What should I watch next?

[osprey_archer]

I finished season 7 of Castle, and in between some things I've heard about season 8 and the fact that season 7 has one of the most perfect endings ever, I think I'm going to stop here. (...Unless sometime down the road someone tells me that season 9 is amazeballs, but when was the last time anyone said season 9 of anything was amazeballs?)

So! Now I am in the position of needing a new show, and I have decided to lay out the pros and cons of the various shows I have in my Netflix queue. (This doesn't include shows available on Netflix instant: those don't require pre-planning to check out.)


1. Orphan Black

Pros: Multiple friends have recommended this to me as being basically the most amazing thing ever

Also, it's starting a new season soon, so theoretically I could catch up and watch it on TV! And although there are three previous seasons, they're only ten episodes long, so I might actually catch up rather than trailing disconsolately behind for the entire run of the show like I have done with basically everything else I've ever watched.

Cons: I am so terrible with faces, you guys. I am so terrible with faces that I spent the first two episodes of Cambridge Spies desperately confused about which white British dudes with a posh accent was which, never mind there are are only four of them and they don't even look that similar! Whereas Orphan Black has fifteen different characters played by the same actress!

Actually I think fifteen is an exaggeration. But nonetheless there are a lot of them.


2. Dark Angel

Pros: You had me at "genetically enhanced soldier Max Guevara on the run from the government." It's like they designed a show just for me! Right down to the fact that it's only two seasons long, bless you, Dark Angel, you are made to cater to my television commitment issues.

Cons: I don't think this one has any cons, but that's partly because I know very little about it. Is the reason I haven't heard more about it because it's secretly terrible and that's why it got only two seasons?


3. Golden Girls

Pros: I have heard many good things about this show about older women hanging out and being buddies and cracking wise together, and it sounds like it would be a hilarious and relaxing show.

Also, while it does have a million episodes, it's also complete, so it's not going to have a million more.

Cons: It has a million episodes. I am very intimidated by shows that have more than three seasons, and Golden Girls has seven and also - I just noticed this - Netflix doesn't have one of them! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT, NETFLIX, WHY.

Probably tabling this one until Netflix has the complete damn series.


4. The Good Wife

Pros: My friends have also sung the praises of this show to the sky, as have the critics, especially for the varied and complex relationships between the female characters.

Cons: It also has a million episodes, and it's still running so who knows how many more it will accrue.


5. Brideshead Revisited

Pros: A miniseries! So it's very short and there will never be more. Also I like book adaptations. (I should see if there are any Austen miniseries I haven't watched yet...)

Cons: I just watched Cambridge Spies, so I'm not feeling another miniseries about the upper classes in interwar Britain just at this moment. Plus I get my fix for that from Poirot. I could even catch up on all those seasons of Downton Abbey I missed, if I really wanted to make myself miserable, why would I want that, this is a terrible idea, self, stop it.

Anyway, I'll probably watch this one eventually (that's the nice thing about miniseries), but not right at this moment.


6. Justified

Pros: I do love crime dramas. And this one is set in Appalachia, and I'm not sure why that appeals to me but it does.

I've also heard a lot of compliments about the use of language in this series, the poetry of the dialogue, which is not something one hears about many series and therefore made me perk up and take notice.

Cons: The female characters apparently get short shrift. Also, while the show is complete, it's also six seasons long, which is a lot of seasons.


I may just go ahead and try Orphan Black first, because it's the only one that has any kind of time component: the others are either complete, or so long that there's no way I'll catch up to the currently airing episodes (The Good Wife). Are there any other shows I should take under consideration? Perhaps particularly miniseries or series that were tragically canceled before their time.

Comments

[silverusagi]

Cons: It has a million episodes.

Well, one thing about The Golden Girls is that it is a straight up sitcom. There is no ongoing story whatsoever. So if you watch it and drop it and go back to it later, you're not going to be lost or anything. And if you watch a couple of seasons and don't like it, be assured that you're not just missing some ~amazing later development. Though on the note of women being amazing together (in an 80s/90s sitcom) there's also Designing Women (which has 5 good seasons before a cast change).

But I vote for Orphan Black. :)

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

I wish I could help! The only one I know anything about is Brideshead Revisited, and that one only in book form, where it's both beautiful and irritating. Maybe it would be good as a miniseries? But Poirot will never show up, and that's a pity.

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

WOLFBLOOD

[minutia-r.livejournal.com]

The only thing I know about Dark Angel is that sometimes I hope that people are talking about Meredith Ann Pierce's Darkangel Trilogy and they're actually talking about this show, so clearly it's no good. You should read the Darkangel Trilogy instead. It's got vampires and secret princesses on the terraformed moon! Has the TV show got vampires and secret princesses on the terraformed moon? Doubtful.

I would think that a show where many of the main characters are played by the same actress would actually be good for someone who has trouble telling people apart by their faces, though? Because they can't rely on the face to distinguish between characters, so they've got to give you other cues, like fashion, hairstyles, mannerisms, accents, etc.

