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Your Top Ten Non-Comedy Shows of All Time

Started by Golden E. Pump, August 08, 2017, 09:10:06 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Golden E. Pump

1. Twin Peaks (has risen up from third due to the strength of season three)
2. X-Files (next season could cause it to slip)
3. The Wire
4. Game of Thrones (could rise to second or third depending on how it ends)
5. The Sopranos
6. Breaking Bad
7. Mad Men
8. Westworld (based on one season; could rise if the next series is as good)
9. Firefly
10. The Walking Dead (could slip off the list if next season does not improve; very unlikely to rise due to the massive dip in quality)

On my list to watch: Six Feet Under, Supernatural, House of Cards, Oz

Fight me with your opinions.

Gulftastic

1. The Prisoner
2. The Wire
3. Buffy The Vampire Slayer
4. Breaking Bad
5. Game Of Thrones
6. The Sopranos
7. Doctor Who
8. Battlestar Galactica (reboot)
9. Band Of Brothers
10. Emmerdale

The order can change (aside from the top spot).

Serge

Breaking Bad
Doctor Who
The Prisoner
Our Friends In The North
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy/Smiley's People
A Perfect Spy
Deadwood
The Shadow Line
Cracker
G.B.H.

These were just as they came to me, I had to wrestle with whether to put G.B.H. or Boys From The Black Stuff (the former just edged it), and I'm guessing that the Beiderbecke Trilogy and Jeeves & Wooster really belong in comedy.....

EOLAN

1 Twin Peaks
2 The Wire
3 Colombo
4 House of Cards (original)
5 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy/Smiley's People
6 Billions
7 Better Call Saul
8 House of Cards (Netflix)
9 Mad Men
10 Breaking Bad


Top three pretty much locked in for now. Twin peaks moving up to top spot of late.

Mr Brightside

Let me tell you what the best ten shows are - in no particular order because I can't be arsed with ordering them . . . 

Twin Peaks
The Wire
Breaking Bad
The X-Files
Game of Thrones
Better Call Saul
The Twilight Zone
Six Feet Under
Hannibal
Dexter

I am also fond of The Sopranos, The Bridge (original Scandinavian one), House of Cards (both American and British ones), Westworld, and Life on Mars (original British one).


robotam



10) Six Feet Under - Bunch of good characters running about doing some good drama.
9) Battlestar Galactica (reboot) - Load of nonsense half the time, but loved all the stuff with the last humans being scared in a shitty situation.
8) Better Call Saul - Like Breaking Bad but without old four eyes Walter White.
7) LOST - Had some of TVs most memorable scenes / episodes. Filled with great ideas.
6) Buffy - Loads of good eps. Mostly fun. Sometimes sad. Great.
5) Banshee - it was cool when "Sheriff Hood" punches people
4) Fargo - Haven't seen the last episode of season 3, so this one COULD CHANGE POSITION. Fun show
3) The Wire - Bunch of great characters running about living life in this depressing world.
2) The Sopranos - Every episode is a work of art. Some of the best characters of all time.
1) The Leftovers -  Beautiful, sad and funny (with some fine lookin' honeys).

Cuntbeaks

In no particular order...

Any Keith Floyd vehicle
Crystal Maze
Bullseye
The Prisoner
Prisoner Cell Block H
QED
Tomorrow's World
BPM
Space Night
Weir's Way

Dr Rock

Blake's 7
The Sopranos
Daredevil
Roots
Twin Peaks
Hill Street Blues
Twilight Zone
Battle Of The Planets
Bagpuss
Batman (Adam West) - or would you call this a comedy?

Honorable mentions to GBH, The Prisoner, original Star Trek and also Next Generation, Tales Of The Unexpected, and Dynasty. Cos Dynasty was great.

Old Nehamkin

Twin Peaks
Breaking Bad
Deadwood
Justified
Rectify
Friday Night Lights
Columbo
The Wire
Newsround (Mzimba era)
Newsround  (other)

Mr Banlon

Out (1978)
Budgie
The Prisoner
Callan
The Sweeney
Avengers
Sopranos
Life On Earth
The World About Us
Law and Order (BBC 1978)

notjosh

Breaking Bad
Star Trek (TOS)
The Wire
The Twilight Zone (1959)
Survivors (1975)
Satorare
Danger Man
House of Cards (UK)
The Demon Headmaster
Doctor Who

Bazooka

1. The Sopranos
2. The X-files
3. Mad Men (breaks the rules of not using 'The' in the title)
4. The Wire
5. OZ
6. Deadwood
7. The Walking Dead
8. Daredevil
9. Brookside series 8
10. Brookside series with the lesbian kiss.

