Le Voyage dans la lune - Georges Méliès 1902 (link provided) holds up after 115 years. Don't be so surprised! Timeless storytelling and design transcends it's delivery medium.
To the people questioning whether good television is still being made, yes of course it is, it might just take you a few years to find it. True Detective, Fargo, Utopia are all great. A la carte streaming (eg select any 10 shows, 10 movies, $10/month) is the future for media consumption. Which platform will deliver this first only time will tell. At the moment original content is the model and there are some evident growth pains.
Is there a place here for Blake's Seven, (esp the early episodes) and of course Tom Baker's Dr Who incarnation? Incidentally, for those who didn't know, Douglas Adams wrote some classic episodes and was script editor (head writer) on Dr Who for at least a season or so.
And I think Dad's Army remains a classic, about the Home Guard in WWII, with some of the finest comic actors.
There's even a case to be made for The Sweeney and the Professionals which dealt with grittier more modern reality stories, darker sides of law and intelligence enforcement which is often glossed over in the modern glitzier procedurals.
Aha, and though maybe it was largely in the 80s, how about Minder?
To anyone who loves Star Trek, Firefly, BSG etc: I want to highlight Blake's Seven for you as a really great series that's well worth a watch:
Imagine a gritty British version of the original Star Trek.
In this story, the federation are evil, and the crew aren't all that nice either, and basically just want to survive having lucked out on finding a ship at the right moment. They're forced into cooperation by necessity.
It's not about exploration or Tribbles, it's about a bunch of people just trying to stay alive and eventually organise a rebellion.
The primary antagonist (Servalan) is a) female b) fairly competent at her job
Two of the characters in the series are artificial intelligences.
The ending of the show is excellent.
There are audiobooks that tell further stories in the Blake-i-verse. Amazon has most/all of them. There seem to be quite a few episodes on Youtube (Blakes7Movies) if you're curious to watch.
If you like the genre of 'space warship crew on the run', you may also enjoy LEXX and The Expanse.
It's hard to believe that B7 hasn't been rebooted.
Blakes Seven had great characters and a fantastic concept. I binge-watched the whole run about 5 years ago. It had great moments in the first couple of series, but like a lot of TV back then the pacing was painfully slow at times. That's one of the big advances in the last decade or so, the best TV now is paced almost like a movie.
The Box (RIP) was a torrent sever dedicated to British programming, and turned me on to a bunch of amazing shows from the 70s.
My favorite is Secret Army, an espionage thriller about a Belgian resistance unit during WWII that I devoured over the course of a few months. It stars Bernard Hepton, who also appears in the sequel series, Kessler, as well as in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People.
Colditz is from the early 70s and perhaps a little more dated as far as production values go but still great. There was a recent HN post about the story of the Colditz glider, built by British prisoners to escape the castle they were held prisoner in by air.
I loved The Prisoner! I especially enjoyed how they would change certain details from episode to episode. It's like gaslighting the audience: highly appropriate, given the subject matter.
To the people questioning whether good
television is still being made
There are people questioning that? All the best TV i know is from the 21st century (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, new Battlestar Galactica, Orange is the New Black, GLOW, Rick & Mortey etc).
Maybe it's just that people only remember the good tv shows/films/music/things from those years and ignore the boring chaff.
Maybe there are just as many good tv shows these days.
but in my opinion the vast majority of current tv shows/films/music/webcontent is utter undiluted mind numbing banal drivel and there isn't a circle of hell worthy enough to hold those responsible.
We are more and more nostalgic about everything. But I don't see how people can think TV shows were better in the 70s, 80s or even 90s. Since 2000 we live in the golden age of TV shows. We got The Wire, the Sopranos, Mad Men, the Shield, (Game of thrones?, Westworld?) and a ton of original concepts. I tend to think that nowadays there is more originality and risk taking in TV shows than in the movie industry.
This summer, I watch Twin Peaks The Return, some episodes are the weirdest things I have seen on a mainstream TV channel. I am amazed it was allowed to air at prime time.
"But I don't see how people can think TV shows were better in the 70s, 80s or even 90s. Since 2000 we live in the golden age of TV shows."
I'm on the same camp. Absolute majority of TV series from pre-Internet times were dull, boring and non distinctive. Sure, there were some amazing exceptions (mostly named throughout this thread), but I personally, find many better TV series in the span of the last 10 years than in previous 30 years or so. What impresses me most that recent series are much more realistic, characters are deep, themes are more muddy not unlike in older series where black&white characters, good vs evil themes, mandatory happy ending etc. was nearly universal. Imagine something like Game of Thrones (not that it's the paramount of our times, but more for its brutality, nudity etc.) being aired on prime time during 70s or 80s..