[littlerhymes]

Orphan Black gives you lots to cues to distinguish the many characters played by Tatiana Maslany. It's a ton of fun. :)

I watched a fair few eps of Dark Angel when it aired, and honestly I thought it was kind of terrible? But on the upside it's short.

I rec Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles. Tragically cut short, but amazing for its brief run.

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

Dark Angel was one of my first ever fandoms. Season 1 was really good and had so much cool stuff and left a deep imprint on my id, but it was really critical of government authoritarianism, but then 9/11 happened and James Cameron lost his nerve so Season 2 was a bunch of bullshit sexual tension drivel and plot moppets. But a lot of people like it because young Jensen Ackles is brought in as the smirking wisecracking sex interest.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Oooh, it looks like that one's on Netflix Instant. And each episode is less than half an hour long, which is a definite plus. Maybe I'll do that after I finish season 4 of New Girl.

I'm also waiting for Netflix to get the third season of Graceland in some capacity. Come on, Netflix! Get with the program here!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I read Brideshead Revisited - or rather, listened to it as an audiobook, narrated by Jeremy Irons, who was perhaps not the best narrator even though he was in the miniseries, because his voice is a bit more restful than one really wants in an audiobook narrator...

Anyway. Beautiful and irritating is probably a good description of the book. Of course Poirot never will show up, but I think that if he did, he would feel right at home: he's always stumbling upon gothic country houses full of secrets.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I always had a prejudice against the Darkangel Trilogy, because it was shelved right next to Tamora Pierce's books and I always got excited that she might have a new book out! ...but then it was by another Pierce, very disappointing. But perhaps I should overcome this junior high feeling and give it a try.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Noooo James Cameron! Stick to your anti-authoritarianism plot! I mean, doubtless the political climate at the time probably made that difficult, but nonetheless I am already in mourning for What Could Have Been.

I have never seen the sexual appeal of Jensen Ackles, but maybe the problem is that I've only seen him in still pictures. Perhaps he'll be better as a smirking wisecracking moving picture? Or maybe I'll get two episodes into season 2 and throw up my hands in disgust.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Maybe Netflix will get Golden Girls on instant eventually. It sounds like the sort of thing that would be really good as a show to watch occasionally on a slow afternoon or something. (I mean, I'm sure it's available somewhere else on the internet, but I am super lazy.)

I'm probably going to do Orphan Black first, though.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Is Dark Angel terrible-but-full-of-idtastic-goodness, or just straight up terrible? I have watched some pretty awful things for the idtastic goodness, c.f. my inability to quit Agents of SHEILD.

[minutia-r.livejournal.com]

Ha, it's irrational prejudices against fictional things for not being other fictional things all the way down!

I think you might like the Darkangel Trilogy, although it's a very strange set of books and not really like anything else, and I wouldn't recommend it to everybody. But as a Sutcliff fan at least you'll be prepared to deal with archaicizing prose and formal-tending-towards-stilted dialogue.

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

IMO he simply cannot compete with the stubbly wounded gravitas of Michael Weatherly in S1, but maybe that's just the shipper in me coming out.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I'm probably going to agree with you. Nothing against smirking wisecrackers, but they can never compete with stubbly wounded gravitas for me.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It looks like the library has it. (Someone at the library must be a fan, because with trilogies that are thirty years old the library often only has one or two of them. THAT'S USELESS, LIBRARY.) So maybe I'll check it out!

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

Wolfblood is such a good palette cleanser for all the grimdark speculative fiction stuff out there now.

Oh, man, I think everyone's given up on Graceland. :( :( :(

[vcmw]

I enjoy what I've watched so far of Orphan Black and they do a lot with hair, makeup, clothes, and ways of talking to distinguish the different characters. (I am about 1.5 seasons in? Maybe 2.)

I haven't watched it but I understand from people who do that The Good Wife is definitively ending at the end of season 7. They have a plan and are sticking to it.

[littlerhymes]

I found it actually terrible but YMMV - I mean, it still has its fans to this day!

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

EXTREMELY BELATED OPINION (oh my gosh you review so many things *in awe*):

The first season of Dark Angel was great post-apoc Seattle canon of my HEART. The second season was...different. Bad different. And I wanted to punch young Jensen's character in his smug, douchey face the entire time.

I was also a bit bummed that the lesbian character (who is GREAT) never seems to get a proper romance plot that works out at all, and the main character is established as Firmly Heterosexual, so I can't really slash them even though I want to. But the first season at least is worth watching.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Aw, I hate it when a show goes to extra lengths to establish just how Firmly Heterosexual the main character is. Not that I demand for every show to go to the Torchwood route either, but it never hurts to leave a little wiggle room.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Well. I guess one could make an argument for Max being potentially bi, but certain...biological imperatives only applying to dudes (trying not to spoil the set-up). I would have preferred Cindy to have a more visible non-Max-related love life than she had, but there were hints of one and she was a pretty well-rounded character, not just Lesbian Best Friend.

For its time and given James Cameron's particular interests, I do feel like the show did some interesting stuff the first season. I've never seen a show do that hard a shark-jump so quickly, though. :-/ But it's worth watching, I think.