Bluemoon's Official Top 100 TV Shows

This was my list (not in rank order):

The Prisoner
I Claudius
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
The Sweeney
The Day Today
Brass Eye
The Sopranos
The Wire
Breaking Bad
Chernobyl
Red Riding Trilogy
Spiral
Gomorrah
Romanzo Criminale
Show Me A Hero
Treme
The Kingdom (Riget)
Twin Peaks
The Returned (Les Revenants)
The Hollow Crown (the series of BBC Shakespeare adapatations)

If I had the chance again, I would have included Our Friends In The North and Police Squad instead of Les Revenants and the Shakespeare adaptations. Just didn’t think to at the time. Maybe should have included The Shield as well.

As I have mentioned before, very surprised that Spiral didn’t feature somewhere. Would have ranked it at number 2 (after The Wire but ahead of Twin Peaks). All 8 seasons can be watched for free on the BBC iPlayer. Still haven’t seen the second half of Season 7 and Season 8 yet.

It’s great to see other people’s lists. Must check out GoT, The Handmaid’s Tale and Line of Duty.

Thanks to BlueHammer for creating this wonderfully diverting thread.
 
BB was my no. 2. I've said that I resisted it. I never like to watch what everyone else is watching, and my natural tendency is to resist hype. After people bending my ear for a while, I reluctantly bought the first series, and watched it with — let us say — some interest. But at the end I just thought, yeah, well, ok, another drug series, I can take it or leave it. But people kept saying to me, no, no, go back to it, you'll see. A full year passed. I bought the second series, and about half way through, I started to get an inkling of what everybody was going on about. Then it just built and built. It's the way the characters develop — especially Jesse, who's just a no mark small time drug dealer at the beginning, and then gets more and more entangled in Walter's web, until he absolutely cannot extricate himself — through the arc of the the five seasons. Skylar, who I found simply flat, controlling, and irritating at the start (the worst kind of American wife!), and who very, very slowly wakes up to what's going on, but knows that she's chosen her man, for better or worse; Hank, who from simply doing a job moves on to an obsession and finally a horrible revelation. You get the strong feeling that Hank ‘knows’ before he allows himself to know. Gus, who controls everything until finally he controls nothing. Mike, and his admirable, laconic loyalty. I think it was the killing of the kid and then Mike that fully revealed the horror of what Walter had turned into, and turned me fully against him. And yet… and yet… Cranston's performance is so good that you sort of know why he's doing it all, right through to the end. He gets a kind of dignity, and a kind of respect, and as he says at the time, he was good at it. He made the best stuff around. At the start, he's just a high school chemistry teacher that the kids take the piss out of. At the end he's Macbeth.
And then, the sheer inventiveness of the screenplay — the poisoning of Gus's enemies, the torched lab, the magnet (“magnet, woman!”), the forty second slaughter in the prisons, the train! the mattress made of millions of dollars. I could go on.
My son made an interesting remark. He said he's convinced that it was meticulously planned out, from the first episode to the very last, by Vince Gilligan and his associate writers. They knew exactly where they were going. I hadn't thought about that before, but when I did, it convinced me. A lot of series find out that they're on to a good thing, and then just drift until they've murdered the golden goose. Not this one.
No, a worthy winner.
Good work, @BlueHammer85 So…what's next on the agenda, eh?
 
Last edited:
Lovebitesandeveryfing said:
BB was my no. 2. I've said that I resisted it. I never like to watch what everyone else is watching, and my natural tendency is to resist hype. After people bending my ear for a while, I reluctantly bought the first series, and watched it with — let us say — some interest. But at the end I just thought, yeah, well, ok, another drug series, I can take it or leave it. But people kept saying to me, no, no, go back to it, you'll see. A full year passed. I bought the second series, and about half way through, I started to get an inkling of what everybody was going on about. Then it just built and built. It's the way the characters develop — especially Jesse, who's just a no mark small time drug dealer at the beginning, and then gets more and more entangled in Walter's web, until he absolutely cannot extricate himself — through the arc of the the five seasons. Skylar, who I found simply flat, controlling, and irritating at the start (the worst kind of American wife!), and who very, very slowly wakes up to what's going on, but knows that she's chosen her man, for better or worse; Hank, who from simply doing a job moves on to an obsession and finally a horrible revelation. You get the strong feeling that Hank ‘knows’ before he allows himself to know. Gus, who controls everything until finally he controls nothing. Mike, and his admirable, laconic loyalty. I think it was the killing of the kid and then Mike that fully revealed the horror of what Walter had turned into, and turned me fully against him. And yet… and yet… Cranston's performance is good that you sort of know why he's doing it all, right through to the end. He gets a kind of dignity, and a kind of respect, and as he says at the time, he was good at it. He made the best stuff around. At the start, he's just a high school chemistry teacher that the kids take the piss out of. At the end he's Macbeth.
And then, the sheer inventiveness of the screenplay — the poisoning of Gus's enemies, the torched lab, the magnet (“magnet, woman!”), the forty second slaughter in the prisons, the train! the mattress made of millions of dollars. I could go on.
My son made an interesting remark. He said he's convinced that it was meticulously planned out, from the first episode to the very last, by Vince Gilligan and his associate writers. They knew exactly where they were going. I hadn't thought about that before, but when I did, it convinced me. A lot of series find out that they're on to a good thing, and then just drift until they've murdered the golden goose. Not this one.
No, a worthy winner.
Good work, @BlueHammer85 So…what's next on the agenda, eh?
Click to expand...

That's a brilliant review of BB
 
RandolphMABlue said:
Glad to see I wasn't the only one with thirtysomething on my list!
Click to expand...

I didn't expect it to get many votes but decided against voting tactically. I've not seen it since it first aired so not sure what I'd think now but I was thirtysomething when I watched it. It's one of those shows in the format that Hill Street Blues started, although very different subject matter, that I really like.
 
BlueHammer85 said:
1. Breaking Bad
2. The Sopranos
3. Better Call Saul
4. The Office
5. The Wire
6. Game Of Thrones
7. Boardwalk Empire
8. Making A Murderer
9. Narcos
10. MadMen
11. Homeland
12. Chernobyl
13. The Affair
14. Sharpe Objects
15. House Of Cards
16. Mindhunter
17. The Crown
18. The Inbetweeners
19. Billions
20. Big Little Lies
Click to expand...

Decent list. Have you watched Ozark?

As ever, thanks for doing sterling work on pulling this together.
 
BlueHammer85 said:
1. Breaking Bad
2. The Sopranos
3. Better Call Saul
4. The Office
5. The Wire
6. Game Of Thrones
7. Boardwalk Empire
8. Making A Murderer
9. Narcos
10. MadMen
11. Homeland
12. Chernobyl
13. The Affair
14. Sharpe Objects
15. House Of Cards
16. Mindhunter
17. The Crown
18. The Inbetweeners
19. Billions
20. Big Little Lies
Click to expand...

heavy on the drama too.
 
Everyone of mine are from the last century near enough.
1. Porridge
2. Faulty towers
3. Only fools and horses
4. Blackadder
5. Phoenix nights
6. Rising Damp
7. Open all hours
8. Steptoe and Son
9. The Royle family
10. The young one's
11. Taxi
12. Bottom
13 M.A.S.H.
14. Sweeney
15. Cracker
16. Auf Wiedersehen pet.
17. The likely lads
18. Cheers.
19. Red dwarf.
20. Drop the dead donkey.

Never seen most of the American shows in this list.
So it seems I'm missing out on some good telly.
Started watching the Sopranos and got through the 1st season in a week.
I think it's really good up to now.
 
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