The Criterion Collection

[theater dreamer]

Absolutely. I'm only in the second season now, but it's incredible.

As already mentioned, Breaking Bad, Homeland and The Wire are among the greatest shows ever made. The Sopranos is certainly near the very top.

I'd also put the first four seasons of Dexter on a must see list. Michael C. Hall is exceptional, and John Lithgow was ridiculous in season four. Hall was also on Six Feet Under, which I have only seen a bit from, but plan on going all the way through, as well.

As for current shows, Game of Thrones is king for me. Lots of violence, and sex, but it's really never gratuitous, in my opinion. Westeros is a tough place to live. Every friend of mine that has started watching it on my suggestion is addicted.

Better Call Saul, which is a prequel to Breaking Bad-about how Jimmy McGill became ethically-challenged attorney Saul Goodman, just finished its second season. It's incredibly well done. Bob Odenkirk and Jonathan Banks are one hell of a one-two punch.

I also really like Ray Donovan. Liev Schreiber is a bad ass.

I could (and have) binge watched any of the series I listed. I re-watched Breaking Bad all the way through in less two weeks.

Originally Posted by JJJ225

Mad Men is a masterpiece and just as worthy of your time as an Ozu film.

[Blutar]

No love for True Detective Season 1? (let's forget season 2)

The ending was a tad over the top but the overall arc, setting, and interplay between the leads...wow.

[The Great Owl]

Everybody is talking about new television shows in this thread, and I'm still multitasking through my Blu-ray sets of Batman: The Complete Series (1966-1968), Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-1969), Battlestar Galactica: The Definitive Collection (1978-1980), Airwolf: The Complete Series (1984-1988), and The X:Files: Seasons 1-9 (1993-2002).

[The Great Owl]

Originally Posted by bwdowiak

Which out of the bunch of new watches would you say was the best "pleasant surprise?"

I really like Cowboy, Johnny Guitar, Man of the West, The Ox-Bow Incident, El Dorado, and The Professionals.

Man of the West and The Ox-Bow Incident get bonus points for being "western noir."

Cowboy was directed by Delmer Daves, who also helmed 3:10 to Yuma and Jubal.

I also forgot to mention that I watched the Blu-ray of Sergio Leone's Duck, You Sucker for the first time, after having seen the DVD many years ago. This really is a brilliant Leone film all around, and my already high opinion soared into the stratosphere with this latest viewing.

[bwdowiak]

Originally Posted by JJJ225

Mad Men is a masterpiece and just as worthy of your time as an Ozu film.

a quick check indicates that there are 92 episodes of Mad Men at an average of 47 minutes per episode. that's 72 hours plus. in my lifetime (granted that I've only started in earnest to watch art house and classic maybe 5 years or so ago,) I have had the pleasure of giving my time to the work of Yasujiro Ozu on 4 occasions, so that's less than 8 hours.

I'm sure it's a fine show. I choose not to even get my feet wet w/ Mad Men, Breaking Bad, or anything else because I cannot commit myself to spending that much time in front of the television.

[johnmccabe]

Some great TV in the last 15 years:

Breaking Bad
Deadwood
Game of Thrones
The Wire
The Sopranos
The Office (UK version)
Peep Show
Louie
The Americans
Black Mirror
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Eastbound & Down
Mad Men
The Shield
Veep

[theater dreamer]

The first season was amazing. McCounaughey and Harrelson both gave Emmy-worthy performances, imo. I haven't watched the second season yet, though I love Rachel McAdams (my future wife). I guess I got spooked by critical reviews that came out as it was reading to start. One of my best friends watched it, and said that while it wasn't up to the first season, it wasn't as bad as many made it out to be. There was no way they were going to top the first season, so the cast and crew were starting out at a disadvantage.

I was remiss in overlooking another phenomenal show, this one on BBC. Sherlock might give Game of Thrones a fight for my favorite show. It's so easy to overlook only because the "seasons" are so short-only three or four episodes per season. The problem is that it takes a while to get a season filmed. There is going to be a fourth season, but it will be next year until it comes out. Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman are so busy, getting a block of time to shoot is proving difficult. But the modern spin on the classic Holmes is worth any wait. It's a masterfully done show.

