So I never was interested in Babylon 5 back in the day so I started watching it. Apparently it was an early adaptor of CGI and it just does not hold up. Also the sets they use look like low budget Dr. Who.
Pretty much any old science fiction show is going to look somewhat dated, just because technology advances far faster in some ways, and far faster in others than anyone expects. Just look how antiquated the old Star Trek communicators are, both in design and in utility. Something that big and clunky that just communicates? Seems kind of antiquated, and we’re only 50 years on.
For me, the main thing that usually makes a show age poorly is being too much a product of its times, without being specifically set in that time. By that, I mean that “Leave it to Beaver” is a 1950s-1960s show, and has always been so, so it doesn’t bother me. But watching “Star Trek: The Next Generation” tends to bug me, because it’s SO 1980s/1990s in hairstyle, effects and sensibilities. It’s a show that feels quaint, yet is set hundreds of years in the future. Same with Babylon 5.
I wouldn’t let that stop you though; the real problem with B5’s first season is that it’s kind of like the first chapter in a book that doesn’t get rolling until the second chapter. It’s basically episodic stage-setting and character development for the really interesting stuff that happens in the next few seasons- the CGI gets better… a LOT better as time goes on. ISTR that they started using Video Toasters/Amiga 2000s, but moved to more capable hardware as PC technology became cheaper and more capable.
Re-watching the classic cop shows I loved as a kid, I’m shocked at how plodding they are:
“C’mon, let’s stop by the suspect’s work and nab him!”
Cut to cops leaving police station, walking to car.
Medium shot of cops opening car doors, wait for them to start car.
Blinker goes on, another car drives past, cop car slowly pulls away from curb.
Long shot of car driving down Mulholland Drive, takes a left on San Fernando then a hard right down Big Tujunga Canyon. A right, a left, a left, another right, and a U-turn in front of “Acme Rectifiers”.
We wait while cops parallel park in front, turn off car and get out, manually locking the doors and walking up the steps.
They peer through window, then knock on door. “Let’s try around back.”
They start to walk down alley…
Come ON, already! Any show today would’ve cut from the cop shop to Acme Rectifiers, possibly with the suspect already in fight (or flight) mode.
A lot of horror anthologies from the 80’s seemed to have aged like milk instead of a fine wine.
Hair, clothing, special effects, all scream “Look, the 1980’s threw up here!”.
My classic example:
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
OK, Erin Gray and Pamela Hensley were gorgeous, but…
I’ll probably catch hell for this, but Twin Peaks is unwatchable these days.
Bablyon 5 ages especially bad if you watch season 1. Seasons 2-5 hold up better. The effects improved a lot throughout the show and the writing/acting is so solid in seasons 2-4, it makes the show hold up quite well.
My wife and I watched it about 5-6 years ago. It was my wife’s first viewing and she liked it quite a bit.
I think Seinfeld has aged rather badly. I guess it could still be funny, but it was very much a 90’s show.
I find a lot of the shows produced in the late '60s and early '70s to be all but unwatchable. It Takes a Thief, Name of the Game, Marcus Welby, inter alia all had long scenes with nothing more than pretty photography and music playing in the background—Al Mundy walking through the streets of Venice, f’rinstance. BOR-ING!
Oddly, I no longer have any interest in many of the shows I once loved watching, e.g., Twin Peaks, The Sopranos, CSI. I’ve seen every episode, and I know how they end—so I could go another 20 years before watching them again. If I do, I suspect I’ll just be disappointed with them. I’d rather just keep the memory of them.
I think I’ve seen Twin Peaks start to finish three or four times.
About two years ago I convinced a co-worker to watch it. I watched “with” him (as in we stayed mostly on the same episode. I LOVED it the first time I saw it as well as all the in between times. This last time it was tough. If it wasn’t for him, it would have been fine, but he’s never been exposed to this type of show. He’s (was) 25. I had to remind him that while he grew up watching True Blood and Sopranos and Breaking Bad, Twin Peaks WAS the Sopranos and Breaking Bad of the 90’s. It WAS the show everyone talked about the next day, it WAS the show that everyone on tv was speculating about. But, alas, he’d point out some of the awful acting and maybe find a plot hole here and there and some of the scenes were really cheesy for no reason (like that singing scene). I think he skipped the last few episodes (which is fine).
However, if there was one thing I think he was really thrilled about, it was that Dual Spires finally made a lot more sense. We both watched Psych while it was on too, when that episode came on, I was blown away. For those that didn’t watch Psych, they did a Twin Peaks themed episode and had quite a few Twin Peaks cast members show up for it. You could probably watch that episode by itself just for fun.
