Hello, my name is SecretaryofEvil and I’m addicted to binge watching television. I’ve found that since I ditched the traditional television watching format for the internet/DVDs, I burn through series at a surprisingly quick pace. So I’m looking for recommendations. The thing is, I already know about Firefly, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and the usual responses to “recommend some great TV shows” threads. So I’m looking for some second tier recommendations. Shows that are good, but maybe not great. Shows that rank 11th or 12th on your top ten list. Slightly obscure shows that don’t get a ton of buzz.
If you’re going to make a recommendation I’d appreciate a brief explanation of why you’re recommending the show instead of just a list of titles. I encourage people to comment on other posters’ recommendations but no one feel obligated to put up too strong of a defense of their choice. This is a thread for shows we enjoy watching, not a thread in which we debate which is the best show ever. One final caveat: only fictional programs, no reality TV.
My first recommendation…
***Chuck: ***The eponymous Chuck is a young underachieving computer repairman who accidentally ends up with government secrets subliminally implanted in his brain. Adam Baldwin and Yvonne Strahovski play agents from rival intelligence agencies intent on protecting (or possibly exploiting) Chuck. The show is a loving parody of not just the spy genre but of film and television in general. If you can sort of just accept and go with the show’s absolutely ludicrous premise, it’s an extremely enjoyable time. The show shifts effortlessly from comedy to action to drama, and can occasionally be surprisingly brilliant and even dark beneath its surface wackiness. A steady stream of notable guest stars and Yvonne Strahovski bouncing around “undercover” in a variety of different sexy costumes doesn’t hurt either. The show’s soundtrack also includes some of the best contemporary music out there, and has introduced me to several new songs and artists that I now love. A word of advice if you decide to watch, don’t bother with the 5th season. It sucks and the 4th season finale wraps up everything nicely anyway.
I have a couple of other recommendations, but I’ll wait and see how much interest there is in the thread before I bother typing them up. I don’t want the first post to be a TL;DR.
American Gothic -spooky supernatural series set in the deep south and filmed in the early 1990’s. An evil sheriff who may or may not be in league with the Devil fights prominent townspeople for possession of young boy who lives there.
This is an interesting question, because the lines between tiers can definitely be blurry.
For me, my favorite show I consider second-tier is probably the British show Misfits. It’s a show in which a bunch of juvenile deliquints randomly get superpowers. Instead of becoming superheros, however, they just continue being juvenile delinquints. Only with superpowers. It’s suprisingly understated and nuanced at times and frequently uproariously funny, but it’s too messy and never quite gels enough for me to want to call it top-tier. I will probably take flak from somebody for that verdict.
I would second Misfits. It’s the best superhero show ever (especially the first two seasons). It’s filled with twists and surprises and always goes in an unexpected direction. It’s on Hulu.
If you have Netflix:
The Miss Fisher Mysteries. A charming detective show featuring Phryne Fisher, a 20s liberated woman who has a modern (21st century) concept of a the role of women, much to the dismay of those around her. It’s based on a series of Australian detective novels (the show is set in Melbourne) and has a wonderful cast of characters. Generally light and fun (though there was a dark subplot about her past in the first season) and very funny seeing the others react to her.
Snuff Box – a surreal black comedy show, ostensibly about two British hangmen who hang out at a gentleman’s club for hangmen. It’s a series of sketches, though each episode does have a plot thread through it, and there are references between episodes.
BoJack Horseman – new on Netflix, it’s an animated show about the title character – a horse – who is the washed up star of a 70s family comedy (think Family Ties with only three kids and a horse as the father). It’s set in a world where humans live with anthropomorphic animals: BoJack’s agent is a cat; his rival (Mr. Peanutbutter), a dog. Bojack (voiced by Will Arnett) is a self-centered alcoholic mess who is writing his memoirs with the help of a human ghostwriter (voice of Allison Brie). The show has some ongoing continuity for an overarching plot, and the characters grow and change over the course of it.
Justified – About a federal lawman forced to go back and work in his hometown in Kentucky. Hijinks ensue. The last season ( 4 or 5 I think) is a little shaky but definitely an engaging show.
Psych – a guy who’s just really, really observant pretends to be a psychic detective, setting up shop with his best friend. Great comedy-mystery, with touches of rom com – plus a pineapple in every episode!
I esp. enjoy it because it’s purportedly set in Santa Barbara, but is filmed in Vancouver, so the terrain looks absolutely nothing like Santa Barbara, which adds another layer of WTF delight for me (I went to college in Santa Barbara).
also on Netflix, peaky blinders, the story of a London crime family post ww1.
Copper, set in the Five Points area of New York City post Gangs of New York
De gustibus and all, but Justified is one of my top-tier shows; it makes me laugh more than any other show I can think of. The relationship between the protagonist and his boss is a thing of beauty; both of them has spectacular comedic chops, and I’d say their headlining a drama is a waste of their talents except that the writers constantly play to their talents.
I agree with Misfits. The first season was really, really funny. After that, it felt like a rehash. Several other British shows available on Hulu have felt similar to us (Whites, Fresh Meat, Pramface)–a single season is a lot of fun, more that gets old. I’d give all of them second-tier recommendations.
