Posted on 05/24/2010 12:10:06 PM PDT by AlienandStranger
I don’t watch TV, but I own a few series on DVD that I watch in order to avoid commercials and to watch on my own time.
I’m looking for something that doesn’t insult my spiritual or political (Christian Conservative) beliefs. And I don’t want comedies that exist on juvenile sexual innuendoes.
I love and own the first five seasons of LOST and THE OFFICE. I have the first two seasons of 24, but quit when I saw that the producers are too cowardly to depict Muslim terrorists not backed by white corporate types as the bad guys. I also have BAND OF BROTHERS and the first 10 seasons of THE SIMPSONS.
I was thinking of getting the first season of SCRUBS except I’m uncomfortable watching with my 16 year old daughter because of the frequent sexual situations.
I heard good things about CHUCK.
Any suggestions for a series I can get into?
Sarah Connor was surprisingly good. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but now anything with Summer Glau is going to be ‘must-watch TV’. I liked here in Firefly and she was excellent in SCC.
Go for Chuck.
Burn Notice is a good one to look at too.
Yes they are both “spy” type things but the flavor is different.
Definitely! He played an excellent role. His landman turned out to be quite the swinger.
That sets the bar pretty high. HBO has some very good shows, but they usually aren't family viewing. Band of Brothers is a good show, though.
Life on Mars was pretty good, a cop show about a modern day policeman who gets knocked out and wakes up in 1973. There's a British and a US version. It's a clever way of having things both ways -- making a 70s cop show like Kojak or The Streets of San Francisco with an ironic twist.
There's some slight off-color humor, designed to show how unenlightened men were back then, like calling a police woman "no nuts with the donuts" but nothing really dirty. The ending of both series was lame though.
Big Train was a British sketch comedy series. Sort of like Monty Python thirty years later. Spaced was a British sitcom. It's The Young Ones twenty years after. If you like Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead), he's in both shows.
The British The Office was also good. The American version can be too painfully embarassing to watch, but in the original British series you can chock up the stupid things the boss does to his being a foreigner. Extras was basically that same embarassing boss character working as a movie extra, so if you like The Office, you'll like Extras.
I saw season one of The Mentalist. It was very good. I didn't get that "Oh! This is just another cop show like all the others!" feeling (That usually comes around season two or three).
Bert, Young Indiana Jones is a good adventure show for family viewing (with a few exceptions). Used to watch that when it was on TV; I believe it's available on DVD now.
From The Earth To The Moon was a Tom Hanks produced HBO series on the Apollo missions made after the success of the Apollo 13 movie. Burn Notice is great too.
Finally, a British show that is timeless and appropriate for all viewers is the BBC series All Creatures Great And Small based on the James Herriot books. It was shot at a leisurely pace, so you actually feel your blood pressure go down when you watch it.
Firefly or the original Star Trek. Firefly has some mild suggestive nudity in one of the shows, though. but most of them are just plain great.
Best Masterpiece Theater series Ever!
British version is 100 x better than ABC's. The British Gene Hunt is a truly unforgettable character.
But the actor who plays him is no Harvey Keitel.
Yes, he is a great actor. But all his subsequent sitcoms just haven’t clicked. Sideshow Bob, yes, he is great as him.
Yes!!! Faye, ROFL!!
I love that show. When I am sick or have a migraine, I will put on the ones we have on DVR and laugh myself silly. It is the most laugh-out-loud TV I’ve ever seen.
What about the episode where Frasier drags Dad to the opera, and Frasier meets a hot chick who’s with her mom, and Dad isn’t interested but doesn’t want to insult the mom, who seems interested in him, and Frasier hisses at Dad not to hurt the mom’s feelings? So he lets her know he is gay? And then later the girl brings her gay uncle along to their home?? How can you NOT laugh as the mishaps ensue?
Or the one where Frasier is taping a political ad for his favorite candidate? Between takes, the candidate confides in Frasier that he has been abducted by aliens? LOL!!!
Several years ago there was a weird show on called Carnival. It ran for 3 years and got cancelled and left so many loose ends. It was a great show but I never recommend it because of its unsatisfactory demise.
The Prisoner—the original 1967 series. One of the best and most inventive series ever made, and still influencing contemporary tv.
Jericho gets a vote from me and Joan of Arcadia {great until they brought the devil in.}
British series “Spooks” great. MI5, 8 seasons.
Agreed. Try "House of Cards" for political machination with Ian Richardson - post Maggie Thatcher and "The First Churchills" with John Neville and Susan Hampshire - 1600s England.
You're right. Philip Glenister is better.
Yes, “Rockford files” - wonderful, well written funny.
and in a similar time frame - “Magnum PI”
two interesting and entertaining private detective series, and they were often humerous, though not commedies.
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