As much as I love the show…it’s not that it didn’t age well, it’s just that, what, I don’t want to say there’s better show than it…I think HBO type shows kinda left it behind. But they keep talking about a reboot. Supposedly they’ve finished filming it. IMDB lists it as airing next April, I guess we’ll find out, fingers crossed, I’m really hoping it takes the throne back.
Shows don’t age well generally. It’s the exceptions that do for me.
Batman, the Monkees, Dick Van Dyke, the outer limits, The Avengers, are still good.
Twilight Zone is a yawn.
Usually for old shows I just catch the theme song and the credits and a few minutes and I got the whole idea and don’t need any more memories out of them.
Anyone rewatch MacGyver recently? I’m afraid to…
I started watching the 1970s “Upstairs, Downstairs” a while ago. I had seen all of these glowing reviews of it, but the production values just looked really cheap to me by modern standards.
Likewise, I thought I’d check out “The Barchester Chronicles” (a mini-series from 1982) and it also had the look of a show that was shot on a cellphone with sets that cost $1.98.
And I watched the miniseries “Amerika” (which admittedly was a flop when it came out in 1987) and it also looked kind of cheap. And it cost $40 million to make; that was a lot of money in 1987!
All of the shows of my youth have not aged well. That is putting it mildly. When I was a kid the shows that we would be talking about were CHiPs, Dukes of Hazard, Buck Rogers, The A-Team, The Incredible Hulk, Battlestar Galactica… all completely unwatchable now. My parents were saints for watching those shows with me on our one TV. One show that I think has aged pretty well is Magnum PI. Still a fun show with some excellent episodes.
Have no fear, it is being rebooted this fall.
Princess Ardala in the pilot was one of the first moments when I realized some girls weren’t quite so yucky. (I was 7).
I’m glad other people feel this way about “Star Trek: the Next Generation” and "Twin Peaks."Once or twice when the subject of old shows comes up, I’ve mentioned that these two shows seem dated to me – only to be raked over the coals for daring to criticize them. These two shows in particular seem to be sacred cows. Fault them at your own peril, else their defenders will attack you ruthlessly.
“Twin Peaks” in particular seems to be the product of a very specific time period, even though it’s supposed to be set in a dream-like, Eisenhower-esque, retro-50s town, it just seems to reek of the late 80s: Ben Horne’s owl-rim eyeglasses, the MAMMOTH 'dos all the women have, the Japanese real estate investors (remember when everyone in the USA was all freaked out about the Japanese coming to overwhelm our country?)
TNG, as mentioned above, just seems like “STARFLEET GLOBAL, Inc.” I had one weird afternoon once flipping around basic cable channels and saw a few minutes of a Dr. Pulaski episode of TNG, then flipped to an “L.A. Law” episode with Rosalind Shays. It struck me how remarkably similar the Mackenzie & Bracken law offices and the Starship Enterprise looked. (And even more weirdly, “L.A. Law” which is a show that deliberately sought to encapsulate its time period seemed a little less dated than TNG!)
Add to the list “the X-files.” ENORMOUS ‘hand-held, wireless’ phones. Monochromatic suits. Cheesy synth music. THE 1990s ARE ATTACKING!
Max Headroom.
I happened upon an episode of Fantasy Island recently. It was horrible.
I’m now wondering if this is a really a case of not-having-aged-well, or that the show was trash to begin with. I was much younger and naive back then, but we’d schedule our weekend around watching Tatoo scream, “De plane. De plane”. However, I couldn’t watch 30 minutes of it today.
I will agree that Twilight Zone is a product of its time. We are currently watching a couple of episodes a night and I’m not surprised how ‘dated’ they are, because, 50’s and 60’s, duh. But most are plodding dullish morality tales. (So many bit part characters are played by elderly folk, some born in the late 1800’s! - that was a thing in older tv shows, like I Love Lucy - they must have hired their old friends still alive, is all I can think.) I do like looking for actors doing bits on TZ who went on to become famous. I do like the few great classic episodes you always remember. But the majority of stories aren’t too memorable. And to think I was utterly terrified just hearing the TZ music, as a child! Today? Feh!
My mother refused to let me and my sibs watch this show, and “Love Boat” too on the grounds that these shows were that stupid. So I don’t think it’s a case of being dated, more like just plain bad to begin with.