Well 90% of everything is crap (or is it 95% ?) We just disagree about what 10% is non-crap. Due to the financial structure of TV production, you can be sure the majority of what is produced is considered worth watching by somebody.
In any case, we are in a golden age of TV production with more high quality (writing, action, production) TV shows produced than ever. Enjoy it while it last, so you can complain when it ends.
I think the golden age is already in the past (the Lost trend, 2004-2010, which finished terrible but in the mean time other great shows with world-wide audience were released) and today is already the after-party that nobody wanted to miss, mostly for the late adopters (which is the majority, anyway). But a lot of people are becoming "series"-averse. I myself included.
Atlanta, Fargo, You're the Worst, Bojack Horseman, Rick and Morty, Kimmy Schmidt, Hannibal, Review, Twin Peaks (The Return), Stranger Things, The Good Place, Santa Clarita.... and probably three dozen other ongoing or started-after-2010-but-now-finished shows I'm forgetting right now that are excellent, by the standards of all TV before 2010. Many others are top-5%-of-TV-series-ever material but kinda skippable now because there's just so damn much excellent TV. I've dropped ongoing shows that are merely very very good because I can do that and still have more TV left than I can watch.
Right now is the best TV's been. It's frustratingly good, almost, because I know there are lots of good things I'm not watching simply because there's no time (I do other stuff too, ya know?).
Complex series with ongoing storylines can be great but they also get a bit exhausting after a while. There is a definite limit to how many Game of Thrones or Lost plotlines and character backstories one can keep in one's head when you just want to sit down and watch some TV.
It's fine that there are TV shows that are basically crafted for uber-fans who want to carefully watch every episode multiple times but these shows often aren't for the casual viewer. And there's nothing wrong with being a casual viewer.
I disliked Lost and always felt it had a fake (and dishonest) complexity. So many details were introduced, but later forgotten and never resolved.
From the very first episodes, the way they started slowly cycling through each character's backstory, I realised this was going to be a really long drawn-out series that was clearly going to be stretched (and milked) to maximum running length. I'll credit it for it's glossy production look and design. That's one thing that really separates productions today from old: many TV series have the same glossy, high-end look of Hollywood films.
I loved lost and hate it in hindsight. Fake/dishonest complexity is a great description of what was wrong with it, I just didn't realize that was the case until halfway through the final season.
I think you can argue that the golden age died with breaking bad and mad men ending. But we are still in a silver age. There has never been more good TV. But we lack truly great consensus shows.
Probably because the talent pool is diluted. There are probably 10X as many serious cable/streaming dramas now than there were 10 years ago.
> Maybe there are just as many good tv shows these days.
Check out Top of the Lake, it's well-written, well-acted, & doesn't overstay its welcome. Season two just came out!
I think modern shows are dominated by 'must-see' spectacles or sensationalist attention-grabbers, because people watch them in droves and advertises will pay for slots. Weirdly, the modern BBC only makes shows like this, even though they don't rely on advertising.
Part of the charm of The Sandbaggers is that they clearly made it for pennies, so they had to make the characters and dialogue interesting to fill in for car chases + stunts + exotic locations + top-shelf actors (i.e. the complement of Bond films).
In my opinion, season 2 of Top of the Lake is pretty mediocre compared to the first. The Guardian episode recap/reviews are pretty similar to my feelings.
Honestly, it does feel like the current crop of TV is somewhat weaker than it has been for a while. (I'd argue that Top Of The Lake, which is 4 years old now, doesn't fit in "current crop".)
That might just be a taste thing on my part, or it might be a response to the tremendous commercial pressures that were forcing execs to look anywhere, everywhere for a story a couple of years ago.
There's a second series of Top of The Lake, it finished airing in the UK last week, it's definitely current. Apparently coming to the states next month.
You should know how S2 ends at least because S2 ends on a cliffhanger involving Coop that S3 picks up. And maybe give S2 a second chance while fast-forwarding through every scene with James in it, because he has no impact on anything else and eventually just leaves.
The second half of season 2 was kind of a letdown. The finale, however, was spectacular, and without knowing how season 2 ended, season 3 won't make much sense.
