ok so this from the movies

yeah, 90s tv was a huge leap i think. maybe due to cultural/generational changes?

twin peaks sure, at least the first season. but also seinfeld. also of course the simpsons which as i recall used to be deemed dangerous for children, or something. and lesser things that are now forgotten that brought both formal + content changes to tv. there was a thing called northern exposure that brought a bit of magical realism to the screen. then an even more forgotten thing now, parker lewis something something, which was a bit shit but i think it had a postmodern approach to tv-- i can't remember much of what happened (except that everyone was white, lol) but i do recall being impressed by the way stories were told. i wish i could find it/rewatch it/ think about it. then there was stuff on mtv like liquid television and was it cartoon sushi? oh yeah. that was the testing ground for today's adult animation. shit like aeon flux was insane at the time. this so-called golden age of american tv was brewing for a long time before it made it big.

Parker Lewis Cant Lose was indeed innovative and funny. It took the whole Ferris Bueller thing to new hieghts of absurdity. I love absurd comedies.

Night Court, for the middle 4-5 years of it's run, was so fucking funny and surreal.

Sledgehammer, a parody of the dirty harry/tough cop trope from 70's hollywood, was one of our faves. so funny, so ridiculously violent.

The true golden age of USA TV began with Sopranos (for storytelling and quality of presentation) and Star Trek DS9, season 4,5,6. DS9chose to become serialized, continuous storytelling instead of endless one-shot stories were the cast was essentially given a blank slate after every episode. on DS9 all the characters changed/grew and events that ocurred had to be dealt with in all the subsequent episodes. This ruined the series for sindication, since in sindication the goal is to sell packets of 20 episodes to various station which would re-0air the same ones over and over and over again, until they bought a new packet of twenty episodes.
This is why I love DS9 more than TNG. Those two shows I think helped the TV producers understand that their audience was far more sophisticated than they were given credit for, and that the old "rules" of TV had become antiquated.

It also helped that US TV producers realized that they did not have to do the standard 28-32 eps for hour long dramas and 30-40 eps for half hour sitcoms. The quality goes down when so many episodes are required.

is that overly religious? Crusades, and all that........:confused:

just watched the final episode, it's been a good season on there.

not really-- not so far anyway. i mean there are monasteries and shit but also a lot of swordplay among post-vikings ha ha

reminds me a bit about the pillars of the earth. you've seen? (similar era, though not the same subject). pillars of the earth featured a very corrupt bishop played by "swengin" from deadwood ha ha ha.

yeah. it was the style of it all though that blew my mind. it totally broke the rules of what tv was back then as i recall. i'm suprised that it's not remembered now as some sort of pioneering shit. maybe people took it for granted.

Hell yes you do. It's a slow-burner of a season, but the performances are just excellent, and it's starting to pick up big time.

Parker Lewis! I remember that guy. Shit, that's one of those shows I can never remember the name of unless someone says it. Hah. Good stuff.

I'm an episode and a half into American Gods, and, while some of the blood is a bit (lot) much, bordering on ridiculous, I'm enjoying this take on the book I loved so much. I feel like seeing it on screen might expose some of Gaiman's shortcomings as a dialogue writer, but I'll withhold judgment.

Great performances, nice weird atmosphere. I had this thing planned out in my head 10 years ago and it was nothing like this (Terry Gilliam directed, and it was Abglocentric, with Clive Owen as Shadow, what's his name with the beard from Jurassic Park as Wednesday), but so far this is working for me. I'm liking Anansi a lot. :D

One thing to remember is that American Gods was Gaiman's first novel. he had co-written Good Omens with Terry Pratchett, who helped Gaiman put his ideas into novel form as opposed to comic book script form.

The TV adaptation might be confusing to audiences who have not read the book, or do not have any exposure to mythological history and comparative religion, They also really make shadow's dead wife get more and more rotten! so grossssss. I think it may be the first TV show that deals with and shows sexuality in a organic and human manner, as opposed to using sexual attraction as a simple plot device.

Well, I'm certainly familiar with the book. It's one of only a handful of books that I've read more than once. I did not, however, realize that it came out before Neverwhere. I guess I never really thought about the chronology of his novels. Except I know that Norse Mythology (blech) is he most recent, and before that it was Ocean at the End of the Lane (great!), and before that it was Anansi Boys (which I honestly didn't care for much).