Second-tier for me would be Agents of Shield and Sleepy Hollow. We watch them both regularly and reasonably enjoy them, but neither one is a show I’d recommend somebody go seek out.
On a slight tangent, I heard a bunch of people recommending Arrow, so we finally watched the beginning of the third season. We couldn’t make it fifteen minutes in–the dialog was so terrible, and everyone was so damned serious about the essentially ridiculous setup. Gotham was different when we started watching it–people are serious, but everything is so silly that it’s more like they’re making straightfaced jokes (“That’s a second person murdered by weather balloon–and it’s the priest they call The Diddling Father!”) which made it okay. Am I missing something with Arrow? Would anyone put it second-tier, even?
I like Arrow–though I wouldn’t put it as high as “second-tier” for me. It is very much a comic-book action/drama and it plays things mostly straight. I think it succeeds at that better than most other efforts I have seen, though I think Gotham is doing it pretty well, too, though as you said Gotham may have more of the nudge-nudge-wink-wink factor going on (which is fitting considering the history of the Batman franchise).
Orphan Black. A BBC show about a young woman who discovers there’s clones of herself (each with their own personalities), and focuses on Sarah and her friend Felix as they try to get to the bottom of why and who’s behind all this.
Great show with amazing character chemistry. The visual effects and clever editing are so well done, and her acting is so fantastic, that you completely forget all these clones, in the same room a lot of the time, are being played by one actress. Drama, Action, Intrigue, Comedy, Moral/Ethical quagmires… it all works here.
It has two seasons so far, the third should begin sometime in early 2015.
Absolutely 100% agree with this one. The show is superficially idiotic, but within no time at all you realize it’s fantastic. It becomes quite poignant and touching, and is often hilarious all the same. One of TV’s most underrated programs.
what I love about the show is that the fact that half the characters are animals is just a complete irrelevance; they and humans just live happily in the same world. But every now and then they throw in an animal joke (a papparazi who’s a bird, threatened with legal action, tried to fly out of an office and crashes into the window) and it’s just screamingly funny.
We’re also recently enjoying "Lilyhammer, "the show in which Steven Van Zandt plays a guy basically like the guy he played on The Sopranos, except that he’s in the Witness Protection Program and decides to be relocated to Lillehammer, Norway. (He really liked the 1994 Olympics.) The show uses Norway and Norwegian culture as a central character in itself (and so it’s immensely popular in Norway) and while it’s slow and really unlike other shows, it grows on you.
Arrow was fairly awful the first season or two. I marathon watched it to catch up, and found myself fast forwarding through a lot of the dialogue. I like superhero shows and it did get better, but most of the individual episodes are pretty forgettable.
I didn’t expect to like Haven, but was surprised with the writing. It grew on me fairly quickly.
I liked Alphas very much. It’s yet another take on the superpowered X-Men type mutants, but a really good and original take.
Bates Motel is the story of Norman Bates and his mom, back when Norman was a teenager. It’s off the wall hilarious fun at times.
Warehouse 13: sort of a supernatural (?) dramady about a secret warehouse holding all of the supernatural articles so that bad guys (or innocent people) can’t get their hands on them.
Oh, boy. I hate to recommend this one, but Drop Dead Diva really isn’t horrible, as bad as it sounds. A “would be model” dies and gets returned to earth in a lawyers body.
Masterpiece Mystery is also surprisingly good, though sometimes uneven.
Better Off Ted was one of the few sitcoms that I could actually watch after the first episode. Smart, quirky, and funny.
Booth at the End is a web-only series that is surprisingly good! Just watch the first episode or 2 and you’ll see
The Secret Diary of a Call Girl with Billie Piper (of Doctor Who fame). Semi-fictional look at the industry from an insider point of view.
Lost Girl is pretty interesting and pretty sexy. Made by a Canadian company, a Succubus discovers what she is, and <something> ensues.
Eureka - Regular-guy sheriff discovers a secret town of geniuses. Much wackiness ensues. Spotty, but over several seasons made me really care about the characters, so much so that I stopped watching when they killed one of them off halfway through the last season or so. Finally finished the show, and they redeemed themselves a bit. Funny, screwy, nothing ground-breaking but always entertaining, and they didn’t hesitate to do a reboot halfway through that actually made sense.
Wings - A quaint little sit-com set at a Nantucket airport. Nothing new, nothing amazing, but consistently good. Overlooked by most, hated by some, but I always find it a reliable Sunday afternoon time-filler.
The british show Hustle is in a much similar vein - con artists, who are the good guys, going around finding awful people to steal from.
Another british show, Jonathon Creek, about a magician who lives in a windmill and solves locked room mysteries with his reporter friend. The mysteries are clever, I thought.
Gravity Falls I can’t recommend highly enough. Even though it’s a children’s cartoon, it is imo one of the most intelligent things on television now. It’s very smart, hilariously funny, tremendously layered, with callbacks and callforwards and is littered with hidden jokes and messages, mostly for cryptography enthusiasts.