Shit Good Nose

The Wire on top, the rest in no particular order:
Columbo (although only the 70s ones - the 80s-on re-boot sucked all kinds of balls)
Edge of Darkness
Moving Pictures
Ghost In the Shell Stand Alone Complex
Jack the Ripper (the Michael Caine one)
The Old Grey Whistle Test
Fargo
Crime Story (although a good chunk of the isolated non-arc episodes were abysmal)
Threads



lebowskibukowski

Romanzo Criminale
The Wire
Our Friends In The North
Engrenages
Grange Hill
Game Of Thrones (First 3 series only, or whenever Noob Saibot comes flying out of that ginger bird's foof
Brookside
Prisoner Cell Block H (not even ironically - fucking loved it)
Minder
That Public Information advert with the frisbee

LORD BAD VIBE

In chronological order:-

1. Quatermass and the Pit (1958-59)
2. Doctor Who (1963-1989)
3. Public Eye (1965-1975)
4. Callan (1967-1972)
5. The Prisoner (1967-1968)
6. Ghost Stories for Christmas (1968-1978, 2005-2013)
7. I, Claudius (1976)
8. Twin Peaks (1990-1991, 2017)
9. Cracker (1993-1996)
10. Our Friends in the North (1996)

Plenty of good modern stuff but nothing in the Top 10 for me - Game of Thrones, The Killing, Banshee, Follow the Money, The Bridge, Trapped, Bates Motel, and so on.

Dr Rock

I'd like to add Horizon as many of them were fantastic. And I suppose Top Of The Pops should go in; although the presenters' hilarious  banter might mean it should be classified as a comedy!

shh

Not sure if this is restricted to dramas, but off the top of my head

The Prisoner
Singing Detective
Various plays for today (Nuts in May, Abigail's Party)
Gormenghast
Children of the Stones
Mr Benn (would be churlish to exclude the first half of my life)
Planet Earth
The Wire
20,000 streets under the sky
Wolf Hall
Svankmajer shorts
Norman Conquests (comedyish)


hewantstolurkatad

Hmmm, oddly I've never even tried doing this before. Gonna leave out somewhat comedic things like Enlightened and Freaks and Geeks, gonna try to include miniseries


The Sopranos: duhr

The Wire: duhr

Friday Night Lights: full hearts

The Shield: masterful buildup throughout perfected by the best final season I can think of

Dekalog: Effectively 10 Kieslowski films... I mean, c'mon

The Americans: Pretty fantastic family drama and performances throughout, completely exceeded my expectations

WWE Raw: 99% total dogshit, but that one percent, man!

Columbo: The best procedural

Ken Burns's the Civil War: I imagine this was way more impressive at the time before Burns wore thin, but it's the perfect material for his style, there's such a wonderful set of historians and source materials... it's so good. The lack of any video from the era does wonders.

Hollywood -- A Celebration of the American Silent Film: I don't get why I have never successfully convinced anyone to watch this. It's a bit of a miracle it got made just before so many of the sources of the era died, you can kinda tell a lot of them are just over the moon that someone gives a shite about the whole period again. The whole thing is so lovingly put together. It doesn't go crazy deep or anything, but the effective sidestepping of Chaplin, Keaton and others (as Brownlow was doing individual series for each of them) lets the series avoid being too caught up in the usual footnotes.


I would probably trade something in there for a reality show if I could settle on one (maybe the first few seasons of the Apprentice UK?) and the Americans spot is highly dependent on how the final season comes out. One of the Adam Curtis series probably could deserve a spot too, Pandora's Box, maybe.

non capisco

Quote from: hewantstolurkatad on August 09, 2017, 07:11:07 PM
Hollywood -- A Celebration of the American Silent Film: I don't get why I have never successfully convinced anyone to watch this. It's a bit of a miracle it got made just before so many of the sources of the era died, you can kinda tell a lot of them are just over the moon that someone gives a shite about the whole period again. The whole thing is so lovingly put together. It doesn't go crazy deep or anything, but the effective sidestepping of Chaplin, Keaton and others (as Brownlow was doing individual series for each of them) lets the series avoid being too caught up in the usual footnotes.

That is a sublime programme. I think it's the very first episode that deals with the movement of the nascent film industry from the East to the West coast that demonstrates just how hair-raisingly life threatening all those short comedy car chase stunts actually were. I'd love to see that series again.

Sin Agog

Oy gevalt, I'm shit at these, and I keep on wanting to put Larry Sanders in there even though I know I can't, but I'll give it a go.  In no particular order at all:

Twin Peaks (like everyone else here said, thanks to the newest series).

