the waxen complexions of he cast and assumed it was some kind of schlock horror, based in the old west....... In a way, maybe my gut reaction was nearer the mark, than I would have given it credit for, at the time.

Deadwood is a frontier town/camp, formed around the time that the United States was getting itself organised in its union of states. Deadwood is near Dakota and the story takes place, just after the battle of The Little Big Horn, where General Custer effectively brought a knife to a gunfight.

But Deadwood isnt in the United States yet, and alot of the plot is based around the political wrangling, to annexe it to one of its neighbouring states.

The story centres mainly on a saloon called The Gem, its propriator played by english thespian Ian McShane, previously more noted for his part as an antiques dealer in an english series called Lovejoy.

His character Al, is so diametrically opposite to his benign loveable rogue in Lovejoy, its like comparing the Antichrist to Mother Theresa. he playes his part with such relish and enthusiasm, you are really taken aback, when you realise who is playing the part.

The cast that inhabit Deadwood are really just incredible, all weaving their own little webs of intrigue, but that big fat spider in the centre, casting his baleful eyes on all the shennanigans, plucking at all the other little webs to his advantage, makes Ian McShane a joy to behold.

Although he would be the main character, he does not make the other worthies less corporeal, they are all top notch actors, playing their parts with gusto. I had only heard of a couple of the other cast members names before, Brad Douriff (unrecognisable as the doctor) and Powers Boothe (awesome as the owner of a competing saloon/brothel to Al's Gem).

The dialogue is one of the first things you will notice in this series, it is vile, vulgar, abusive, in short, I have never heard so much swearing before in my life, it is so rife, its like an assualt on your senses, for awhile, you miss the actual dialogue that is spoken around the swearing, because you are asking yourself questions like ....wtf?..... did he just say what I thought he said .... how did this get past the censors!?!

But after a few episodes, it all starts to click into place, you become so inured to the swearing, that you filter it out to a certain extent and focus more on the other words, then you begin to notice a cadence buried within the dialogue.

This is what makes this show so compelling to me. The dialogue is nearly shakespearaian, I dont mean "thee. thou, didst thou perchance", but some of the phrases used by even the most menial characters, are nearly on a par with some of the soliloquies from Shakespears works.

This is just the backdrop though, to this newly founded frontiers town, the place is just rife with wanton murder, gratuitous sex and violence, with frontier style justice, just a hammer click away from a final resolution.

With gold deposits newly discovered, bringing with it the dregs of society, to prey on the more fastidious or weak, there is always something going on, the director never shirking away from his vision of base instincts driving the need for survival in this godforsaken place. This makes the "Dollar" spaghetti westerns look like Bonanza, Al would smile and pour a drink for Clint, while he stabbed him in the throat with his knife, just because he thought he was too quiet.

There are "good" characters too, but always with fatal flaws, like Wild Bill Hickcok, weary and jaded with life, Calamity Jane who makes you wonder where they came up with the idea for using Doris Day to play her in the eponymous movie.

Anyway, I hope this either made you curious enough to check the series out, or avoid it like the plague, personally I think I avoided it for too long.

Fiach : Watching TV, so you dont have to.

[PZ]

Very informative Fiach - I'm glad that you're watching TV so we don't need to!  Although, you've stimulated my interest in Deadwood.

I like some of the series coming from the UK (60s)

• The Avengers - one of my all time favorites - Emma Peel and Tara King are my favorite companions to Steed.
• Secret Agent - love the theme song (and the program as well)
• The Saint with Roger Moore

It is fascinating to see how opinions and ways of doing things have changed over the years.  Every man wore shirt and tie in the 60s, and today, hardly anyone does unless forced to by their occupation.

[JRD]

Oldies I remember are
- Agent 86 - Maxwel Smart - excellent show, didn't see the movie thankfully
- CHiP's
- Dukes of Hazard
- Star Trek... can't stand one whole episode today, but it was great fun back then!!

Today's I watch......
- House (for the character, not the hospital theme, which I dislike, by the way)
- Lots of sitcoms... Seinfeld, Friends, Married with children, Frasier
- Does "Band of Brothers" count? It was made for TV wasn't it? An outstanding series.

But I only sit to watch TV if there's nothing better to do or to watch the news I haven't read about on the 'net or for movies... I actually bought a TV recently (some 3 years ago) after a long hiatus without the "box of evil"

[Fiach]

Yup, Emma Peel, Diana Rigg has even recently been voted the sexiest woman alive!