Originally Posted by Blutar

No love for True Detective Season 1? (let's forget season 2)

The ending was a tad over the top but the overall arc, setting, and interplay between the leads...wow.

[bwdowiak]

Originally Posted by senseabove

From the last 15 years? Most people would say The Wire, at least, though I've personally never been a huge fan, and Mad Men, whose first few seasons really are fantastically well-done, and the last few hold up with their own kind of "late style," if you will.

The TV dramas from the past 15 years that I think transcend the "really good TV drama" limitation to become something that could be more long-lasting:
- Six Feet Under, which has held up remarkably well in spite of storylines and motifs that could very, very easily seem dated now (the flashback/dream stuff, David's coming out story, Claire's angsty teen)
- Treme, which is the real standout for me; I think it's some of the best TV/Film/Moving Pictures about a place and its people I've ever seen
- Rectify, a little-seen show on IFC that is just unbelievably well-scripted and well-acted

I'm not doubting that there are great shows. I'm only stating that I haven't seen any of them - not a single episode.

EDIT: ...and I choose not to. The effort and sincere approach to 90 minutes worth of material cannot be matched by a serial that has to film 50 minutes or so of usable footage on a weekly basis. maybe these shows are great, but I just don't see the same level of quality and I'm not going to give my time to that.

oh, and '30 for 30' is fantastic, Abdrewes... those are a collection of short films, though, by different filmmakers

[AaronJ]

Originally Posted by bwdowiak

Another thing is - I’ve had my arm twisted twice to watch modern TV. Once was for Luther which wasn’t bad, really. The other was American Horror Story which is an abomination. I thought my wife would enjoy it because she enjoys the genre more than I do, but that pilot episode had every horror cliché in history wrapped into 60 minutes; even she thought it was garbage.

What?! Wow.

Anyways, I think that AHS has been mostly pretty amazing.


Oh, and "Jessica Jones" on Netflix is freakin' awesome.

[theater dreamer]

Oh, and the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica is really a drama/sci fi hybrid, so I would definitely include it. I grew up on the original (met Dirk Benedict when I was a kid visiting my Aunt in San Francisco). And while TOS will always have a special place in my heart, the Ronald Moore/David Eick version is step above. It's the best science fiction show in television history, imo.

Yes, I watch a lot of television, lol.

[theater dreamer]

I've liked what little I've seen of Penny Dreadful and Peaky Blinders, too. And Narcos on Netflix was really good, too. The second season should be starting in a few months.

Lots of good shows right now.

[Bates_Motel]

Originally Posted by bwdowiak

A night or two ago I turned on the TV and Lifetime Movie Network had one of their typical crappy ' the man I loved turned out to be a crazy man,' movies playing. This crazy man was taping a woman's mouth shut with duct tape while she's pleading with him to stop. A few moments later, he is chasing her around the house with a gun.

Now I don't need to ask if you think the nudity would be censored . Of course it would be - even if she only were to show her back side. But which of those two scenes do you think is more inappropriate for a general audience?

If those scenes were within the context of a story, why would they be inappropriate?

[ckt]

I don't watch much TV. I usually stick with HBO for what I do watch though. "Boardwalk Empire" was ok, and "True Detective" (Season 1) was entertaining. But, I'd have to say the best I've watched on TV in the past few years has been "The Knick," and "Generation Kill," —even though that was a bit more than a few years ago, I've rewatched it recently. OH! And Veep! Veep is fantastic!

[bwdowiak]

Originally Posted by Bates_Motel

If those scenes were within the context of a story, why would they be inappropriate?

I'll turn that question back at you. How are they appropriate? ..and back to the point I was making.. which do you think was more inappropriate and in need of censoring? for regular tv, mind you.

I think you might have missed something in my original post.

