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I'm much more excited to see how daily news plays out.

1 Mad Men
2 Colbert
3 Key and Peele
4 SNL
5 Letterman
6 Daily Show
7 The Simpsons
8 Community
9 No Reservations (whatever bourdain is doing now)
10 American Masters

ended shows that were once on, Breaking Bad

warren oates wrote:--Fareed Zakaria GPS is what I always thought those other pundit shows ought to be. On just about every major issue of the day, he's always getting just the right guests and asking them all the hard questions. Almost completely free of baseless partisan squabbling. He's a realist and a practical problem solver interested in seeing things for what they are and moving forward optimistically in spite of it all.

With all due respect I have to take issue with this. Plagiarizer, CFR member, Iraq War cheerleader, Fareed Zakaria embodies all that is wrong, corrupt, odious and vapid about our media. Never asks a tough question and when he's not asking stupid ones, spouts nothing more than conventional wisdom which usually means I'm not pissing off any of my corporate masters. The man shouldn't be employed let alone have a tv show but, he's popular at Washington dinner parties so yeah, he's qualified.

more on this 'journalist' here

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.5/fare ... g_fees.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

hnc

EDIT..Needs updating

1. Doctor Who (where it has been for almost 40 years... The actual quality is immaterial; if it's being made, it's number one)
2. Mad Men
3. Game of Thrones
4. Sherlock
5. Parks and Recreation (finally made it to the UK!)
6. Orange is the New Black
7. The Walking Dead
8. Spiral (Engrenages)
9. Louie
10. Arrow / The Flash

Removed Being Human UK, still watching the wonderful final season but it's now ended, and Torchwood as it seems unlikely to return any time soon. Elementary is a lot of fun, but not as essential as Sherlock. Newsroom almost makes the list, a decent second series should see it on. And the first series of Broadchurch was excellent, but I'm not quite sure about the promised second series...

Out go Breaking Bad and Misfits, in come The Bridge which is on its second series at the moment and is really rather good, and the stupidly entertaining Arrow. Everything else can stay where it is for the moment.

August 2014 - Out goes Have I Got News for You (which I still love - at least most of the time) and True Blood (a month away from finally finishing over here - I'll remove it now) in come Louie and Orange. I'm enjoiying Agents of Shield, but Arrow is a lot more fun at the moment.

April 2015 - Removed The Bridge, which may return depending on series 3. In comes Spiral / Engrenages - a cracking French policier. Also (cheating a bit), added The Flash with Arrow - enjoying both hugely at the moment.

2013 placeholder

Best

1. Breaking Bad
2. Hannibal (Best new show of the year, too)
3. Justified
4. Treme
5. House Of Cards
6. Homeland
7. The Bridge
8. Broadchurch
9. Top Of The Lake
10. Ray Donovan

Worst

Under The Dome

As of this year

01. Justified - the rare show they truly does get better as the seasons progress.
02. Breaking Bad - I can not wait and yet I also dread the ending.
03. Bates Motel - Best new show of the season and a program that may have tremendous legs if they maintain the same format (kill a major character every couple episodes).
04. Doctor Who - 40 years and it's no longer a show it's now an institution.
05. Survivor - Reality shows are generally dismissed as low art but the last few seasons have blended Machiavelli with Insanity and provided an engaging game but also an engaging look at society.
06. Mad Men - weakening as the story moves forward the show is still must watch but it's starting to show it's age.
07. Hannibal - Yup I'm sold on this one, shame odds are it will be one and done
08. Walking Dead - one week it's terrible the next it's a classic
09. Game of Thrones - Still a good show but I feel like it's spinning in it's wheels.
10. Big Bang Theory, the rare sitcom that as it adds cast members the stories become richer, the acting better and the humor more palpable. Mellisa Raunch and Mayim Bialik really deserve more attention.

Siddon wrote:05. Mad Men - weakening as the story moves forward the show is still must watch but it's starting to show it's age.

Really? I thought the 5th season was by far the best it's ever been.

