More like a miniseries, but HBO’s Chernobyl. Some of the best television I’ve ever seen.
As a scifi buff: Battlestar Galactica, and The Expanse were excellent. Nightsky was also a really good watch even though it was slow moving, and was more about relationships than SciFi
The Expanse is magnificent. And they are at the perfect time to get certain actors back to continue with the Laconia story in the last three books. I want it so badly.
I want to believe they will finish the Expanse.
At least they ended up on a fairly logical point if not. But I still wonder why they included the Strange Dogs novella if they knew that’s the last season.
Have thought the same. Its inclusion doesn’t indicate anything will happen, but it does seem intended to allow such a thing by providing some continuity over a long break.
I guess it could otherwise just be a brief apology to readers. “Sorry we aren’t getting to this.” But I remain hopeful.
I’m sure that at least some of the people who worked on it hoped it’d be continued in the future in some form. I honestly don’t know how it hasn’t been. It’s not like it wasn’t well received. Maybe it wasn’t as profitable as the studio wanted, but that’s a matter of cutting costs. You don’t have to drop the whole thing. With the game coming out, there’s clearly interest in it still.
I’m 60% through the last book, it’s so good!
Oh please oh please oh please‽
There was a reason they killed off Alex…
Just watched the first episode of Night Sky. So far it strikes me as a really good psychological drama about getting old. Not a lot of sci-fi stuff yet.
J.K. Simmons is a really good actor, especially by American standards. I’d say he’s on the level of a good Scandinavian or British actor.
Anyway, I might just have to binge this. Thanks for the recommendation!
Edit: The mysterious sci-fi stuff gets interesting around episode 4
Its lo-fi scifi. Great character development story though
Just finished watching. I give it an 8/10.
On an emotional and psychological level, I thought the show led to a pretty satisfying conclusion. Viewers should not expect to have any off their questions about the sci-fi stuff or the intrigue answered, though. Too bad it was cancelled after one season!
But I can see why it didn’t gain a massive audience. It’s too slow and psychological for a lot of sci-fi fans, yet it has too much silly sci-fi stuff for fans of realistic psychological dramas. The Spanish parts with subtitles may also have put off a few English-speaking viewers.
😀 Glad you enjoyed the journey. Yeah, I had hoped for Season 2 to see where it was all headed…oh well
If you l like J.K. Simmons, character development and science fiction, you should check out Counterpart, if you haven’t seen it already. It’s a solid spy thriller where the main plot device is a cool sci-fi concept.
Knowing anything about the story beforehand will tell you about this plot device, which is a bit of a spoiler for the first episode.
Thanks I had forgotten about this (on my list). Edit. Yes I did watch this, it was a great show.
How about Real Humans/Äkta människor? It’s a Swedish show about androids. Good drama and acting. IMO better than the British adaptation, Humans.
dint really like reimagined, the showrunner was obsessed with making it god arc, heard he had religious leanings, and hated it enough to not include the advanced tech of the original series. it was good until the writer strikes happened.
Obligatory Firefly mention.
The Wire. It’s the best piece of visual media ever created. Not only is it the best portrayal of the inner city drugs trade but also the decaying institutions and social structures that allow it to flourish, and the corrupting influence of dirty money.
It also is consistently the best written show on TV and is grounded in it’s reality better than anything else. Half the cast were complete unknowns, in many cases plucked from the streets of Baltimore itself and there are standout performances all across it’s vast and diverse cast.
It’s a little slow to get going, the first few episodes have a lot of ground to cover to get the viewer up to speed, it also makes no effort to ease the viewer in, with a lot of jargon, slang and some very thick accents to content with, there’s also no “previously on the wire” to go over key points from earlier episodes so it definitely requires more participation from the viewer than most TV but it’s all the better for it.
The Good Place. Funny, compelling, I cried through the final episode. It also doesn’t waste your time, things will happen mid-season that any other show would have dragged out for the season finale.
I am surprised that I’m the first to mention Bojack Horseman here.
This series is for you if you want to cry out your mental health problems
As someone who had depression and watched the show as it came out: IT IS NOT HEALTHY FOR YOUR DEPRESSION. It is however an excellent representation of it.
I avoided that show for years because it looked like a typical raunchy adult cartoon.
I was very wrong.
If anyone else really enjoyed the dark topics and themes of Bojack Horseman I highly recommend trying to read Goodnight Punpun. It’s a “slice of life” manga that goes through similarly dark themes with a lot of depth, excellent writing and beautiful artwork. In my opinion it is a must read for anyone who enjoys this sort of stuff.
arrested development
- A&E’s Nero Wolfe
- Agatha Christie’s Poirot (with David Suchet)
- The Expanse
- Star Trek: TNG
- Fleabag (season 2 is a masterpiece, and I don’t throw that word around)
- For All Mankind
- Archane (season 1 is another masterpiece)
- Penny Dreadful (it dips in quality in the later seasons, but worth it for the Frankenstein’s monster story alone)
EDIT:
- Coupling (UK) - Thr first two seasons
- Keeping Up Appearances
- IT Crowd
Poirot, Coupling and IT Crowd are some of the best telly ever created in my opinion.
