Posted February 13, 201015 yr seems to me that over the last 20 odd years theres been a lack of great american tv shows.... the ones that appealed to the whole family... in the 60's there was classic dramas like perry mason, star trek and the man from uncle .... comedies like lucille ball, bewitched and rowan and martins laugh in... and westerns like rawhide, the virginian, bonanza and the high chaparal. come the 70's detective serise took over (dramas were still repeated) ironside (started in the late 60's) kojak, cannon, mc cleans law, starskey and hutch, rockford files and they died out slowly in the 80's with cagney and lacey, hill st blues etc. in the late 70's and throughout the 80's the great american soaps took over with dallas, dynasty, colbys, falcon crest .... but into the 90's interest in mainstream american programmes slowly died out. all we ever seem to get are silly sit coms like friends, frasier, etc. ok we have sex in the city and desperate houswives but tbh they arnt exactly family type programmes, they only really seem to appeal to a certain demograph. do you miss classic american dramas? which did you like?
February 13, 201015 yr Well thinking of my favourite US TV import right now (Glee), I have to go old school ...... Fame. bbFu_wkflpI ^ Good grief now I see why autotune is used in music today :lol:; well the first two series were good before Series 3 & 4 went downhill very fast. Still it did feature a then unknown female singer/actress who went on to far greater things..... Kq5GyQN8if8
February 13, 201015 yr From the 60's I liked Star Trek, The Man from UNCLE, Batman, Hawaii five 0, Bonanza, High Chaparral, Combat, Hogan's Heroes, The Fugitive, Man in a suitcase, Mission Impossible, The Time Tunnel, Outer Limits, Voyage to the bottom of the sea. As you can see I liked mostly sci fi and detective stuff. From the 70's Starsky & Hutch,6 million dollar man, Happy Days, Kung fu, Battlestar Galactica, Charlie's Angels, Alias & Smith & Jones, Buck Rogers, Kojak, The Incredible Hulk, Planet of the Apes, Shaft. Still was a sucker for sci fi and detective programs. From the 80's The A Team , Macgyver, Married with children ,Moonlighting, Sledge Hammer, V,Cagney & Lacey, Baywatch( hey they had good stories, :lol: , Dallas, Knightrider, Miami Vice, Midnight Caller, Remington Steele, Star Trek Next generation, Police Squad, TJ Hooker, Quantum Leap, Rockford Files, Cheers. A bit more mixed viewing, still a bit of sci fi. From the 90's Buffy the Vampire slayer, The Simpsons, Star Trek Voyager, Home Improvement. Not really many from this decade, must have been less US tv shows imported or they were all rubbish.
February 17, 201015 yr come the 70's detective serise took over (dramas were still repeated) ironside (started in the late 60's) kojak, cannon, mc cleans law, starskey and hutch, rockford files and they died out slowly in the 80's with cagney and lacey, hill st blues etc. in the late 70's and throughout the 80's the great american soaps took over with dallas, dynasty, colbys, falcon crest .... but into the 90's interest in mainstream american programmes slowly died out. all we ever seem to get are silly sit coms like friends, frasier, etc. Someone who extols the virtues of absolute crap like The Colbys and Falcon Crest and then calls Frasier "silly".... A tad ironic..... :P For me, my fave US shows growing up as a kid were, without a doubt, Kojak, Streets of San Francisco, A-Team, Airwolf, Knight Rider, Star Trek, The Invaders, Starsky and Hutch, Miami Vice, Hill Street Blues, Charlies Angels, 6 Million Dollar Man, Bionic Woman, Kung Fu, Lost In Space, Mission Impossible, Time Tunnel, The Fall Guy, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and, yes, I'll admit it, Dynasty.... As I got older I moved onto stuff like Star Trek TNG, Deep Space 9, Voyager, Babylon 5, Buffy, Cheers, Frasier, The X-Files, Homicide, NYPD Blue, Law and Order... TBH, I'd say that there's still some very good US shows doing the rounds in the 00s, but stuff like Dexter, Fringe, Supernatural, The Shield and The Wire are not exactly family entertainment granted... Actually, I'd say 'Chuck' is a pretty good bit of all-round silly entertainment.... Any age can watch that really...
February 17, 201015 yr Someone who extols the virtues of absolute crap like The Colbys and Falcon Crest and then calls Frasier "silly".... A tad ironic..... :P What he said... American shows do now seem to be massive 24 episode box sets now or nothing at all. I used to love the sort of thing they played on Channel 4 between 6 and 7 during the 90's, but in hindsight it was mostly crap.
