TV: What's your favorite...

9 years ago

last modified: 9 years ago

Inspired by the cancellation thread I was wondering what you all loved to watch most. Please answer each of these or just one, but please put the category. If your answer is a kids' show, it should be one you've watched as an adult.

1. Favorite All Time Show -- Liked the best. The one that you saved the recordings for, and bought the DVDs and still watch if it happens to be on.

2. Best All Time Show -- Best quality. The one you told everyone they had to watch, but that you shut yourself up alone with so as not to miss a word or expression.

3. Favorite Guilty Pleasure -- Embarrassed to admit. The one you'd never want to miss, but don't bring up lest people judge you.

4. Favorite Show You Only Liked for the Actor(s) -- The not so great show make appointment worthy because you're a fan of the people.

5. Favorite Show You only Liked for the Acting, Writing or Photography -- Not such a great show but with some quality components.

6. Favorite Show to Watch While You're Sick or Unhappy -- Comfort watching, like comfort food. Maybe not the greatest show, but perfect accompaniment to wooly socks and a blankie.

Featured Answer

plllog
Original Author

9 years ago

last modified: 9 years ago

1. My So-Called Life is my all time favorite by the definition I gave. There is so much nuance and layering in what, on the surface, is a teen show.

2. The Wire. Everything was well done. The acting was amazing. The story was intense. The editing was powerful and as well engineered as a carnival ride. It was visually of cinematic quality. The direction tied it all together beautifully. The story read like a five part novel. It was so engrossing that being ripped away when the card came up at the end of an episode was startling and almost painful.

3. It's a genre really. "Reality" shows about other cultures (Hutterites, Gypsies, Amish, etc.). These are usually so cheesy it's obvious when the featured players are doing their own thing and where something "dramatic" was cooked up by the producers. There's more of the latter than the former. Still, even just to hear their accents, and glimpse between the lines at their ways of thinking, and their values, is fascinating. I could never listen to an anthropologist long enough to get it the academic way. Some of these shows are horribly unwatchable, but some of the better ones are my guilty pleasure. :)

4. Extant. I love Goran Visnjic. Halle Berry and Michael O'Neill also. And Grace Gummer. But I doubt I'd have watched any of it if it weren't for Goran Visnjic. He's a fine actor, but it's just that I like him as an actor that brings me in, not his ability. :)

5. Sports Night. Love Aaron Sorkin's writing. The actors were good too. Not enough to keep it on.

6. The Newsroom is one I can rewatch when I'm in pain (more Aaron Sorkin). It's very distracting. :)

[Edited to correct brain cramp.]

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Comments (16)

glenda_al
9 years ago
My favorite of all favorites is National Geographic Life Below Zero
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blfenton
9 years ago
1. Favourite all time Show - Anything Star Trek

2. Best all time Show - The West Wing

3. Favourite Guilty Pleasure - When I was younger it was Remington Steele and more recently it was White Collar and of course, anything Star Trek

4. Favourite Show you only liked for the actors - mmm... I'll have to think about that one. I like Motive.

5. Favourite show you only liked for the acting, writing or Photography - Lost.
As an aside I really liked Sports Night as well. First time I saw Peter Krause, Felicity Huffman and Joshua Malina.

6. Favourite Show to Watch when sick or unhappy - I don't think I really have one. If it's on the weekend I'll try to find a Star Wars (lV, V or Vl), Indiana Jones or Star Trek movie. Or a good Golf Game.
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MDLN
9 years ago
1. Monday Mornings
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blfenton
9 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
That's the problem with threads like these - people remind you of great shows that you watched and miss. :) Such as Monday Mornings.

And then there was Paper Chase and Harry's Law
matti5
9 years ago
1. Favorite - Seinfeld. I have seen each episode hundreds of times, but still laugh like the first time I watched. The perfect cast, great writing, yada yada yada!

2. Best Show - Sopranos. Brilliant! I miss it!

3. Guilty pleasure - I really hate to admit this :) but I have been watching the Real Housewives series since the beginning. I honestly can't give a good reason why lol

4 and 5. I don't watch a show just for the actors or just the writing. It is a combo of all those things that keeps me watching.

6. Favorite to watch while sick or sad. A toss up between Seinfeld or The Big Bang Theory.
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User
9 years ago
1. Favorite All Time Show -- all of the Law and Order shows.

2. Best All Time Show -- Carol Burnett Show.

3. Favorite Guilty Pleasure - Law and Order.

4. Favorite Show You Only Liked for the Actor(s) -- Nothing in particular.

5. Favorite Show You only Liked for the Acting, Writing or Photography -- Writing - Saturday Night Live from the late 1970s

6. Favorite Show to Watch While You're Sick or Unhappy -- i could watch any of Alan Titschmarsh's BBC Gardening shows time and time again. Gardening is always good when I'm down.
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gyr_falcon
9 years ago
This is tough! I'm all over the board when it comes to television.