I was never old enough to watch at the time, but I managed to find both Northern Exposure and Parker Lewis Can't Lose. Loved both of them.


Parker was early FOX and from when they had nothing to lose, pun intended, by putting out a bit of a ridiculous show like that.

true.

I'm not sure I was old enough either now that I think about it. When was that show on?

I distinctly remember the initial run of Twin Peaks even though I was not, ostensibly, allowed to watch it (this is before my parents said fuck it and realized I was more fun to be around when I could talk to them about stuff). Anyway, Parker can't be much older than TP, can it?

I remember Northern Exposure (AKA, Twin Peaks' the nice demon-free rom com doppelgänger) too. But I think I only remember Parker Lewis in re-runs on USA circa 1995. :(

Rob, did you see my post about Watchmen being in development for a Damon Lindelof HBO show? I've seen several more articles to back up this story at this point. I think it's a cracking good idea.

I did and looked up some info. It could be very cool!!!!!

guilty pleasure : Animal Kingdom. Really reminds me of some of the dildos I knew when I was down in that part of Cal.

Parker Lewis was 90-93
Northern Exposure was 90-95


I would have been 12 by 1995, and still mostly watching Nickelodeon.


Fun fact, I know there's one scene somewhere in Northern Exposure that very specifically references Twin Peaks, including the waterfall and the finger snapping background music. So there was some crossover.

Ok, so they were all on at the same time, at least for a while. I must have just not been watching the right networks. I don't know what station Parker Lewis was on, but I didn't have cable of any kind until around '97-'98.

We're about the same age then. I was largely off Nickelodeon by 1995, but I remember being super into the big three original Nick cartoons (Doug, Rugrats, Ren & Stimpy) when they first premiered in like 1990-91. I would watch the weekly episode and then watch as it re-ran every night until the next one. Man that was bad programming on Nick's part, but I liked it. :)


Hmm. I don't remember this but I did always feel like TP and NE were the "evil" and "good" versions of each other, respectively. I need to re-watch NE. I always found that show very soothing and pleasant. Twin Peaks haunted my dreams when I did get around to watching a minute or two with my dad (who was obsessed) during the original run. I had nightmares about Laura Palmer's corpse for years until I finally watched the show in full at an older age. It was less frightening and 100% more hilarious from a more mature perspective.

I need to do a Northern Exposure rewatch as well. More things to add to my huge queue

GLOW, on Netflix, thanks to a long history of loving prowrestling.

Is that any good? I feel like I'd watch it just for Alison Brie tbh

She's in that shit? Oh man. She is something. I have no idea why she hasn't "caught on" a bit more in Hollywood.

I'm only 3 episodes in, but I've been enjoying it. I'm only vaguely familiar with the original real GLOW from back in the day, but from what I can recall, there's plenty of similarities.

The logs say "yes"

I can't speak to the new series, as I haven't seen any of it yet, but the original is pretty freaking amazing, though I do think it gets a bit lost around the middle stretch of season 2... there's some definite filler in there... but all in all, it turns out to be pretty goddamn excellent. Especially if you factor Twin speaks: Fire Walk With Me into the equation.

Returning to our discussion of Best TV Shows, I think a solid case could be made for the U.S. version of House of Cards at this point. Few shows are as fully and completely engrossing as that one, and it manages to do moral ambiguity right. Definitely deserves consideration.

right now getting a kick out of the cheesy but moderately addictive EMPIRE season 1



also just started SILICON VALLEY season 3



still hilarious!

I stopped watching Silicon Valley mid-current season because I gave up my HBO account (essentials and non-essentials and whatnot), but yeah... still fucking hilarious and one of the funniest shows on tv.

good for you! and congrats on getting control of your money. now have some patience and wait for it to hit your local library or something. i rent them off netflix and yeah i'm watching last year's season but enjoying just the same.

btw ive also been scouting amazon for shows (living in the boonies i depend on them for supplies of all kinds, so prime video is a free bonus) and there's some good stuff there. i should write some quick reviews.

Better Call Saul season 3 ended last week. :(

Now I'm sad as fuck, and feel a bit lost.