Just as I was reading this, I noticed that as a result of my headphones, I had a hot ear. IYKYK.
Fleabag x2
I agree with all of this expect FAM. I wanted to love this show. the sci-fi was fun and could get creative and cool but every time they gripped you with a cool idea they gave you 10min of it, left you wanting more then moved on to drama for drama sake for 45min.
I tried for 2 seasons and I think the first episode of 3 and gave up. :(
I started Arcane, and pretty soon I felt like they were just ripping off a lot from the 80’s Shuiten and Peeter’s graphic novels, that I just quit.
OK. It’s a French animation studio that wanted to give their show a distinctively European feel. It makes sense that they would pull aesthetic inspiration from European graphic novels.
Disco Elysium is one of the greatest video games ever made, and its aesthetics pull heavily from European graphic novels. It’d be a shame to miss out one either because you feel their art style is inspired by previous works.
If you do decide to watch Arcane, do not binge it. It is meant to be consumed three episodes at a time. My recommendation to anyone reading this is to watch three episodes per day.
Season 2 is rushed jut Season 1 is perfect.
80’s Shuiten and Peeter’s graphic novels
Those seem to borrow Mœbius’ earlier style, which was defining for French and Belgian comics since the seventies. So it’s rather ironic of you to say that it’s S&P who were ‘ripped off’.
I don’t concur. I believe you are talking more of graphic style, while I’m talking more about the worldbuilding, the ambiance, the conceptual, pre-steampunk visual language. While Shuiten is a sort of Ligne Claire extremist, I find Moebius very difficult, if not impossible, to classify. He is often called Ligne Claire, but his style is often very gritty, and his protrayal of movement is clearly inspired by Franquin, the master of movement. Moebius has such an ability to move between styles, while keeping his personality, that makes him very difficult to classify.
Fringe. Best Sci-Fi ending that wraps back around to an episode that broke the show open. The last season getting there is kind of rough. But the first 4 seasons are solid.
Fringe is worth it for the White Tulip episode alone. For me that was when the series changed from a monster of the week series to actual art.
one thing that bothers me a lot on shows Is that it always seem they don’t know how to end things. I loved Fringe ending. They tied so many things together in a beautiful scene.
Tried to get into it recently. I don’t think it’s for me. The dialogue and delivery is not great.
You’re not alone. I went in expecting it to be high-quality based on comments similar to the above, then adjusted my sights for trite but entertaining, then realized I was only even entertained when John Noble was on screen (and to be fair, his performance was very fun).
I do recognize that it broke new ground and wasn’t as cliché when it originally aired, but it’s hard to imagine that it wasn’t just as hammy.
Its a victim of its time. There is a decent amount of filler and some episodes have big inconsistencies at one point due to being released out of order since they were filler content, but the overarching quality of the show, and watching it slowly move away from monster/mystery of the week to something that rewarded its fans in multiple intentional and sometimes subtle ways, it truly felt… And still feels… Like something deeply special and really worth recommending, even if you do end up having to work through a decent amount of filler in the first seasons.
Came for Fringe, found it. Fucking good show and also a very satisfying ending.
Fringe should always benin rotation.
Andor is the best piece of Star Wars media and the best TV show I’ve ever seen. You don’t need to like Star Wars. I don’t know if seeing Star Wars would even increase your enjoyment. I think seeing Rogue One would probably be good but otherwise just jump in. No space wizards or laser swords or destiny or whatever. It’s so adult and grounded. I can’t believe Disney let them make this.
The Good Place
Penny Dreadful
Farscape
I really enjoyed Babylon 5. Especially seasons 2-4. The interplay between the characters, especially Londo and G’kar was excellent. The stories were epic and political, it would be relevant today I think. It was so quotable and parts really moved you.
The effects were dated even then, and the transfer to widescreen after the digital models were lost was an absolute travesty. Instead of widescreen making the show better, they cropped the 4:3 for every effects shot, making them all blurry and poorly composed.
Even so, the story and characters are epic and timeless.
I was learning 3d modeling back then and found lightwave was used for the cgi!
It’s also extremely quotable.
Avatar: the Last Airbender.
Mr Robot
Came here to recommend Mr Robot as well. The ending of the series was perfectly planned, so it loops around perfectly to the beginning of the series. It was a nice contrast to something like Game of Thrones, where they clearly had no good ending planned and just rushed through to get something done.
I remember watching the end of Mr Robot and going “holy shit.”
