Good Quality TV, Thread 1: The Wire

Originally posted by FMF
Oh? What's the story there?

1870s western about a tiny mining town in the Dakota territory. The plot surrounds the exploits of the goody-two-shoes sheriff and the Machiavellian saloon owner/crime boss. Interesting show with the best part being the almost Shakespearean dialogue. I don't think it's as good as The Wire and some of the others mentioned above though.

PS: You can actually visit the real Deadwood and the graves of some of the real life characters portrayed in the show. It's in western South Dakota, not too far from Mount Rushmore.

Originally posted by sh76
1870s western about a tiny mining town in the Dakota territory. ...

No. I know it well. Ranks way up there. Nice study on the 'American Dream' along with Midnight Cowboy and Glengarry Glen Ross!

What I meant was, what's the story with it only being 3 series, and why won't it ever be 'finished'?

Originally posted by FMF
No. I know it well. Ranks way up there. Nice study on the 'American Dream' along with Midnight Cowboy and Glengarry Glen Ross!

What I meant was, what's the story with it only being 3 series, and why won't it ever be 'finished'?

Oh, LOL.

Like most of the HBO series, at some point they realize that their not making enough money to justify the enormous budgets that these shows consume. Same happened with other great HBO series, such as Carnivale.

Originally posted by shahenshah
How about TOP CHEF?

At first I thought it was a bit silly.
But then when you see some of the dishes & the arrangement, colours that these guys come up with, I feel that some of theses people are geniuses.

I can just barely make a cup of tea and omelettes! 🙂

Top Chef is one of the better reality shows. They actually treat the contestants like respectable human beings and not like cartoon characters.

Originally posted by PsychoPawn
Top Chef is one of the better reality shows. They actually treat the contestants like respectable human beings and not like cartoon characters.

Yup, I agree.... the last line of each episode where the inform the loser,...is a little sharp though, they say... "pack your knives and go".

Originally posted by sh76
Oh, LOL.

Like most of the HBO series, at some point they realize that their not making enough money to justify the enormous budgets that these shows consume. Same happened with other great HBO series, such as Carnivale.

Yeah, something like that, sadly. I believe they kept the sets for years, planning to finish it off with a couple of TV movies, but it never came to pass...

I'd agree it's not as good as The Wire, but it is damned fine TV. What a lot of swearing, though!

EDIT: Thus Spake Wikipedia:

"From its debut, Deadwood has drawn attention for its extensive profanity. It is a deliberate anachronism on the part of the creator with a twofold intent. [The show's creator] has explained in several interviews that the characters were originally intended to use period slang and swear words. Such words, however, were based heavily on the era's deep religious roots and tended to be more blasphemous than scatological. Instead of being shockingly crude (in keeping with the tone of a frontier mining camp), the results sounded downright comical. As one commentator put it "… if you put words like 'goldarn' into the mouths of the characters on 'Deadwood', they'd all wind up sounding like Yosemite Sam.""

I like "Everybody loves Raymond"

Originally posted by shahenshah
I like "Everybody loves Raymond"

i miss prison break. and Seinfeld...

and raymond's mum scares me...

Originally posted by trev33
Shortened... raymond's mum scares me...

ha ha ha ha 😀
My mother lives just a couple of house away, so I had almost similar things happen to me, like the cooking competition between Debra and Marie.
So I can laugh now at things that worried me before!!!

CSI, anyone?

Originally posted by shahenshah
CSI, anyone?

CSI Miami is horrible.

While I'm not a huge fan of CSI, the New York and original versions are ok. Even though the investigative science they use is sometimes laughably impossible or at least improbable.

CSI - NY - would be good, if it weren't for Sela Ward's face-lifted eyes & her eyebrows, make her look like Spock's sister 😀
Plus her character tries to be a modern day Sherlock Holmes.
Why is Miami horrible? I like David Caruso and the scenic water-fronts, shots of the city. Amazing houses!

Criminal Minds, anyone?

Originally posted by FMF
The Wire

Really enjoyed the intricate parallel in Series 5 between the police doing their thing and the newspaper doing their thing. Perhaps a classic The Wire moment was when the profilers' profile of the McNulty-conjured-serial-killer had McNulty down to a tee: the look on McNulty's face as he listened!

Originally posted by FMF
Just started watching this. Half way through series 1. This is very good stuff.

So. Why wasn't it a smash hit, as it were?

Yeah, The Wire is great TV. The acting is outstanding, and the writing is really pretty good.

My wife isn't getting into it, and she loves cop shows, and I generally hate cop shows, so go figure...

In her case, I think she's not getting into it partly because she has trouble understanding it. She was born outside the U.S. (in Serbia) so some of the accents and street talk are a little rough for her to understand. Hell, even I have a little trouble sometimes. So, perhaps that scares off some people.

I'm only about half way through Season 2 -- going through it slowly through old-school netflix mailers. Ahem, make that quickster, sigh. But so far, it's real good.