If you don't feel like watching it, you can read the summary on Wikipedia, though, that should give enough information to make sense of season 3 - to the degree that's possible, at least, we are talking about David Lynch here, after all. ;-)
Just be aware that the third season has a much stronger Lynch-ean flavor to it. Which is great if you're fan of his work (I know I am), but it might not be for everyone.
>but in my opinion the vast majority of current tv shows/films/music/webcontent is utter undiluted mind numbing banal drivel and there isn't a circle of hell worthy enough to hold those responsible.
Well, for tv shows there was been a marked and well established uptick, if not in storytelling, surely in production values (huge, expensive productions) and acting (a-rate actors from movies).
That's how we got shows like Breaking Bad, House Of Cards, Game of Thrones and the rest -- unthinkable in scope and aspirations in the 80s and 90s.
They don't always hold up well for all seasons (the tend to meander after season 3-4), but generally there are far greater than tv shows in the past.
In some ways the 80's show is even more over the top than House of Cards but I only watched season 1 of the US version where they changed the pivotal death scene. It seemed like they were planting the seeds to match the UK series finale, though.
But it's a British one (and they always did some big quality work like Yes, Minister, Monty Pythons, Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy, etc, content wise), but not representative in production values to the modern one.
The changes to the media landscape make great shows less likely. Companies simply stopped aiming for mass appeal in the same way.
If you're really into say magic, then you will forgive more about a show with wizards etc. So, with smaller overall audiences shows simply don't need to be as good.
>The changes to the media landscape make great shows less likely. Companies simply stopped aiming for mass appeal in the same way.
Hmmm? The mass appeal shows were not great by any stretch of the imagination precisely because of aiming for "lowest denominator" mass appeal.
At best they could be good despite going for mass appeal, but aiming for the more tame and universal themes.
By going for smaller audiences the creators can take chances, what some church lady from Iowa or SJW from Portland might find offensive is not as much of an issue, and the storytelling and directing can be more demanding (as it doesn't have to aim to please any average Joe).
Shows like GoT, HoC, Breaking Bad, True Detective (season 1), etc are so much better than the "mass appeal" crap of yesteryear (with some exceptions, like MASH) that it's not even funny.
For one, they don't use "tv actors" as much, but Hollywood a-listers. Second the production values are 10x and 100x those older "mass appeal" shows.
Game of Thrones for example is somewhat popular, but IMO that's mostly because of how bad the average TV show is not how great it is.
It's closest 70's show would probably be Dallas which had 350 million people worldwide watch an episode. That's a well done hook even if they could not show nudes etc.
As to offending people, MAS*H had men in drag show up regularly which really would offend people. Yet, apparently 60% of US households tuned in for the final episode. IMO, this suggests they actually had some freedom.
Remember, Shakespeare was also aiming for a wide audience. It promotes multi layered messaging, which is more complex than just having everyone backstabbing everyone else.
At least, I certainly don't think the variety shows count as "great" by most people's scope, of which 1970s television had a lot of. At least, I'm not aware of modern demand for the Tony and Dawn Rainbow Hour, Donny & Marie, the Shields and Yarnell show, or the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. Maybe I'm wrong.
In the scripted department, there's several single-season or less programs. I presume weren't that great. Shows like Holmes and Yo-Yo, Nashville 99, Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected, and Gemini Man, were they that great? (A "TV movie" -- Riding With Death -- from the last one was used as fodder for MST3K. So, probably not.)
The one thing I think is notable in older TV listings is just how strongly several formats dominate. Namely, in addition to the variety shows, sitcoms and crime / medical dramas seem to dominate. (If you are looking for fantasy / horror / sci-fi, to give a few other genre examples, your pickings are slim.)
"Good" is by nature subjective. But one thing I can say is that none of these genres are typically noted for multilayered messaging. To give two examples from the sitcom side, here are two 1976 shows that are generally reviewed as "good": "Three's Company" and "Good Times". One is basically a farce often criticized as "jiggle television". One basically became a platform for the wacky antics of JJ. Not sure I'd describe either of these shows as very "deep". :)
Today, in the era of DVRs and on-demand streaming, I do think it's easier for writers to "risk" multi-episode plotlines.
Yea, I don't think the average show from the 70's was good.
Though, if your going to compare the average show, then the competition is more like 'Pawn Stars', 'My Teen is Pregnant', 'Tiny House Hunters', etc. Or you could compare similar longer running shows like Three's company (8 seasons) vs. Two and a Half Men (12 seasons).
