My attempts at finding TV I like to watch haven’t been successful lately. I like historical stuff, but not like Vikings, or Last Kingdom. Not like all those nasty pirate series. Not like Rome, weren’t they the first to start this unholy diluvium of cookie cutter pseudo-historical modern TV? I like fantasy, but please don’t GoT me. I’m giving up on Battlestar Galactica - there were some interesting ideas in this and it was bad almost good, but I can’t stand its military propaganda-i-ness a minute longer.
It’s all gore, rape, war, sex, big CGI battle, torture, two lines cheesy dialog, repeat. Every line of dialog these days seems to be written by a badly maintained, malfunctioning robot slave, every character half well constructed is allowed to descend into nonsense after 2 seasons, just so the ‘aesthetics’ consisting of an endless stream of highly detailed violence can be perpetuated. I’m glad the writers are on strike, nothing but good can come out of it. I hope they start small, independent studios and produce quality work.
I did watch quite some Neil Gaiman stuff I liked, and have heard a new season of Good Omens comes out? So that helps a bit. I like crime, used to watch a lot of British crime series, liked True Detective. I don’t like sitcoms. I like serious stuff that’s also funny, or vice versa. I like dialogs that make sense.
Please recommend me something, can be older or even old. I remember watching TV used to be fun but everything out there these days seems rather enshittified.
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Better call saul, if you haven’t seen it already. It starts slow but gets insanely good very fast. Yes, it’s not sci-fi but it’s really good.
For sci-fi, have you seen Expanse? It’s a realistic sci-fi if that’s a thing.
Also, Travelers. It’s got very interesting idea about time travel.
I recently really enjoyed Severance.
Scifi: Foundation - A reimagining of Issac Asimov’s multipart epic on the rise and fall of galactic civilization.
I, Claudius
Reservation Dogs
The WireSince you mentioned BSG, I wanted to recommend Babylon 5. It’s got a cohesive story planned from the get go, and is as good as space opera gets IMHO. There are plenty of historical parallels to draw, my favorite being the Roman Republic inspired Centauri. (Commercial TV from the 90s, so nothing R rated here.)
More recent, and more historical, would be the German Netflix series Barbaren (Barbarians). It might be too roman history focused for your tastes, but it got a glowing review from my family abroad. (I do believe this has more gore and sexual content, I just don’t remember to what extent.)
Also, if you haven’t watched The Wire yet, you should, but given that you say you like crime series I’m assuming you already did!
Peaky blinders
- Historical Fiction: I, Claudius from 1976. It stands up staggeringly well.
- Fantasy: Extraordinary (2023), Neverwhere (1996 - Gaiman’s first TV series)
- Crime: The Night Manager (2016), Slow Horses (2022), Mare of Easttown (2021)
Also Beforeigners (2019, Norway), which kinda qualifies for all of these categories.
can be older or even old
On the sci-fi front, have you seen Firefly?
Planetes was good too, Japanese Animation.Aside from that, I enjoyed The Boys and The Umbrella Academy.
In terms of crime maybe try the original ‘the killing’ and the remake. The bridge is also good - all part of scandi noir crime wave that took over the UK for a while. There is some obvious deption of death and murder.
I’ve recently just watched the silo and that was brilliant Sci fi - very distopian and authoritarian though!
- The Bear
- Tokyo Vice
- Severance
- Yellowjackets
- The Expanse
- Dark
Endeavour, if you can find it. It’s the backstory of Inspector Morse. It’s got some great retro styling in the first few series if you’re into that kind of thing and is a bit more than “crime of the day”.
