So, what show, in your humble opinion, gets it “right” the most?
The show can cover any subject, from law, crime, and be any type, drama, comedy, etc.
Some aspect of an otherwise unrealistic show can also be “nominated;” for instance, I know an older guy who says “Mad Men” is almost spot on in its depiction of 60’s style, culture, etc.
Since neither of us were ad-men in the 60’s, we can’t really speak to the realism of the actions of the characters or its depiction of ad-men or the advertising world of the 60’s.
In that vein, I would nominate The Shield,* and The Wire, for their often gritty depiction of inner-city crime, poverty, gang culture, and the near helpless and often callous attitudes of the police and detectives who have to work in that environment.
*Some might disallow The Shield on the basis that no cop could get away with the kind of stuff Vic Mackey pulled, for so long; I would remind them that the in-show time-lapse was only three or four years, not a year-by-year correlation by season.
Parenthood might be a little more melodramatic than real life, but I’ve always thought it had a really good handle on family dynamics. I come from a large family myself, and some of the arguments between characters on the show very strongly resembled arguments that I’ve had with my siblings or parents. And I know that some people think the overlapping dialogue and multiple conversations being held at once are annoying, but again, get me and my four siblings in a room together, and that’s what it will eventually turn into.
Roseanne. Ignoring the last season it’s probally the most realistic depiction of a white American working class family to ever hit the small screen; at least in sitcom form.
While it is in most ways one of the least realistic shows on TV, Glee is sometimes weirdly true to life.
I work at a university, and once last fall while I was riding the bus across campus I noticed that the students sitting behind me were talking about Glee. Due to the bus noise I could only catch every few words, but it was sounding like one of them was catching the other one up on episodes she’d missed. There was something about a girl named Rachel, a guy who cried a lot, a guy who turned out to be gay, some serious drama over who would land the lead roles in the fall musical, and various ingroup dating and breakups. This went on and on and finally it dawned on me that they weren’t talking about Glee at all. They were theater majors, and this was what their lives were actually like.
People in radio loved WKRP in Cincinnati, which was a far more realistic depiction of a radio station than, say, the Mary Tyler Moore version of a TV newsroom.
I liked the Shield, and while it was certainly more realistic than many other cop shows, like CSI, it still had plenty of unrealistic moments. Sometimes it was unrealistic for the purposes of melodrama, for example: How many serial killers did Dutch get in that 3-4 year period? Vic had a pretty damn high legal kill count, not even including all of his extracurricular murders. Villains like Armadillo or the Armenian foot chopper guy were practically omnipotent when the plot required them to be.
There were also plenty of little nit-picky police procedural errors one could point out.
I’ve seen interviews with the people Generation Kill was based on (some even played themselves) and they all seemed to agree that the miniseries was incredibly realistic.
Then again, I’ve also read articles where some of the officers claimed that Generation Kill, while not necessarily inaccurate, was biased and did not show the whole story. The gist of the complaint was that just because a sergeant thinks his officers are making incompetent decisions, doesn’t necessarily make that so because the sergeant doesn’t have access to the all of the information that forms the big picture the way the officers do.
When I went to work for a radio station (rock, later changed format to country) in the early 90’s, I was really surprised how very much like WKRP in Cincinatti it actually was. I loved working there.
Homeland seems to be fairly realistic. The few episodes of The Good Wife that I have seen have been fairly realistic. Southland also seemed pretty true to life.
I love Homeland, but you’d really have to stretch to call it “realistic” in a story sense. But I have heard from people in the know that Claire Danes’s portrayal of a character with bipolar disorder is pretty accurate in capturing its highs and lows.
Except the glowy Cyclon spines during sex. I don’t think that’s actually the way it happened. I think that was just an effect for the audience. But apart from that, you’re right.