So, my guess is a random episode of 'Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour' was probably better than a random episode of a random cable TV show. Though, it's also very dated at this point. It's also likely worse than say the best south park episode or whatever show you actually like.
Anyway, I am not saying the 70's wins hands down, hell I was not even alive then. But, I do think people are confusing shows about things they like with actual quality. I might like 'How It's Made' but it's not exactly deep.
> * It's closest 70's show would probably be Dallas which had 350 million people worldwide watch an episode. That's a well done hook even if they could not show nudes etc.*
You can't compare numbers directly like that. Cable was not invented yet (or at least wasn't common) so there was a choice of about 4 channels.
On the flip side the US population was only 2/3 as large and no DVR's etc.
Anyway, my point was not to compare numbers which is why I did not show GoT numbers. My point was simply a ridiculous number of people thought it was worth watching.
I disagree. If you are making a show about wizards which will be aired on Netflix, you know that the target population are those interested in magic. Hence, you can create a more complex and detailed story/plot, characters, settings and so on, because you know that those watching are more interested than the general public.
They are also likely to be less forgiving if they expect a show about magic created by others also interested in magic. A show about magic aired on Discovery Channel on the other hand is likely to be superficial, lacking of deeper analysis or content, and laden with tons of repetition after every single ad break just to avoid confusing viewers with a three minute attention span.
Have you actually watched any of the Netflix shows? Because complex characters etc are largely missing.
As to mass audience Shakesphere was writing for a mass audience, it adds complexity even if you include pandering. The original twilight zone needed to work for a huge range of people and a large part of how it did that is not spoon feeding people. There is enough ambiguity that people write their own narrative.
I had never heard of this show, but speaking about wacky British 70s series that still hold up, I think The Avengers should be up there, for similar reasons: great acting, out of this world plots, mixed with a quaint British attitude.
The Emma Peel era was the best, you can check out all the episodes here: http://theavengers.tv/forever/peel.htm. Almost all episodes are gold, but my favorites are The Cybernauts and Honey for the Prince.
I have heard of this show, and speaking of gritty late-Cold-War-era series that still hold up, I think Edge of Darkness should be up there. It was remade into a terrible action film in 2010, but the original TV series from 1985 is a masterpiece of plotting and pacing, and non-verbal storytelling.
Callan was darkly cynical. I remember when the various series were screened on actual telly we used it as a vehicle for discussing the morality of spy stuff. Probably safer than discussing the 'emergency' we then had (Northern Ireland).
I love older uk shows and finding legitimate streaming content is endlessly frustrating. It might be a niche market but the promise of the Internet was it was supposed to address the long tail. So much is sitting on the shelves due to lazy rights holders or only has limited geographical distribution.
Not sure about streaming, but I'm working my way through the reissued Blu-Rays of Avengers Series 5 & 6, and they are superb restorations. (Series 6 with Linda Thorson, not Diana Rigg, is a bit underrated, but IMO the storylines are better)
It's interesting that you get a better experience than the original transmissions. It was all recorded on 35 mm film and broadcast in PAL on the very new, small and highly unreliable TV sets of 1967. The restored versions redigitised from film look incredible.
I love Smiley's People as well as the BBC version of the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It's one of the smartest spy genre movies ever.
I'd definitely think about watching this. But, maybe:
"This makes me want to quit watching. I’m not sure I have the stomach to know a storyline and its characters are going to be abandoned. That’s one of the two main problems with TV as a medium: that it might end too soon or that it might go on for too long."
Sandbaggers was a great show. Watched it on PBS as a kid. The ending is absolutely gutting. I hadn't realized it was supposed to be a cliffhanger. Emotionally, it works very well.
There's also an episode where they get back the lead's (Marston's) love interest from East Germany. Without providing any spoiler's, the ending of that episode left younger me in shock for days. Still one of the most powerful (fiction) TV moments I've ever seen. I think it was "Special Relationship" season ending in Series 1. But don't watch just that one. Watch them all.
Plenty of shows from the 1970s still hold up today: MASH, Hogan's Heroes, Columbo, The Incredible Hulk, Battlestar Galactica, Sesame Street, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Roots, etc. It was a great decade for TV, especially if you consider shows like All In The Family (which doesn't really hold up anymore, but is basically Married With Children for the 70s), Good Times, Mork and Mindy, etc.
"All In The Family (which doesn't really hold up anymore, but is basically Married With Children for the 70s)"
No. Absolutely not.