The Golden Girls reruns
Modern Family
Lidia's Italy
Top Chef
RuPaul's Drag Race
Mob Wives
The Real Housewives of New Jersey
The Millionaire Matchmaker

Murdoch wrote:

Siddon wrote:05. Mad Men - weakening as the story moves forward the show is still must watch but it's starting to show it's age.

Really? I thought the 5th season was by far the best it's ever been.

I feel like the show has moved from being character driven to plot driven. It's less about this company and the people and more about what's happened to these people. When you look at the first season the issues were homosexuality, identity, fidelity, pregnancy, and gender roles. Last season you have Betty in a fat suit, one character hanging himself in the office, another major character leaving, an hitchcockian B story, a drug trip and oh yeah a little prostitution. The show used to be about building up to a meeting with the client, senior partner, or a possible new sexual partner and now it's about who's the next to die.

I don't watch any live-to-air TV, but wait 'til they come out on video - have long lost interest in dealing with free-to-air TV & I've nowhere near enough data/bandwidth for streaming.
Consequently, I'm at least a year behind on everything, and increasingly there's more potentionally interesting content available on streaming-only services, restricting what I get to see; but... here's mine (w/ the actual season I'm current on in brackets).

CUMULATIVE (current as of 2020)

1. Game of Thrones (7)
2. Mr Robot (3)
3. Westworld (3)
4. The Expanse (3)
5. The Deuce (3)
6. Homeland (7)
7. The Handmaid’s Tale (2)
8. The Walking Dead (9)
9. True Detective (3)
10. The Outsider (1) / Homecoming (1)

BEST OF 2020

1. Westworld
2. The Outsider
3. Mystery Road

BEST OF 2019

1. True Detective
2. The Deuce
3. The Walking Dead
4. War of the Worlds
5. Fear the Walking Dead
6. The Act

* Highlights of 2018: [*]The Expanse (3), The Deuce (2), Homeland (7), Westworld (2), The Handmaid’s Tale (2), Homecoming (1)

* Highlights of 2017: Twin Peaks (3), Game of Thrones (7), Mr Robot (3), Fortitude (2), Taboo (1).

1. Doctor Who
2. Mad Men
3. Breaking Bad
4. Game of Thrones
5. Hoarders
6. Sherlock
7. Wilfred
8. The Soup
9. It's Always Sunny
10. Girls

In all honesty I didn't think about this very long, but maybe that's a virtue. Louie's sort of on hiatus, yes?

Top 5

1. Breaking Bad
2. Breaking Bad
3. Breaking Bad
4. Breaking Bad
5. Breaking Bad

nothing else really compares right now. BSG i feel was the last thing that was half as good.

That time of year:

01. Breaking Bad
02. The Americans / Hannibal
04. The Fall / Orange is the New Black
06. Boardwalk Empire
07. Sherlock
08. Masters of Sex
09. Mad Men
10. Game of Thrones / Rectify

2014 placeholder

1. Hannibal
2. Fargo
3. House Of Cards
4. Orange Is The New Black
5. Justified
6. Bojack Horseman
7. True Detective
8. Mozart In The Jungle
9. Alpha House
10. Transparent

Honorable mention: Homeland, The Bridge

Previously On: Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad, Community, Deadwood, Generation Kill, Justified, Louie, Mad Men, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Shield, The Simpsons, The Sopranos, South Park, Terriers, The Wire

This Season:
1. Fargo
2. Game of Thrones
3. The Knick
4. Stranger Things
5. Veep
6. Better Call Saul
7. Silicon Valley
8. Vice Principals
9. Last Week Tonight with Jon Oliver
10. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Next Time On(?): The Affair, The Americans, Vinyl, Westworld

2014

C-SPAN's Book TV
Impractical Jokers
My Strange Addiction
Doomsday Preppers
Real Time With Bill Maher
Cosmos
Vice
Mad Men
True Detective
Turn
Louie

Notes:

And, of course, there are shows that never get old like Cops, which they're still cranking out and which I rediscovered the glories of when I was laid up with the flu in January and was too weak to concentrate on anything else.

