TRUE DETECTIVE - and by this I mean the first season, of course. This isn't my genre and I have no idea how I even ended up watching it, but McCaughney and Harrelson were absolutely spell-binding. Add in an insanely creepy plotline and a setting that is a character itself, and you have magic.
PREVIOUS XMASTIME THOUGHT ABOUT TRUE DETECTIVE:
You think Rust kept himself alive while bleeding out on the ground by telling himself "You just gotta keep livin' man, L-I-V-I-N."?MAD MEN: simply put, this is the Cadillac of prestige television that studios have repeatedly tried to copy over & over without succeeding.
PREVIOUS XMASTIME THOUGHT ABOUT MAD MEN:
The episode of Mad Men last night might've been the best tv I've seen in a long time. The jolt of the plane crash and it's ensuing inappropriate and unchecked jokes, Draper showing both a semi-compassionate side and a hard-ass one, the dude that plays Pete Campbell's awesome vacant performance as well as his family's blue blood Gatsby awkwardness. Great episode. Oh, and just for kicks they threw in some racism and a 5 year-old girl mixing drinks. After last year's mid-season stumble, looks like the show has recovered nicely.IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA - what can you say about a show that with the exception of one season has been THE most consistently flat-out funny sitcom of all time and include a character who is forever in the pantheon (Charlie)?
PREVIOUS XMASTIME THOUGHT ABOUT IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA:
I'm fairly shocked that It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia hasn’t done a straight-up parody of Rocky. Charlie as Rocky, Frank as Mickey and the Waitress as Adrian.
VEEP - the natural descendant of the BBC's brilliant Yes, Minister, this show popped and crackled like nothing else until the end, when for some reason the jokes dragged out a beat too long and it found itself competing with Trump for absurdity, which is a no-win situation. Unique show in that there's a ton of spin-offs featuring aide characters I'd love to watch.
Finally seeing the second season of Veep. An A+ show that adds Gary Cole automatically becomes an A++ show.
COUNT ARTHUR STRONG - Graham Linehan was already a genius thanks to Father Ted, Black Books, and The IT Crowd when he wrote this show. For three seasons it delivered great laughs, which made the few poignant scenes that much more heartfelt.
PREVIOUS XMASTIME THOUGHT ABOUT COUNT ARTHUR STRONG: none really, so enjoy this video!
CUCKOO - classic cozy BBC sitcom that brilliantly showcases the hilarious Greg Davies, who squeezed every laugh out of his few lines on The Inbetweeners. The old "I'd watch him read the phone book" is way overused, but applicable to Davies.
- When Cuckoo began, just like everybody else I'm sure I thought oh, this is a platform for Andy Samberg. And if you had told me it'd get even funnier when he left and Taylor Lautner joined the cast, I'd have said you're probably out of your mind.
- Greg Davies is a British National Treasure, even he never does anything other than Cuckoo and his Hall of Fame character on The Inbetweeners. And if you spot hm on The Graham Norton Show, do yourself favor and watch.
- I always hafta catch myself from demanding more Steve, as he's one of those perfect side characters where a little is perfect and juuuuust a tad more is too much.
- Is there a more delightful family to go down to the pub with?
- Ben was one of sitcom's all-time dull characters (as designed so), but how happy are you when he actually finds his true love?
- I'm assuming there will be 6th season! (fingers crossed emoji)
GIRLS - watching Girls could be maddening and only one of them was actually likeable, but people never stopped watching it, even if only to bitch. Lord knows I bitched about it plenty here. I watch from time to time just to be able to inhale my old neighborhood Williamsburg.
What the problem of Girls is, to me, that it's the first show (in my mind) that sounds like a blog, in that it feels more of a need to cram in it's pithy observations on XYZ than it does in developing a story or characters we care about; you can feel Lara Dunham not listening to anyone else's lines as she's counting down to her next "BOOM!" statement about boys/her vagina/Williamsburg. A blog can be compulsively driven by getting things off one's chest since there doesn't necessarily need to be a connection from one post to another, but a television show needs to organically flow.
This could/should change as the show progresses and Dunham feels less pressure to blurt out the first 100 things she's ever thought of (particularly as "the mind of her generation"); hell, Whitney began with Whitney tripping over everybody else to cram in as many clumsy-fitting one-liners from her stand-up as possible, but became mildly watchable once she calmed down and the other characters were given lives of their own, not just existing as receptors for Whitney's endless "The difference between men and women..." schtick.
MOONE BOY - somehow both laugh-out-loud funny and humbly delightful, featuring a main character who was so funny partly because I'm not really sure he knew he was acting (like Theo Huxtasble before Malcolm Jamal Warner realized he was an ACT-OR!) And of course anything featuring the universally beloved Chris O'Dowd.
PREVIOUS XMASTIME THOUGHT ON MOONE BOY: I've written plenty about it but would rather watch this video over and over.
DERRY GIRLS - another Irish show, featuring a group of four distinct archetypes: the wanna-be alpha, the troublemaker, the nervous rule-follower and the looney. A brilliant way of showing that vents in history happen while people are trying to navigate their own daily lives.
Available NOW on Netflix! A rare show in that every character is really funny. Also the best example of a show that spends the entire series making you laugh over and over & then punches you in the gut in the final minutes since Blackadder Goes Forth. Awesome. Can’t wait for the next series!THE WRONG MAN(S) - James Corden wrote and starred in this with his Gavin and Stacey cast mate Mathew Baynton, a wonderfully unique spy thriller spoof that unleashes Corden to be at his most Corden-y. Also, extremely well-made for a comedy, it looks like a movie. Bonus for have Dawn French in a small role!
PREVIOUS XMASTIME THOUGHT ON THE WRONG MAN(S): a video instead YOU'RE WELCOME!!
SCHITT'S CREEK - I snobbishly turned my nose up at this for years because of the name and then tumbled into all at once and didn't top until I had seen every episode. A brilliant cast - everything the parents say is funny, and the kids go from being over-the-top hate-able to people you urgently root for. Can't wait for the next season, which will sadly be its last.
PREVIOUS XMASTIME THOUGHT ON SCHITT'S CREEK: None. Well. This really fizzled out, didn't it?
DOWNTON ABBEY - what can I say that hasn't been said a million times?
PREVIOUS XMASTIME THOUGHTS ON DOWNTON ABBEY:
Too many gems to choose from, but do yourself a favor and read THIS, THIS, THIS, THIS, and THIS.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
SpyI'm sure I'm missing something but oh fucking well.
Rev.
Whites
Master of None
The Crown
Catastrophe
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Tremé
Friday Night Dinner
The Trip
Detectorists
Chickens
Vicious
Still Open All Hours
Uncle
A Young Doctor’s Notebook
The Big Bang Theory
Modern Family
Miranda
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