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by BaronVH

I have posted about this a while back, but is there anything new about Ran? The Studio Canal release is terrible, and just about everywhere other than region A got the new 4K release. Hopefully, hopefully the reason it has passed by A is that they are negotiating with Criterion for a release. Anybody in the know on this?

I think the more likely reason the new restoration hasn't come out in Region A is because Lionsgate has the rights to it (as part of their lock on the StudioCanal catalog), and no longer seems interested in releasing any of the SC titles on physical media.

[broganreynik]

"Night and Fog", "Hiroshima Mon Amour", and "Muriel, or the Time of Return" sound really interesting to me, especially "Night and Fog". But I hated "Last Year at Marienbad".

I mostly hated LYaM because I couldn't keep track of who was who, because everyone looked the same to me. That and it seemed overly pretentious.

Are the others done in a similar style or would they be a safe-ish blind buy?

[belcherman]

Originally Posted by johnmccabe

Some great TV in the last 15 years:

Breaking Bad
Deadwood
Game of Thrones
The Wire
The Sopranos
The Office (UK version)
Peep Show
Louie
The Americans
Black Mirror
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Eastbound & Down
Mad Men
The Shield
Veep

I generally avoid watching TV shows because I'm afraid of getting wrapped up in a series when I could be spending that valuable view time chopping away at my embarrassingly large pile of unwatched blu rays. Of the series I've seen Mad Men is at the top of the list. It may not be perfect and some episodes (and seasons) are better than others but it is really unlike anything else. In addition to being well-written and acted, it beautifully captures the zeitgeist of its depicted era. Ironically, one of the things that makes this current era so promising for televised content is that, with the advent of cable and internet programming, producers are no longer slaves to advertisers.

Criterion's The Golden Age of Television set is a document of television in its infancy, when it still held promise of bringing original drama and intelligent entertainment into homes across the nation. Network television got away from that early promise but now, with expanded programming options, that promise is returning. Not that everything is wonderful -- Sturgeon's Law still applies ("90% of everything is crud.") but what is good is really good and much better than what you'll find most nights at your local cineplex.

I'm also a big fan of Louie, although I haven't seen every episode.

[octagon]

Originally Posted by bwdowiak

I'm not doubting that there are great shows. I'm only stating that I haven't seen any of them - not a single episode.

EDIT: ...and I choose not to. The effort and sincere approach to 90 minutes worth of material cannot be matched by a serial that has to film 50 minutes or so of usable footage on a weekly basis. maybe these shows are great, but I just don't see the same level of quality and I'm not going to give my time to that.

oh, and '30 for 30' is fantastic, Abdrewes... those are a collection of short films, though, by different filmmakers

Maybe I'm misreading this but how can you say anything about the level of quality - let alone say tv is just stupid - when you haven't watched any of the best shows over the past fifteen years?

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by Abdrewes

HBO indeed has set the bar. Deadwood and Luck are two criminally underappreciated shows that I wish more people would see. It's truly a shame that we only got 3 seasons from the former and one from the latter

Is there a more entertaining TV character than Ian McShane's Al Swearengen? I'd wager no.

I used to be in the TV is terrible camp, but catching up with Freaks and Geeks, Friday Night Lights, Deadwood, Planet Earth, 30 for 30 in the last several years made me change my stance

There's a lot of TV in the past 20-25 years that is terrible, there's a lot that is fair-to-middlin', and there's a lot that is good, and there is definitely some that is worth the investment of time. Of course, not everyone is going to agree on what fits into which of those categories.

HBO's The Wire is often held up as the best TV show ever made. I can't speak to that, as there are a lot of shows I haven't watched, but I can say that in roughly 55 years of watching TV it's the best TV show I've ever seen, barring only Kieślowski's Dekalog. One critic described it as perhaps television's equivalent of the Great American Novel. I don't think that's hyperbole.

Two western/crime drama mash-ups that are worth looking at are Justified and Longmire.

And I'd argue that anyone who is into film noir owes it to themselves to watch the Marvel/Netflix series Jessica Jones.

[biglou114]

All this TV talk and no one mentions Fargo?!

I'm also quite partial to Doctor Who.