If it hadn't been for a Cops marathon that abruptly ended, I never would have discovered Impractical Jokers on TruTV (formerly Court TV), which is easily the best hidden camera prank show I've ever seen. Stanley Milgram, the famous Yale psychologist behind the "Obedience to Authority" experiments, used to teach Candid Camera in his classes because he was fascinated by the way it played with the unwritten rules of social interaction. There's no doubt in my mind he'd be a huge fan of Impractical Jokers, which takes full advantage of the miniaturization of video and audio equipment, a cast that have known each other since high school and a budget that won't allow them to waste time with more elaborate preparations and compels them to dream up more minimal and more meaningful scenarios. Here are just a few of the challenges they set for each other:

See how many items you can take out of someone else's cart at a supermarket. Get a stranger on the street to agree that you've met before and know each other. Sit down on someone else's beach blanket without being asked to leave. Get someone in the park to dance with you without saying a word. Invite yourself to dinner at someone else's restaurant meal and see how long they'll let you stay.

All four cast members compete at the same tasks, usually one at a time, and the ones who aren't on camera are at a monitor watching it all and constantly feeding lines and directions in real time to the one who's on. The rule is that you have to do and say what the others tell you. And if you refuse, you lose.

At the end of every episode the losers have to face some kind of punishment, usually involving public humiliation, and the best ones extended the scope of earlier pranks, like the time that losers had to pretend to open for an Imagine Dragons concert with no advanced notice, no plan and no musical talent, improvising at least three songs before they were booed offstage. Or when one of them finds out he's going to be presented as a master escape artist to an unsuspecting audience of at least a hundred spectators -- this one almost plays out like an Andy Kaufman routine, dragging on and on until the very last person gives up on him.

Anyone who thinks they hate the Vice brand ought to give their new HBO show a shot, because it's completely different from what you imagine it's going to be, way more serious and committed. Their reporters might be younger and some of the material might have a bit of an edge to it, but, essentially, they're doing the sort of longform in-depth journalism from unseen places on un- or under-reported stories across the globe that CNN used to pretend it did with corespondents like Christiane Amanpour. Mix that with a pinch of the come-back-alive, adventure tourist, see the world for yourself ethos of a Robert Young Pelton and a dash of National Geographic if it were reimagined by millennials and, voila, you have Vice.

Just turned on the television for the first time in a year while on summer vacation/visiting the relatives, so it here it goes:

1. Dating Naked
2. Mob Wives
3. Celebrity Wife Swap
4. Naked and Afraid
5. My Strange Addiction
6. The Daily Show
7. Antiques Road Show
8. Frontline
9. POV
10. Downton Abbey

Double post. I actually forgot I'd already submitted a list.

2015 placeholder

1. Fargo
2. Justified
3. Better Call Saul
4. BoJack Horseman
5. Hannibal
6. Blunt Talk
7. Rick and Morty
8. Daredevil
9. Homeland
10. Bosch
11. House Of Cards
12. Mad Dogs
13. Ballers
14. Bloodline

1. Les Revenants
2. Transparent
3. Looking
4. Rupaul's Drag Race
5. Fargo
6. Orange is the New Black
7. Project Runway
8. Game of Thrones
9. The Walking Dead
10. Empire (mainly because of Taraji P. Henson)
11. Penny Dreadful (mainly because of Eva Green)
12. Girls
13. Homeland
14. Louie
15. Last Week Tonight


Mad Men just finished, it would have been my number 2 on this 2015 list and it was my favourite series of the last decade. I'm keeping in Looking because there still is a movie coming up.

Three mini-series which I would have had very high up on my list had they counted were Olive Kitteridge, The Honourable Woman and The Jinx.

At the moment (in no order):

The Knick
Rick and Morty
Getting On
Better Call Saul
Orange Is the New Black
Broad City
Inside Amy Schumer
Silicon Valley
Game of Thrones
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Loving Show Me a Hero, but it's a mini-series. Whatever David Simon has going on at the moment is usually in my top-ten.

2017 Placeholder

1. Twin Peaks
2. The Leftovers
3. Fargo
4. Better Call Saul
5. Homeland
6. Patriot (my pick for best new show of the year)
7. BoJack Horseman
8. Bosch