All In the Family tackled subjects and current events that no other sitcom in that era dared to do. The Wikipedia summary is pretty good here:
"The show broke ground in its depiction of issues previously considered unsuitable for a U.S. network television comedy, such as racism, infidelity, homosexuality, women's liberation, rape, religion, miscarriages, abortion, breast cancer, the Vietnam War, menopause, and impotence."
Married with Children was lowball humor for laughs and simulated controversy. There is absolutely no comparison.
I still think about The Six Million Dollar Man. For the past decade I've been working out how a new season could be written for that show (and the book, Cyborg) and I think there's a ton of potential there. The story arc about a destroyed man, the struggle to rebuild and recover, and the protagonist's dealing with being a literal tool of the military.
First though, the surgery budget would need to be increased. These days, a six million dollar man is a person that's had a kidney transplant.
There was a Bionic Woman reboot in the oughts that failed to do justice to the concept, so it will probably be another decade before we see it tried again.
I've been watching for news and there have been a bunch of projects started but none have gone the distance. Mark Wahlberg is supposed to play Steve Austin, but the project has been delayed a bunch of times (it was supposed to come out this year and has been pushed into next year).
Before that, there was going to be a comedy version (like the Starsky and Hutch reboot a few years ago). I'm so glad that never made it.
Although MASH kind of shows the problem from the modern perspective of 1970s TV. At its best, it focused on the grimly humorous aspects of war and surgery (as a modern take on the subject would), but at least half the episodes were just sitcom material. Plus there weren't really story arcs, but they may have been impractical because on broadcast TV where box sets of previous seasons and streaming wasn't available, it would have been hard for someone who didn't watch every episode to follow.
Well, for that matter, VCRs weren't available. Also syndication was an important revenue stream. As a result, outside of miniseries "events," you mostly couldn't do shows that wouldn't work if someone weren't in front of their TV at a particular time slot every week. (There were somewhat exceptions like Dallas but they were rare.)
Monty Python is inconsistent. (Even then, it was low budget time constrained stuff) Some of it still stands up, some of it is pretty offensive racial stereotype humor. I'll hold up the Argument Clinic as part of the good, and just point to the blackface in the Australian Philosophers and songs like `Don't Ever be Rude to an Arab` and `I like Chinese` for the bits that won't make it now.
A lot of classic British TV shows from the 70s and 80s hold up really well today. After all, Fawlty Towers was a 1975 and 1979 series, with other greats from the era including Dad's Army (1968-1977) and Steptoe and Son (1968-1972). Blackadder and Only Fools and Horses were good in the next decade as well, and that's only counting some of the comedy ones.
As for whether TV now is better or worse... well, probably the same to be honest. Sturgeon's Law reigns supreme where any fiction is concerned, so every generation will have about 90% utterly forgettable crap and 10% amazing classics. The crap just gets filtered out over time as people choose to preserve the stuff that truly matters.
Some of Sapphire and Steel was amazingly terrifying, given how low budget it was. But I suspect modern film makers would not be able to avoid ruining the ambiguous feeling of the series by trying to depict what is going on in the larger scale.
I watched The Sandbaggers twice now. While the sets, props and circumstances are dated, the main ideas and principles still hold, imho.
For a more up-to-date take, read Greg Rucka's excellent Queen and Country comics (the main, and mini series). Not only is it "inspired" by Sandbaggers, but it sometimes borrows actual plots and plays them out. I had fun time at a comics convention talking to Rucka about it, and he is a Sandbaggers fan :).
Just a heads up that Richard Vernon plays Slartibartfast in Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.
I hope one day to have a machine that can speak with the voice of Richard Vernon (as Slartibartfast "My name is unimportant."), or of course Peter Jones who was the voice of The Book in HHGTTG.
I love the sandbaggers. People say how great the recent adaption of "The Night Manager" is, but for me this and Alec Guinness George Smiley rank as all time great British espionage shows.
Le Voyage dans la lune - Georges Méliès 1902 (link provided) holds up after 115 years. Don't be so surprised! Timeless storytelling and design transcends it's delivery medium.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FrdVdKlxUk
To the people questioning whether good television is still being made, yes of course it is, it might just take you a few years to find it. True Detective, Fargo, Utopia are all great. A la carte streaming (eg select any 10 shows, 10 movies, $10/month) is the future for media consumption. Which platform will deliver this first only time will tell. At the moment original content is the model and there are some evident growth pains.