Dennis Potter's Casanova.  Perhaps coloured by wading through all several thousand pages of Casanova's memoirs (wading is maybe the wrong adjective because it's my favourite piece of lit of all time.  Wafting?), but this has most of the Potter hallmarks you'll see in his later works- fractured narratives, trapped narrators, and a real penetrating psychological depth.  Frank Finlay's best performance, I reckon.  The Fellini adaptation is somehow less satisfying, though it has one of the most haunting scores of the '70s by Nino Rota. Thoroughly recommended if you're into The Singing Detective. Favourite one-shot Potter work may have to be Brimstone & Treacle for being a perfect Dostoyevskian little fable.

This list needs an anime somewhere, so let's go with Future Boy Conan.  A whole series of early Miyazaki.  The animation is a tad cruder than his later work, but it's as magical as he ever got, plus it was surprisingly hard-edged with the beatings Conan took before he prevailed.  There are quite a few good anime from that period- especially the impressionistic Rose of Versailles (about a real female captain of the guard around the time of Marie Antoinette), and the winsome anime adaptation of Anne of Green Gables.

Tinker Tailor/Smiley's People.  You have to watch extra carefully with Alec Guinness.  He's one of those hermit crabs who, when he plays a role, really moves in.  I believe he lived in George Smiley's shell longer than any other role in his career, and he haunts me every time I rewatch those series.  The tiniest, most imperceptible tells in his body language and face will occasionally wend their way to the surface of this inwards-looking man with a world bubbling away inside.  God, Alec was good.

Bagpuss

Johnny Staccato.  I wish the book Cassavetes on Cassavetes was called Sin Agog on Cassavetes, if ya namean.

Monkey

Riget/The Kingdom if you emphasise the black over the comedy.  I mean it's got far, far more going on than just the dark laughs

Cosmos.  The original!  Tried to watch the remake but the roving camera and the cornball Neil Degrasse Tyson turned me right off.  He didn't have one tenth of the awe Sagan had in the original, where sometimes I worried that he'd let loose a milky way right on camera when he was evangelising about space

And yeah, fuck it I'll go with The Prisoner

Absorb the anus burn

Quote from: LORD BAD VIBE on August 09, 2017, 01:53:58 PM
In chronological order:-

1. Quatermass and the Pit (1958-59)
2. Doctor Who (1963-1989)
3. Public Eye (1965-1975)
4. Callan (1967-1972)
5. The Prisoner (1967-1968)
6. Ghost Stories for Christmas (1968-1978, 2005-2013)
7. I, Claudius (1976)
8. Twin Peaks (1990-1991, 2017)
9. Cracker (1993-1996)
10. Our Friends in the North (1996)

+1/-0 karma point for including Public Eye

notjosh

Quote from: non capisco on August 09, 2017, 11:23:39 PM
That is a sublime programme. I think it's the very first episode that deals with the movement of the nascent film industry from the East to the West coast that demonstrates just how hair-raisingly life threatening all those short comedy car chase stunts actually were. I'd love to see that series again.

In case you weren't aware, it's all on YouTube. Brilliant series.

non capisco

Excellent! That's my lazy sunday sorted this weekend.

DrGreggles

Not much love for The Shield so far.
That'll be in my top ten* when I get round to doing it.

*probably top five

holyzombiejesus

Agree with the Twin Peaks/ Breaking Bad stuff that almost everyone has chosen. Would add an Attenborough, Ghost Stories for Christmas, Coronation Street, Grange Hill, Match of the Day and Lovejoy. Oh and that Lars Von Trier Kingdom thing. Is Freaks and Geeks classed as a comedy? It'd be more likely to be discussed on Picture Box than Comedy Chat, wouldn't it? I'd have that then.

checkoutgirl

Arena
Breaking Bad
Grange Hill
Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends
Narcos
NYPD Blue
Pennies From Heaven
The Prisoner
The Wire
The Wonder Years

Honourable mention - Freaks and Geeks, Better Call Saul, Start Trek Next Generation, Outer Limits (1990s), X-Files (first series only) and The Sopranos.





phes

1.The Amazing Race
2. Match of the Day
3. Justified
4. The Wire
5. Cosmos
6. Life on Earth
7. Blue Planet
8. Ascent of Man
9. Civilisation
10. The Body in Question

Hons: Breaking Bad, Sopranos


notjosh

Why is there so much love for The Prisoner but nothing for Danger Man? It's just like The Prisoner but without that crap bit at the end when it's just his face under the mask.