I hated Tara, because she took over from Emma, after Emmas husband was found. I have Emmas boxsets though, so cant complain :)

Married with children, I just got the set the other day, something like 11 seasons!! My kids love it soooo much, they cant get enough of it :)

What about ...... HAWAII 50!?! The theme tune is pumping through my head right now :)

Funnily enough, I dont watch TV, apart from Boxsets at weekends with the missus over a couple of bottles of wine, but regular TV, I just cba really.

[JRD]

Hawaii 50 was great too... here's a few more I remember
- Island of Fantasy
- The six million dollar man (with Lee Majors)
- Magnum... also on Hawaii
- Voyage to the bottom of the sea
- The time tunnel

Cartoons...
- Johnny Quest
- Herculoids......
... the list goes on and on...

Oh... not to mention my all time favourite... the one and only... THE SIMPSONS!!

[PZ]

I loved Get Smart!  Don't have the DVD set yet though.

How about:

• Twilight Zone
• Combat
• WKRP in Cincinnati (kind of lame, but I formerly lived in Dayton so I like it)
• Hogan's Heroes (another stupid comedy I liked when I was young because my mother hated it - she was German)
• Kung Fu (ahhhh... yes, Grasshoppah!)

I hardly watch any contemporary situation comedy programs these days because I only become irritated with the entitlement of today's youth.  I normally watch  what my wife unflatteringly refers to as "judge shows"  where the TV judges rake the lying litigants over live coals.  ;D

[Art Blade]

Today's TV programs melt one's brains... I don't watch TV for roughly 10 years now (apart from Formula One live races). Instead I watch films on DVD or read books  :)

Series on DVD: Babylon 5 and Kung Fu (the old one) and Rome I+II

[Fiach]

Time Tunnel! Man I used to play that as a kid, loved that show :)

WKRP, what was the receptionists name, she was a beaut!

Kung Fu with DC was great, we also had a martial arts show here called Monkey, or The Water Margin, maybe two different shows.

Twilight Zone was just too cool, also Outer Limits.

Going to have to wrack my brains for a few shows, who's names escape me at the moment.

Rome, I was looking at that at the weekend, would you recommend it? I saw a BBC TV series many years ago, called I Cladius, it was awesome, well worth looking out for as a rental at least.

[JRD]

Twilight Zone and Kung Fu... aahhh... great memories!!

- M*A*S*H*
- The A team... with Mr. T  ;D
- Knight Rider (aarrgh... David Hasselhoff  ;D )
- Galactica (from the 70's)
- The Fall Guy (again Lee Majors)
- MacGyver... using chewing gum, a hair comb and napkins he could save the day!!
More recently... Baywatch, but not because of David Hasselhoff  ;)

I remember watching those as well as some other great Brazilian TV shows you can never guess, but they were excellent too...

[Fiach]

Whats wrong with The Hoff?????  :P

OK, first SciFi show I remember was called The Invaders, I think it was US, aliens had invaded and this guy was chasing them (or vice versa) and they had some kinda disintegrating ray gun made bodies disappear.

Cowboy series like :
High Chapperal, Lancer, Laredo, The Virginian.

Cop Shows :
Streets of San Francisco, Kojak.

[Art Blade]

The first Sci-Fi series after 70's Galactica I watched was called "V" :) I was in the UK back then, man, cooool :) But don't bother if you don't know it... early 80's stuff...

Rome, it was splendid. A BBC production indeed. The fist part was rated adult for the many "neckid" peeps and intercourse scenes LOL, I love BBC for being that authentic  ;D

[JRD]

Geez... "V" ... I guess it was called "V - The Final Battle" here...... about aliens on earth right? At first they seemed friendly but turns out they are trying to conquer the Earth (duh!  :P )... in the end there was that little girl who saves the world... man... that's an oldie for me  ;D ;D

Rome is excellent.. great series... have to check Rome II one of these days.

The Hoff got better with age... now he makes a parody of himself, which is funny actually!!

[Art Blade]

I always associated V with Visitors (alien ~ ) and it was on TV around 8 or 10 pm, I remember I wanted to watch it but unfortunately I missed a few sequels. Couple months ago I found it at my fave vid shop and bought it :) Looks crap these days, but OK for nostalgic reasons... hehe  :) Ahhh, memories.

[Fiach]

I remember the morning after V aired here, all anyone could talk about next morning, was about how awesome it was .... I hadn't seen it, luckily it was shown the next night on the UK channels. Man the alien chick was hot, I dont care if she ate live mice, I'd still kiss her and never mutter rodent breath afterwards!

