Saturday, October 14, 2017

Underrated TV

I consider myself a TV aficionado.  This means that I know a good TV show when I see one.  And there are plenty of them out there - but some of them fly very under the radar.  One of them ended today - it was the last episode of Halt and Catch Fire.  This is a classic underrated show - critically acclaimed but severely under-watched, and it aired it's final season on a Saturday night - which for American TV is a death knell.  Which is a shame, because this last series has been terrific - strong enough to at times move me to tears.  Another program in the same vein is The Americans, whose last season is due to air next year.  And there are many more shows that have aired over the years that have been great but have been cancelled far too prematurely - shows like Terriers and Kings spring to mind, that you've probably never heard of.  But I pride myself in recognizing a good show - I watched The Office when it first aired on BBC 2 before it really blew up, and same with The Wire before everyone else started calling it the best TV show of all time.  With so much choice, the TV landscape has become diluted and it's a lot more difficult to find a classic show now.  A good judge is whether I would like to own a Blu-ray set of it - and by that standard, only Game of Thrones merits the moniker of a great show.  But if you look hard enough, there are plenty of other shows out there worthy of your time.  My suggestion - take a look at metacritic.com and the TV shows with a 90% rating or more - you can't go wrong with these.

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