11. Free Agents (Channel 4, UK - 6 Episode Series)
I fell in love with Stephen Mangan back in 2006's Jane Hall, a sweet ITV show with 6 episodes in its only season and a bitch of a cliffhanger. This year he starred on Broadway with Jessica Hynes and Ben Miles in The Norman Conquests trilogy. Sitting front row in Circle in the Square? Let's just say I was on a Stephen Mangan kick. So I was lucky that Free Agents came along. Like Jane Hall, it seems to have a been a one hit wonder - six episodes, no chance of a second season - but it deserved so much more. Centered around a will they/won't they (except they do in the first episode) couple (Stephen Mangan and Sharon Horgan) the show explored issues of celebrity, death, sex, loneliness and parenthood, all while maintaining a tone that allows their foul-mouthed boss (Anthony Michael Head) to use blue phrases like "knob jockey". Note to Casey: if you loved Malcolm Tucker's creative insults in In The Loop, you will love this show.
10. Party Down (Starz - 10 Episodes)
Despite spawning from the mind of Rob Thomas (showrunner of Veronica Mars, one of my favorites), Party Down took a while to grow on me. I needed time to get used to Ken Marino's crazy boss, which takes Ricky Gervais' and Steve Carell's characters from the various versions of The Office and manages to take them to a darker, more pathetic and even more deluded place. I needed time to grow to love Adam Scott as the most gormless hero on TV. But love I did, along with supporting characters Ryan Hansen, Jane Lynch (who sadly left the show for an admittedly star-making role on Glee) and an endless parade of guest stars that included George Takei and JK Simmons at his best. Party Down is the true child of the British Office.
9. All the Small Things (BBC One, UK - 6 Episodes)
All ye Glee fans, cower your heads in shame to All the Small Things. Another small British show without the likelihood of a second season, All the Small Things focused on a quaint British town with dualing choral groups. There's some British TV favorites here, including Sarah Lancashire from Coupling, Bryan Dick ("Adam" from the Torchwood episode of the same name) and Annette Badland (who shall always be the Slitheen/Mayor of Cardiff from s1 of the new Doctor Who), but what's really engaging is that in a show about church choirs, it constantly defies your expectations. Sharing any of these developments would spoil the journey, but I truly believe that all I need to sell you on this show is the video below:
8. Community (NBC)
Oh how disappointed I was by the new fall TV season. The one shining light was Community on NBC, with a likable ensemble cast of only slightly stereotyped characters in a beautifully simple but endlessly rewarding premise: community college. It just got better and better, culminating in the poignant yet hilarious holiday episode.
7. Dexter (Showtime - 13 Episodes)
Every season I think the same thing: where the heck can Dexter possibly go from here? Each season seems so final, so obvious. And each season comes back and manages to feel as natural as the first. John Lithgow's Trinity Killer was a viable foe and interesting foil to Dexter, who is still trying to adjust to fatherhood and struggling with the danger his dark passenger presents to family life. Suspenseful and enjoyable, and what a ending! And so I ask again: where the heck can Dexter possibly go from here? You'd think I have faith by now.
6. Being Human (BBC Three, UK - 6 Episodes)
Yes, it sounds like a bad sitcom: a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf all living in a house together! And yet somehow, Being Human lived up to the question implied in its title - how, as a monster, do you reconcile yourself with a life of attempting to be human? Another 6 episode British TV series (you'll notice a trend - I like to think that with only 6 episodes, the writers spend more time in development creating a tight narrative and a small set of solid episodes), but this one has found success, returning 2010 for a second season on BBC, and being remade for Americans on the SyFy channel. I look forward to the former; dread the latter.
Fans of Being Human be sure to check out the original 2008 pilot, with different actors for both Mitchell and Annie. The 6 episode series both started its own narrative and dropped hints to the occurrences of the original pilot, and I think I full understanding of the characters and mythos would be helped enormously by viewing of this episode.