It ended with a bang though. But it left me just desperate for more, just as each individual show does. The idea that it'll be another YEAR before the next chapter is almost too much to fucking bear. Goddammit. :mad:

Yeah, I've had another massive expense pop up, this time a health related one. Very severely abscesses tooth is requiring an emergency root canal, and my co-pay is pretty fucking massive. So no unnecessary treats for me!


I watched one show on there... a legal drama starring Billy Bob Thornton called Goliath. It was actually pretty goddamn good. And I'm not sure if Handmad's Tale is on Amazon or Hulu (one of the green-hued ones), but if it's on Amazon you should watch that shit. I've heard it's great.

Almost done with American Gods, season 1.

Can't believe it's only 8 episodes, and that, like, 2-3 of them have been based on stories that didn't happen in the actual book! Oh well. Pretty goddamn excellent job of putting such a massive thing together.

Again, though, waiting a fucking year for the continuation seems outright cruel. For people who didn't read the book, I guess it's fine. But for the rest of us, who have been praying for this fucker for ages, it's like torture.

holy shit i just started watching the weinstein/bbc coproduction of WAR AND PEACE

it's fucking great!!!



and no i have not read the book and i don't know how abridged it is (i assume tons) but as a thing in itself it's just fantastic at least episode 1 which i just finished

it looks so fucking good!!!!!

WOW... this is really, really, really fucking good. Just... wow. I was not expecting this. I ran out of super hero-themed shit to binge on, so I put this on to fall asleep to the other night. But I did not sleep.

This is a really fucking good, adult-themed, beautifully filmed and edited, weird ass and utterly terrifying show that bears exactly zero resemblance to anything X-men related that's ever been on screen before.

:eek:

FX is kinda killing it these days. Wow.

I watch a lot of SPIKE channel:
- Bar Rescue
- Ink Master
- Dutch Ink Master is in it's first season now too
- Face Off
- and of course the Glory MMA fighting once in a while. It's strange I hate watching boxing, because I don't understand what is fun in getting knocked out and broken noses. But I do like watching MMA where they get their arms broken and stuff :)

You kind of have to know boxing to appreciate it. It is a pretty awesome sport. I was in PAL boxing as a kid. Great stuff. A couple of good ones for highlights are anything with Eusebio Pedroza, Salvador Sanchez, early Duran

somewhat watching Poldark, it's unintentionally funny, and the last season of Orphan Black

It is really good. If you've only seen the 1st episode don't worry about it dipping in form; it maintains to the end. I haven't read the book either. I'm sure it missed loads but it still felt utterly epic and coherent to me. Don't wanna say too much to avoid spoilers but yeah, loved it.

i watched the whole of it nonstop and it was BRILLIANT

i think regardless of what may have been taken out it felt very much like tolstoy. i mean from the things i've read from him (ivan ilich, anna karenina, various tales, etc) i thought it was right on the money with his obsessions. this regardless of actual faithfulness to the text. i was afraid it wouldn't feel that way because in some interview the screenwriters said they had "removed some of the preaching" and let the characters shine through-- but i actually like tolstoy's preaching, and i think his themes did show very well no matter what.

dammit dammit dammit it was so good. the end even better than the beginning.

and funny thing i saw/realized that solzhenitisyn's a day in the life of ivan denisovich owes so much to this.

i really wanna read the book now. i really do.

Wow. I'm sold on War and Peace.

btw, read about 50 pages a day and you'll be done in a month. There are these long, discursive chapters which are essentially essays on Tolstoy's theory of History, which can be skipped I guess when reading (and certainly when adapting for film), so it can be even shorter, although ANNA KARENINA is a tad shorter and kind of better. I keep meaning to re-read WAR but I just end up re-re-re-reading ANNA.

My only criticism (and this is more at the BBC than the series) is that I wish they'd have the nerve to pour the same amount of resources into something a bit less obvious (for them). Everyone knows the BBC makes great adaptations but they invariably focus on the same kind of source material (their next big project is apparently Les Miserables). I don't question the quality of those productions, and it's understandable in the current financial climate that they'd want to play it safe, but at this rate the BBC's in danger of becoming an acronym for banquets, ballgowns and cummerbunds.