many words about the tellybox

[usuallyhats]

Here is that meme about TV that's been doing the rounds. Yes, it has indeed taken me approximately forever to fill in. There are many questions and much wittering was required.

Name a TV show series in which you have seen every episode at least twice:
The Middleman! Three or four times for some episodes.

Name a (current) show you can't miss:
Any of the ones I watch. I am bad at watching things casually. IT MUST BE ALL OR NOTHING.

Name an actor that would make you more inclined to watch a show:
Freema Agyeman, as has been demonstrated.

Name an actor who would make you less likely to watch a show:
Johnny Vegas.

Name a show you can, and do, quote from.
Buffy! It's amazing how often "it's like progress, but without the getting better part" is applicable to the situation at hand.

Name a show you like that no one else enjoys:
Not so much one that no one else enjoys as no one else watches: Adam Adamant Lives! (the exclamation mark is part of the title.) I loved it enough to name my journal after the first episode, but there doesn't seem to be any fannish presence for it at all. :(

Name a TV show which you've been known to sing the theme song:
Most of them. Firefly, Red Dwarf and Maid Marian are the main culprits though, I cannot watch without singing along. Whenever anyone mentions the fact that it's cold outside, I have this urge to tell them that there's no kind of atmosphere.

Name a show you would recommend everyone to watch:
Black Books has universal appeal, right? Actually I would seriously recommend Maid Marian and her Merry Men to all and sundry, for it is awesome.

Name a TV series you own:
What, any one? *glances at shelves* Dead Like Me is the first one I saw.

What is your favourite episode of your favourite series?
City of Death, Doctor Who. It was the one that got me (back) into Classic Who and I love it to pieces.

A show you mean to watch, but you just haven't gotten around to yet:
Sapphire and Steel. Dear lovefilm, please hurry up and buy a copy so's I can rent it, kthnxbai.

Ever quit watching a show because it was so bad?
Oh, loads. Battlestar Galactica, Andromeda (with some regret: I loved the characters and I really wanted it to be better than it was), Veronica Mars (I LOVED season one. I did not love season two), 24, Heroes... And that's not counting things where I drifted away between seasons, or things like Lost which moved to a channel I don't have.

Name a show you aren't interested in watching, not in the least:
Stargate Universe: those spoilers from a while ago essentially killed off any desire I might have had to give it a chance.

Name a show that's made you cry multiple times:
TV SHOWS shinyjenni HAS CRIED AT, A(N INCOMPLETE) LIST: Buffy. Angel. Doctor Who. Six Feet Under (for about half an hour after the finale ended). Babylon 5 (ditto). Deep Space Nine. The Sarah Jane Adventures. The West Wing. Dead Like Me. The Middleman. The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Oldest TV show you like?
Doctor Who.

Newest TV show you like?
Nurse Jackie! I adore it. It's funny, it can be warm without being sentimental, and the characters are marvelous. Zoe in particular I feel would be intensely annoying in principle, but whenever she's on screen I just clutch at my heart with love for her.

What do you eat when you watch TV?
Whatever I feel like eating at the time.

How often do you watch TV?
All the time! Well obviously that is an exaggeration but you catch my drift.

Do you have a favorite talk show?
Nope, don't watch 'em.

What's the last TV show you watched?
The first episode of 'The Talons of Weng Chiang' (for free, legally, on the internets! thanks, BBC!)

What's your favourite/preferred genre of TV?
Sci-fi and/or fantasy. But I will try pretty much anything if I've heard it's good.

What's your least favourite genre of TV?
Reality TV.

What was the first TV show you were obsessed with?
I don't know, it depends what the first one I watched was. I used to write fanfic for The Animals of Farthing Wood, back in the day.

What TV show do you wish you never watched?
Well, wish I'd never watched is a bit strong, but my reaction to Misfits went from "optimism" to "OH WHAT NO" remarkably fast.

What's the weirdest show you enjoyed?
Most of what I enjoy is pretty weird tbh, that's why I like it.

What TV show scared you the most?
The X Files has freaked me out a bit upon occasion. Also, when I was little my parents wouldn't let me stay up to watch Red Dwarf, which I thought was terribly unfair, so one night I lingered on the stairs and watched a bit through the crack in the door. I got as far as "everyone's dead, Dave" before taking to my heels, thinking "ok, they are right, I am not old enough to watch this D:"

What is the funniest TV show you have ever watched?
Black Books! Or possibly the first series of Green Wing.

Which do you think is the best TV series ever made?
I'm not sure it's possible to pick one and go "yes, this is the best of them." It depends how you're defining best, and even then you can't really measure quality subjectively. Also I have not seen all the TV serieseseses ever made and am therefore not qualified to judge.

Comments

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Also I have not seen all the TV serieseseses ever made and am therefore not qualified to judge.

*giggles over "serieseseses"...

I ought to do this one since I keep seeing it on my FList...

Sapphire and Steel is a bit of a mixed bag, but definitely weird. It freaked me the hell out when I watched it as a kid. And some of the episodes still freak me out now (I rewatched it last year on You Tube.)

[usuallyhats]

Yeah, I've heard it's really creepy and cool... I want to see it! Hurry up, lovefilm.

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

*Gives lovefilm a hard poke to speed them up*

[munditia.livejournal.com]

Just be glad that you never saw season 3 of Veronica Mars. It almost killed my love for the show, and it took me over a year until I could calmly pretend that it had been tragically cancelled after the first and only season.