5. The Colbert Report (Comedy Central)
I should include The Daily Show with Jon Stewart along with this, but I grow increasingly bitter at that show winning all the awards when Colbert, whose show I find infinitely more entertaining and inventive, gets left to the sidelines. Riffing on the conservative blowhards that litter cable news these days, Stephen Colbert gets an enormous amount of mileage comedically and politically from his sharp satire. And yet he manages to keep the absurdity level high - continuing his endless rivalry with Korean popstar Rain, his quest to get his name in space and his continuing (but sadly waning) war with bears. And when he shaved his head at the behest of Obama? I may have cried. I find it unmissable.
4. Supernatural (CW)
When you first watched this show and saw the legends of the hook man and Bloody Mary play out as hot brothers Sam and Dean Winchester fight demons, did you ever expect it to turn into a war between God and Lucifer, with angels and archangels fighting over the proper way to proceed and arguing whether humanity is worth saving anyway? And did you expect them to still be able to pull off episodes amidst this war that put Sam & Dean in fictional versions of all your favorite TV stereotypes, drooling over "Doctor Sexy" and shamelessly mocking David Caruso's one-liners from CSI: Miami? And that that particular episode would culminate in the bad guy being THE ARCHANGEL GABRIEL??? I didn't. Supernatural grew its way from a show you watched for the hot boys (which doesn't really explain why Casey stuck with it) to a thought-provoking and suspenseful treatise on God, family and loyalty. The first strains of "Carry On My Wayward Son" never fail to excite me. Paris Hilton can't kill it.
Bonus!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsyMtYoSkC0
3. The Soup (E!)
So, Joel McHale, you have made it on this list twice. Congratulations. You and your suffering staff have saved me from the hellish void that is reality TV and packaged it into an entertaining weekly 30-minute package. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for keeping me up to date on Miley Cyrus (It's Miley!) and the saga of Jon and Kate without subjecting me to their mindless shows and the mindless talk and "news" shows that cover them. Plus, you're hot. Moving on!
2. Misfits (ITV, UK - 6 Episodes)
It's Heroes with the sensibilities of Skins. 5 teenagers develop powers during a freak electrical storm while they perform their court mandated community service. These are not your high-school cheerleaders: they're the nymphos and the arsonists and the drug users and the chavs. It would be a crime to tell you what happens in even the first episode of this twisted show but be warned: it's probably not one to watch home alone at 2am. I hope and pray that a US cable network picks this up and exposes it to American audiences. A second series has been commissioned, and I can't wait. Special shoutout to Robert Sheehan, giving a standout performance in an admittedly showy role as loudmouth Nathan.
Watch the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODl-kAhVsXY
1. Torchwood: Children of Earth (BBC One, UK - 5 Episodes)
I have a tormented relationship with the work of Russell T Davies. On the one hand he's written some of the worst and most labored Doctor Who episodes of the last 3 years - on the other: Children of Earth. A 5-part miniseries aired over 5 consecutive days, it was the perfect storm of everything Torchwood strove to be. The 456 were a villain that seemed truly alien in every sense (I'm looking at you, every other sci-fi story ever written), but the real terror lay in the human story - the government trying to work through a trying situation and exposing the darkest side of human nature in the process. This is true television drama. And to those intimidated by the canon of the Doctor Who/Torchwood universe, feel comforted by the knowledge that Children of Earth can be enjoyed without any prior knowledge of the series.
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And with the amount of TV I watch, I'd be remiss if I didn't give special mention to:
Drop Dead Diva, for being better than it had any right to be.
Nathan Fillion, for making Castle better than it had any right to be.
30 Rock. You know it's funny, I know it's funny. It's cliche to say anything more.
How I Met Your Mother, for continuing to fuel my burning love for New York City.
The Real World: Brooklyn for getting me to watch it.
Lindsey Shaw, from 10 Things I Hate About You, upon whom I have a massive girl crush.
Bring it on, 2010.
1 comments:
That's Anthony STEWART Head and Anthony Michael HALL.
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