The Hoff was on one of our national shows a couple of months back and he was awesome, wasnt plugging anything, he just happened to be in town and gracefully accepted an invitation to come on the show. He was a great laugh, sharp sense of humour, sang a couple of songs and rocked the joint after the show went off air, with the house band. A thorough gentleman, or as they say in London, a Diamond Geezer!

[DKM2]

I took the plunge and got the entire Twilight Zone. (150+ episodes)
Amazing twisty little stories.

[PZ]

I'm envious - I love the Twilight Zone - have set my DVR to record my all time favorite choice episodes and then burn them to DVD so at least I have something I can come back to.  Another series I like is the old Alfred Hitchcock Presents half-hour episodes.  It is amazing to see how people walked, talked, dressed, and what the social norms were considered to be in those days.

[Fiach]

Yeah, I loved the music from the Hitchcock series :)

I was watching a programme about the TV advertising industry in Ireland in the 60/70/80's and it was amazing the difference. People were being encouraged to smoke and drink back then and other manipulative tricks of the trade.

There is a US TV series called Mad Men, which you should check out, its set in the 60's (I think) and based around the advertising industry in Madison Avenue back then. But it is interesting the way it gives an insight to lifestyles back then.

[fragger]

People were being encouraged to smoke and drink back then and other manipulative tricks of the trade.

You're not wrong, Fiach! Check this out:

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

There's a bunch of other examples there as well, unbelievable stuff compared to today's attitudes.

[JRD]

People were being encouraged to smoke and drink back then and other manipulative tricks of the trade.

You're not wrong, Fiach! Check this out:

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

There's a bunch of other examples there as well, unbelievable stuff compared to today's attitudes.

Holy crap... I felt like lightning one (if I haven't quit it long ago)  :D

[Dweller_Benthos]

Kolchak: The Night Stalker, the original 70's one, not the lame remake from a few years ago. I saw a couple episodes recently and man is it cheesy and campy, but back then as a kid, it scared the bejeebers out of me.

"...and if you happen to be underground and hear a rumbling in the walls, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!"

He was always taking notes on his at the time really cool mini tape recorder. That was from the underground lizard episode that ripped off the Star Trek episode "Devil in the Dark" but the most scary one that gave me nighmares was the one about the dead biker riding around town without his head, another rip off, of Legend Of Sleepy Hollow this time, but I didn't know at the time, and Kolchak finds the biker's head in a bucket, and it's just a skull, of course, and throws it at the biker and finally kills him. Of course the body shown at the end is just all bones, which scared me even more.

[fragger]

Anybody remember the original "Outer Limits"? That used to scare the crap out of me when I was little, especially the beginning when the screen would contract to a point and this alien-sounding voice said something like, "We have taken control of your television". Once we had a power outage and the TV picture really did shrink to a dot (valve technology - heh), and I was convinced the aliens were on their way, so I did what any kid worth his salt would do - I hid behind the door with my hands over my eyes. Hey - if I can't see them, they can't see me, right?
Actually, I still do this today whenever the news comes on...

[Fiach]

Yeah mate I enjoyed Outer Limits .... umm.... never wussed out watching it tho  :P

[PZ]

Still enjoy the old Outer Limits.  There is another kind of goofy show I really enjoyed called Lost in Space.  As a child, I can remember waiting all summer for that show to air in the fall, and when the first episode featured a 100-foot tall cyclops, all my waiting was made worthwhile!

[deadman1]

Still enjoy the old Outer Limits.  There is another kind of goofy show I really enjoyed called Lost in Space.  As a child, I can remember waiting all summer for that show to air in the fall, and when the first episode featured a 100-foot tall cyclops, all my waiting was made worthwhile!

Danger Will Robinson danger!!!  ;D

I remeber watching it in the late 80`s on a scifi channel here in sweden. To bad the movie remake wa so bad though.

[Art Blade]

Just thought I'd mention The Unit - a special forces team that officially doesn't exist. The episodes are usually comprised of two parts: one, the military stuff like how they do on a mission, and two, the family part like how their wives deal with all that. I don't know why I like The Unit quite a bit, but I like it :) I got vol I for a while and finally vol.II on DVD. There is more, but not available in my country yet.

I love the title theme, just check it out :) By the way, the pics in that youtube vid are not from The Unit, just some soldiers.

The Unit - "fire up, feels good" - by Robert Duncan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVjurb-mZdM