1. Favorite All Time Show(s): More of a type than a single show. Informational stuff: American Masters, documentaries, science and nature (But I don't have any tapings or DVDs)

2. Best All Time Show: MASH

3. Favorite Guilty Pleasure: Running: Survivor Cancelled/ReReReruns: Big Cat Diary

4. Favorite Show You Only Liked for the Actor(s): Running: maybe The Good Wife Cancelled: Nikita

5. Favorite Show You only Liked for the Acting, Writing or Photography: Witchblade Season 1, and 1.5 episodes of Season 2

6. Favorite Comfort Show: Murphy Brown Season 1 is all we get. :( So if I need more episodes of something, maybe West Wing, or whatever looks good in the cabinet.
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prairie_rose
9 years ago
1. Favorite All Time Show: Dallas (the original 80's series, not the remake)
1. Best All Time Show: Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
3. Favorite Guilty Pleasure: The OC

4/5 Favorite Because I like the Actor, etc. Nothing comes to mind
1. Favorite Comfort Show: The mini series Lonesome Dove. I've worn out the VHS and DVD and now own it in BlueRay.
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susanwv
9 years ago
Favorite show right now is The Blacklist, love it!! All time fave is Alaska, the last Frontier. Guilty pleasure:. Survivor. Others that come to mind are: Gold Rush, The Voice, Life Below Zero, Ice Cold Gold, Antiques Roadshow,
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chisue
9 years ago
I don't think DH and I have ever watched a TV program twice. (I did just say I could watch Wolf Hall again. Evidently there have enough *new* shows to watch, almost exclusively via recording PBS or from a DVD.

There may be two or three novels I've read twice...maybe. (I'm shallow. So sue me. I have watched Lion In Winter more than once, but that's a film.)

If there were no new programs, we could go back to The Wire, The Hour, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Doc Martin, The West Wing. We liked Idris Elba so much in The Wire that we picked up Luther and enjoyed that. We enjoyed the Poirot series. We liked the Canadian series, Intelligence. The original Upstairs Downstairs? DH never missed LA Law. We're waiting for the second season of The Americans (spies in the US).

Comfort watching? Midsummer Murders and all of that ilk. DH would watch Rocky & Bullwinkle or any Bug Bunny cartoons. The Muppets!

If I'm sick, I'm much more likely to read a novel than watch anything on TV.
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Fun2BHere
9 years ago
1. Favorite All Time Show -- The West Wing

2. Best All Time Show -- The West Wing

3. Favorite Guilty Pleasure -- Grey's Anatomy, Veronica Mars

4. Favorite Show You Only Liked for the Actor(s) -- NCIS: Los Angeles

5. Favorite Show You only Liked for the Acting, Writing or
Photography -- Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip -- Can you tell that I'm an Aaron Sorkin fan?

6. Favorite Show to Watch While You're Sick or Unhappy -- This choice changes depending on how alert I am. If I'm sleepy sick, then I'll watch Design, Inc. or My Little Paris Kitchen. If I want mindlessness, then I'll watch Roswell, Buffy or Angel, guilty pleasures from the past.

7. May I add a category? Favorite Unavailable Show. That show from the past that you would really, really love to have to watch again, but that isn't available anywhere. Mine is Reasonable Doubts with Mark Harmon and Marlee Matlin.
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plllog
Original Author
9 years ago
7. Favorite Unavailable Show. That show from the past that you would really, really love to have to watch again, but that isn't available anywhere (no DVD, streaming, etc.).

Fun2BHere, that's a good category! For a long time, my answer would have been Flambards, but then I found it. Still haven't watched it, though. I spent a Summer obsessed by it (one of the rare times the filming was better than the books). I loved Reasonable Doubts. Right now, I'd have to say Bunheads. Season 1 is on Amazon streaming, but not the whole thing.

Speaking of Sorkin, even before I read Fun2BHere's list, I realized that somewhere between my thoughts and my fingers, I'd turned him into David E. Kelley last night. I was thinking about distinctive writers, and I well know the difference between the two (Picket Fences was a runner up but didn't exactly fit any of the categories I'd made). Anyway, I corrected it above.
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Chi
9 years ago
This is hard! I don't have specific answers, but my favorite is probably Game of Thrones. It's so well done, and it transports me to another world from the moment the theme music starts. I also really like Downton Abbey for the same reason.
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linda_in_iowa
9 years ago
I have two shows that I cannot miss, The Good Wife and Grey's Anatomy. If I am not going to be home when they are on, I set the DVR. Other shows I watch for a couple of months and then lose interest.
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marilyn_c
9 years ago
I quit watching tv when I was in jr high, so for many years, I watched only news programs and some PBS....no weekly series. But, I did get interested in one and that was just before it was canceled....The Office.

My guilty pleasure would be King of the Hill.
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