As is often touted here and elsewhere, we are currently living in the Golden Age of Television, with show after amazing high-quality show available everywhere we turn. Yet I can’t be the only one to have noticed that all of these shows center, primarily, on assholes treating each other like assholes. Take your pick: Breaking Bad, True Detective, Game of Thrones, Dexter, Justified, Mad Men, etc, etc. I’m not denying that these are great shows. They’re well-written, clever, well-acted, all that stuff. And I understand that the essence of drama is conflict, so bad things have to happen. I’m not insisting that everything be The Cosby Show.
But, you know, sometimes I’m just in the mood to sit down, watch something - ideally something that is high quality like all of the above shows - something that is worth the time investment, and then feel, well, happy at the end. Where are these shows? Do they exist? Any recommendations?
I like Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Obviously as a comedic spoof it doesn’t have the gravitas of shows like CSI or Law & Order: SVU that it lampoons. But it does a surprisingly good job of being funny without getting too ridiculously absurd.
Some other good HBO comedies:
VEEP - Basically Elaine Benice from Seinfeld as VPOTUS.
Silicon Valley - Office Space the series set in contemporary day instead of the mid 90s.
Showtimes: House of Lies - Don Cheadle and Kristen Bell as management consultants. Funny and still a lot of focus on the characters treating each other like assholes. But not as dark as some of the shows you mention.
Come on man - Orphan Black is heavy, except for most of the scenes with Felix.
I totally agree with Veep and Silicon Valley. I have to watch them on Sundays AFTER Mad Men so I can un-bum-myself-out before I go to sleep.
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Brooklyn 99*, yes. Bob’s Burgers - awesome! It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, also awesome. 2 Broke Girls is such mindless and easy comedy, I’ve come to enjoy it pretty well for the yuks. Hot In Cleveland is another one that’s kind of pedestrian but it’s a good silly time.
Other good ones: The Middle Moone Boy (on Hulu) New Girl Modern Family The Goldbergs Adventure Time (Cartoon Network) The Mindy Project
Castle. It’s pretty light for the most part, but gets dark now and then. The leads won’t die, but others can. Dialogue is good - the actors seem to lke their job, they fit it.
Yeah, I forgot to include Veep, which I like, but is definitely chock full of assholes. Same with Always Sunny.
My wife and I watch Castle, too, because she has a crush on Nathan Fillion, but I’d have a hard time describing it as “good”. The writing varies from OK to dire. Fillion can make the phone book entertaining, but without him, it would be painful.
Merlin I think I watched one episode. Definitely too teeny…teenish…young?
Bob’s Burgers is probably the best candidate, but it would also be nice to have a few more serious, nonanimated shows. Orphan Black is another good candidate - there are plenty of characters that are actually likeable, and while bad things happen, it’s usually not “go jump off a bridge” level of bad.
I would like to reccoment The Americans on the FX Network.
One of the very best dramas to come along in a very long time and if you don’t object to stretching your imagination, Fargo (the TV show) is also most excellent.
Gotta disagree here. The two leads (for the uninitiated) are cold war era Soviet deep cover spies. The kill innocents with nary a hesitation, while attempting to bring about the destruction of America. Their American counterparts are barely better. What they lack in sheer brutality, they make up in stupidity. There are no “good” characters in the show.
It’s an entertaining show, even a good show, but I think it is one more in the list of shows the OP is complaining against.
I think you have to go back in time. Older shows, before the ‘dark times’, could have drama with likeable leads. They used to make crime shows, doctor shows, mystery shows, where the leads were “good” people and didn’t spend the entire episode undermining others, back stabbing, or doing their own criminal acts. Tastes change, I guess. The pendulum will swing again.
I know it’s not drama or comedy, but if you want to feel good, watch Extreme_Makeover:_Home_Edition.
There’s a tear-jerking introduction, then watching masses of people helping those in need and finally a truly happy ending.
In the UK, the equivalent is DIY SOS the Big Build - different presentation, but same heart-warming stuff. An hour well spent.
I certainly respect your right to disagree and it would make for a very interesting discussion. There are many aspects of this show that are not only unpleasant, but also unrealistic. I once wrote a post about this show and very close to the topic at hand. But, ultimately, I decided it would not fit into the thread I had considered and so, I just deleted that post and saved it - possibly for future use.
Well, here we are. I’d like to post it here and now and ask what you think about it now. I have no doubt that this show makes for very unpleasant viewing for anyone who would find the activities of the lead characters (as well as KGB agents who act within America) to be … well … I guess the word is “abhorrent”.
However, if we can put aside the activities they perform and limit the discussion to the artistic merits of the show, the issue might then become, “what do you think of the quality of this drama, ignoring what it is about and admitting that it is not at all realistic”? Anyway, the following is the post I wrote a few weeks ago and I hope you might be interested in discussing the artistic merits of this show - forgetting about the fact that it paints all espionage agents in a very negative light. In the real world, KGB agents and American agents are all fairly dispicable human beings. And if you limit the activities of a group of agents on American soil, then surely they will appear to be extremely abhorrent to Americans.
Likewise, if you limit the activities of a group of agents on Russian soil, then surely they will appear to be extremely abhorrent to Russians. If you can accept that premise, then I would invite you to consider the following post as fairly neutral - not pro-American and not pro-Russian - but pro the TV show. In other words, regardless of what you think about the KGB or the corresponding American agency, what do you think about the quality of this show? Anyway, here is a copy of that post. Somehow I have the feeling that it might just be a big mistake to post this and maybe I should have left it deleted for all time?
Recently, I have discovered a wonderful TV show on the FX network called “The Americans”. I think it is one of the finest shows to come along in many, many years. I would rank it right at the top of the best shows today right along side with Game of Thrones.
If you have never seen the show, it’s about Russian KGB agents who come to the USA and live there. They secretly adopt the identities of American citizens who died when they were just children and they are taught how to appear to be Americans in every possible way. They almost always appear to be married couples and they actually have children. But they are also trained in the ways of espionage agents (spies). Their children never seem to know anything about their parents real identities or that they came from Russia and function as KGB agents.
One of the most amazing ways in which they are trained is in the art of hand to hand combat (or call it self defense). The two stars of this show are Keri Russel (from Felicity fame) and Matthew Rhys (a Welsh actor). Keri Russel appears to be a very diminutive woman. I don’t have any hard figures but she definitely seems to be shorter than the average woman of her age (approx 35 years) and she seems to weigh less than the average woman. To put it bluntly, if you look at her, it would seem that you could knock her over with a feather.
However, in most every episode she engages in a physical fight with a much bigger and stronger man who has also been trained in the art of hand to hand physical combat and invariably, she beats the snot out of that man.
I would love to ask the question, "How realistic is it that a relatively tiny woman with superb physical training could get into a fight with a relatively large man (also with superb physical training) and come away the victor?
How often would it be expected that the small woman would win such an encounter (by winning I mean she would either kill the man or leave him battered on the ground - usually unconscious).
Finally, I just want to make the point that regardless of how realistic or unrealistic this may be, it does not detract at all from my opinion that this is a superb show - one of the best I’ve ever seen and from comments on many public message boards, that opinion seems to be widely held. People universally seem to just love this show.