[usuallyhats]

It got WORSE? D: I gave up about halfway through season two, which was soon enough to preserve my season one love.

[stellastars]

Any of the ones I watch. I am bad at watching things casually. IT MUST BE ALL OR NOTHING.

I'm exactly the same way... There's no in-between -- either I watch completely or not at all.


Also, totally with you on the declining love of Veronica Mars. Season 1 rocked so much. In fact, I think it was the first time I've actually cheered for a tv show, while watching the tv show... And then Season 2 just began its slow, depressing decline in quality.

[usuallyhats]

Season one is such brilliant TV. I was amazed at how fast it lost it in season two!

[stellastars]

S1 was fantastic! Sometimes I wonder how much the creator/writers tinkered with the show trying to make S2 conform to whatever the network thought would be more marketable... They should have just left it alone!


Thanks, btw, for the link to the msn player above. Yay! for free Classic Who online!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Someone else who went off BSG! I should have mentioned Andromeda too; it went from interesting and fun to a lot of fight scenes. Sigh.

SGU was huge fail in its casting calls, which I didn't know till I started watching. I know it made a lot of people not watch. My favourite characters are Eli, an overweight (the only one) geek, and Rush, an aging guy with a very lived-in face (Robert Carlyle in fact). So there, plastic people. The bodyswap stuff happens all the time--it's their only way of communicating with Earth, and the technique was discovered in SG1--and of course the bodies get used for sex with partners back home. [shudder] They couldn't pay me enough to loan my body out. The other thing they do is show the character occupying the body, not the body itself, which I suppose helps people keep it straight and doesn't require the actors to imitate each other. It's the part I like least., but I'm still watching because I need some SF in my life. And sometimes there is some. Incidentally, that women in the wheelchair mentioned in your link hasn't turned up yet.

Nurse Jackie is on here, but I wasn't sure about it because Jackie herself is on drugs. I feared it would be "gritty" and I don't like gritty.

[usuallyhats]

I was getting so frustrated with BSG, and then I read spoilers for the end of the series and decided that it wasn't worth any more annoyance!

Oh Andromeda. For about a season and a half I felt like it was really trying (and occasionally succeeding) to be a really good program, but then it all went wrong.

The whole idea of the body swaps being used for sex skeeved me immensely :/ I'm getting most of my SF from rewatches at the moment, but I really wish there was some good new stuff around - possibly I'm forgetting something really obvious, but I can't think of any.

I wouldn't call Nurse Jackie gritty, I don't think (I'm about eight episodes into season one so far) - certainly not in the gratuitous bleakness way. There's a lot of humour and warmth in it, and generally I think it's a very well balanced program, if that makes sense.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

It squicks me too, esp when one character arrived back briefly in his body due to a power glitch and found it in the act with the occupier's wife--then, not being a very nice guy, called round on the woman in the hopes he could have a repeat performance. I could really do without that stuff, but then I've never enjoyed relationship and romance on screen. I want to cut to the action and the interesting SF. It looks as if they're getting there, but it seems from that link they're not giving up on the soap and sex. Sigh. I can't think of any other SF on telly at the moment, except Lost whose final season starts soon. Soooooon! :-)

OK, that sounds interesting. I like Edie Falco too. Hmmm. I could probably catch up fairly easily. Is there much gore?

[usuallyhats]

Edie Falco is fantastic in it! There is a bit of gore, but not too much, I don't think (though I'm not that bothered by gore, so I might be misjudging it!). It's not as gory as I remember ER being, probably because most of the cases are less dramatic.

Oh yes, Lost! I'm waiting to see what the reactions to the final season are like before decide whether or not to catch up - I liked the first two seasons, but then it moved to a channel I don't have, alas.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I will have to see where it's up to here and how much I have to catch up on. I need some more current series to watch.

S3 was a bit flat and static and lost some fans, but they missed out on the awesomeness of S4 and S5 (which are shorter than most US seasons too; only 14 and 17 eps). I am looking forward to the last season (12 eps?) more than anything else on TV, including the new Doctor. :-) But I'm also a bit worried about my favourite characters. Anything can happen on that show.

[littledarkvoice.livejournal.com]

The Middleman! More people need to know about it; it's both unashamedly geeky AND pretty feminist, so of course it was too good to last. Sigh.

[usuallyhats]

It was exactly the sort of thing I want to watch, which probably meant it was doomed from the outset, really. :( I keep making people watch it and they keep loving it, but it's a little too late to make a difference now, alas.

[neuralclone.livejournal.com]

I just stumbled on this post while I was looking to see if there was any fannish interest in "Adam Adamant Lives!" (hence the belated response). I've been watching the boxed set, and like you am bamboozled as to why there isn't a fan following. The whole thing is simply crying out for fanfic!

[usuallyhats]

It really is! I wasn't exactly expecting to find a massive fandom, but I can't believe there's nothing out there.

(Sorry for the late reply, btw, I've been on holiday!)

[neuralclone.livejournal.com]

Not at all! (Lucky you, on holiday - I'm stuck home with larygitis!)

Did you notice that among the extras on the DVD boxed set are the shooting scripts for the missing episodes? Along with pdfs of some truly awful comic strips and the "Adam Adamant Lives!" annual from the 1960s. I've been reading the scripts while I've been home sick. There's some quite intelligent writing there!

[usuallyhats]

Oh no! Get well soon.

I've got all the extras saved on my computer to read but haven't quite got round to them yet! Glad to hear they're a good read - it's such a shame the episodes were wiped.