February 17, 201015 yr I'm a 90s kid and grew up on shows like Saved by the Bell, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Kenan and Kel, Friends, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Charmed, Fresh Prince of Bel Air. But I love the 00s American imports which is when I really started to appreciate drama as I got older; Six Feet Under, True Blood, Battlestar Galactica, Lost, 24, The Wire, Big Love, Arrested Development, Modern Family, Glee and you know the rest. I don't know where we would be without HBO :wub:
February 17, 201015 yr Author Someone who extols the virtues of absolute crap like The Colbys and Falcon Crest and then calls Frasier "silly".... A tad ironic..... :P For me, my fave US shows growing up as a kid were, without a doubt, Kojak, Streets of San Francisco, A-Team, Airwolf, Knight Rider, Star Trek, The Invaders, Starsky and Hutch, Miami Vice, Hill Street Blues, Charlies Angels, 6 Million Dollar Man, Bionic Woman, Kung Fu, Lost In Space, Mission Impossible, Time Tunnel, The Fall Guy, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and, yes, I'll admit it, Dynasty.... As I got older I moved onto stuff like Star Trek TNG, Deep Space 9, Voyager, Babylon 5, Buffy, Cheers, Frasier, The X-Files, Homicide, NYPD Blue, Law and Order... TBH, I'd say that there's still some very good US shows doing the rounds in the 00s, but stuff like Dexter, Fringe, Supernatural, The Shield and The Wire are not exactly family entertainment granted... Actually, I'd say 'Chuck' is a pretty good bit of all-round silly entertainment.... Any age can watch that really... oh i dont like falcon crest, colbys etc...the ONLY american soap ive ever liked was dallas. cant abide dynasty... thats the point though... they used to be family orientated, and just look how fashions have changed... when was the last time there was a good old fashioned western tv seriese? and cop dramas arnt mainstream now. i think its odd that american soaps, westerns and cop dramas used to be so popular but now just dont appear to be produced for the mass mainstream market.
February 17, 201015 yr when was the last time there was a good old fashioned western tv seriese? . "Deadwood", a quite brilliant HBO show... Which was actually praised by historians for its historical accuracy.... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348914/ Not "old fashioned" like "Bonanza" though, more like film westerns like "Unforgiven" or "Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid".... And, I thought "Lonesome Dove" was pretty good.... I prefer US shows the way they are now in a lot of ways... I look back at some of the stuff I watched in the 80s, and frankly it just doesn't hold up anymore, frankly it's naive and more than silly, even the 'grittier' stuff like Miami Vice looks, well, dated, the notable exception is probably Hill Street Blues which I can still watch happily, even though tougher and more uncompromising shows like Homicide came along (I'm watching Homicide again on DVD at the moment and have come to the conclusion that perhaps this is the best cop drama of all time, even given my love for Hill St Blues and The Wire)... When you look at the best of the Cable shows like Mad Men, Dexter, Battlestar Galactica (which almost definitely supercedes the original show in every way..), Generation Kill, True Blood, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Breaking Bad, etc you can just see that TV drama has almost certainly evolved.... And of course 'Lost' is just bloody mind-bending....
February 17, 201015 yr the notable exception is probably Hill Street Blues which I can still watch happily, even though tougher and more uncompromising shows like Homicide came along (I'm watching Homicide again on DVD at the moment and have come to the conclusion that perhaps this is the best cop drama of all time, even given my love for Hill St Blues and The Wire)... I so agree! Until Homicide Life on the Street came along ... I didn't think anything could match HSB. Do you have a favourite episode/storyline from either series? Norma
February 18, 201015 yr Do you have a favourite episode/storyline from either series? From Homicide it really has to be the episode where Bayliss and Pembleton interrogate the guy who they think killed Adina Watson... Absolutely fukkin' AMAZING and intense acting from Andre Braugher and Kyle Secor above and beyond the call of duty, even more amazing that the script actually draws out audience sympathy for the suspect.... Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best and that episode was just basically three guys in a room talking for an hour.... But how it was done led to one of the greatest single pieces of TV drama of all time IMO.... In a similar vein, and slightly off the beaten track, probably one of the best episodes of Babylon 5 was the one where Sheridan was interrogated... Something about pure "interrogation" episodes just seems to bring out the best in the particular writers I think......
February 18, 201015 yr My favourite was actually a real sad one. It was the one where there was a young bloke caught between two sections of a subway train. The whole episode consisted of a dialogue between him and Andre Braugher's character. Braugher had been informed that once the carriage's had been separated the guy would die ... in short it was the pressure and the shock that was keeping the bloke alive so Braugh was talking to a dead man. And at the end of it ... the perpetrator was just a total stranger who pushed the bloke off the platform for a laugh ... so serial killer, no pattern of murders ... just one of those awful things. Again ... Braugher's performance was absolutely brilliant. I was also very fond of the Edgar Allen Poe'esque episode. Norma Edited February 18, 201015 yr by Norma_Snockers
February 18, 201015 yr From Homicide it really has to be the episode where Bayliss and Pembleton interrogate the guy who they think killed Adina Watson... Absolutely fukkin' AMAZING and intense acting from Andre Braugher and Kyle Secor above and beyond the call of duty, even more amazing that the script actually draws out audience sympathy for the suspect.... Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best and that episode was just basically three guys in a room talking for an hour.... But how it was done led to one of the greatest single pieces of TV drama of all time IMO.... In a similar vein, and slightly off the beaten track, probably one of the best episodes of Babylon 5 was the one where Sheridan was interrogated... Something about pure "interrogation" episodes just seems to bring out the best in the particular writers I think...... Sorry for bringing it off topic, but what is Babylon 5 about? Is it similar, better or worse, than the recent Battlestar Galactica? Edited February 18, 201015 yr by Daniel Gleek
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