Essential Telly

Yes - I will be the first to admit that I do spend an inordinate amount of time sat on my ass watching the telly! Well it would be a positive shame to not mention the stuff that I rate and spend (waste) my license fee on (you may notice some glaring omissions in the comedy department - try Essential Comedy for inclusion of these);

University Challenge

OK - so I should be utterly ashamed of myself! I have been watching this since the BEEB decided to raise it from the dead in the mid 1990's (so it is the program I have been faithful to the longest). Before this it was rejected by ITV (who now specialise in quite possibly the worst shows in the world) and was the victim of some very clever parodies (The Young Ones and Not The Nine O'Clock News).

Basically - a student quiz show (and I still have the hump about Cambridge and Oxford being able to enter squillions of teams i.e Durham can enter one team and Oxford get to enter Brooks College Oxford, Pembroke College Oxford, Keeble College Oxford etc!)).

Best Things About; you can make yourself feel really smart when you get a question that none of the academics get, you get to see quite possibly the rudest person in the world, Jeremy Paxman, at work - truly the master!

Best Bit Ever - Manchester Polytechnic Team refusing to give any other answer than Karl Marx, Che Guvera or Lenin as a protest at the elite nature of the show (this was in the 1970's when being a lefty and at university was still a pretty cool thing to do).

ER

I could enthuse about this programme for an entire website (don't worry - if you go to my links page I will point you in the direction of someone who already has!). Perhaps the best way to get a feel for its quality is to watch one of the UK's quite lame hospital dramas (such as Casualty or Holby City) and then watch any episode of ER - there, do you see what I am on about? This is the better product because it is about the lives of the people who work in the ER, choosing not to have pointless subplots about the lives of the walk-on cast that are soon forgotten by the time that the titles have rolled.

Basically - the lives of the crew of a Chicago Emergency Room

Best Things About - The cast (flawless), the filming, the in-jokes (a sign of true self confidence by the writers), the characterisation, the storylines.

Best Bit Ever - the multi episodic descent of Dr. Carter into survivors guilt, imsomnia and finally drug addiction after he survives a stabbing and his colleague did not.

The Sopranos

This programme just about sums up the term Sinful Pleasure in nice long hour long slices of really quite nasty stuff - your mum is not gonna like it. I actually missed the enitre first series and then discovered the repeats (who says repeats are a bad thing?). Just when our own paltry television offerings in the UK come anywhere close to this could be decades off - you should watch this just to see how bad we have it over here.

Basically - a mob bad guy turns to a shrink after he starts to doubt his own sanity - the complete story of a New Jersey crime family going by the name of The Sopranos.

Best Things About - Lots! The soundtrack, the brilliant filming, the Mafia in-jokes, the cast (including loads of organised crime regulars), the quite horrible bouts of extreme violence, the superb and artful use of the F word, the long complex story-arcs - just about everything really!

Best Bit Ever - a short, tastefully delivered scene, warning young chaps why it is a really bad idea robbing a card game that consists entirely of top-line mafia types who are armed to the teeth and a little highly strung at the best of times.

Six Feet Under

OK - so more American Imports! Whatever you might think about the USA (I don't mind them really), you must concede that they are a bit braver in the script writing department. This is a tale of an LA funeral parlour that is run by two brothers after their father has a close encounter with a bus in the opening episode - full of sex, death, love, hate and enbalming fluid, this is the programme that will change your life - in nice hour long slices!

Basically - a dysfunctional family, their undertaker business, dream sequences a plenty and visions from beyond the grave - like Twin Peaks but with a higher IQ.

Best Things About - the writing, the dream sequences and visits from the recently deceased (who always have lots of little secrets about the next world).

Best Bit Ever - Nate Fisher snr, watching his own funeral from beyond the grave

Attachments

Ok - so this no doubt flew over everyone's heads when it made some brief visits to BEEB2. If you missed this then you missed a really good bit of telly. This is just so far from left field that it just has to be watched. Full of sex (it makes This Life look positively celibate), swearing and nastiness, is it perhaps the worst advert for a career in computing ever.

Basically - an internet firm try and get their site succesful - when they are not being particularly bad people that is!

Best Things About - the quite horrible and dislikable characters, the soundtrack.

Best Bit Ever - e-mail flirting shown properly and for adults only.

Deep Space 9

This programme saved my sanity when I was on Nites as I watched two episodes a day before I started shift - without fail(a dubious pleasure I now must miss out on!). The best of the Star Trek spin offs (especially better than Next Generation which now looks hopelessly dated), intelligent, witty, brave and never boring. This is the science fiction that it is ok to love.

Basically - a war in space, a space station and some prophets.

Best Things About - the original scripts, the cast, the final season story-arc (that means lots of connected episodes to the clueless).

Best Bit Ever - a vision from the prophets to warn Ben Sisko to not to leave the station - delivered as a time travel vision back to racist 1950's New York and the life of a black science fiction writer. You really had to be there.

Our Friends in the North

Deserves to be rammed down the throat of everyone in the UK. This was a massive series, somewhat overlooked, set from the 1960's to the 1990's, focusing on scandals and their impact upon a gang of four friends of the Geordie Persuasion. This was filmed over the best part of a year and contains loads of extras, superb music and brilliant sets.

Basically - four Geordie friends, their connection to real life scandals (the Soho police corruption scandals, the miners strike, the late 1960's property developer scandals)

Best Things About - the brilliant portrayal of real events, the cast, the acting, the story.

Best Bit Ever - recreation of 1960's and 1970's Soho - nice sideburns!

Boys from the Blackstuff

From the typewriter of Alan Bleasdale (who went to school with my mum @ Wade Deacon, Widnes), and surely the crowning glory of his rather impressive CV. Back in 1982, there were over three million unemployed in the UK and this programme was one of a few that actually bothered to show the human cost. I can remember watching this in my early teens and truly believing that the future in the North West did not hold out much hope. Twenty years later and this programme still shouts after us and reminds us just how bad things were.

Basically - the endless search for work (mainly of the cash-in-hand-behind-the-eyes-of-the-dole variety) for a gang of unemployed tarmac layers; Loggo, Snowy, Yosser, Chrissy and Dixie. Overlooking all of this is the terminally ill George Malone, former dock worker and shop steward who refuses to let go of his hope for the future.

Best Bit Ever - the final speech and summing up of the past, present and future by George Malone. I have heard this called the Alan Bleasdale State of the Union Address. Television this well written and moving should be a permanent fixture of the schedules - you all in your hearts know the goddam issues.

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