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This came up in a conversation last week about TV/online shows/streaming shows etc.

I was thinking about what great shows there have been over the last say decade (a lot to do with the advent of HBO online, Amazon online, Netflix etc. funding them rather than standard terrestrial TV stations).
I wont list them all because opinions will differ but I think most would agree the likes of GoT, Stranger Things, Chernobyl, Homeland etc were very darn good.

However we then got to thinking about shows during the 2000s - E.R., The Wire, Sopranos, Breaking Bad etc

Into the 1990s and top notch stuff like TNG, X Files, Outer Limits, DS9.

The 80s are a bit more difficult beause of the nostalgia factor but damn I loved A-team, Nightrider, Airwolf, MacGyver, Dukes of Hazard.

Not sure where we ended conclusion-wise but each decade seems to have some superb offerings for shows but is the current era a bit ahead of the rest?

Maybe due to:
range of choice
ease of access
money spent (read: big production values)
willingness to take risks (there is zero chance of the likes of GoT being shown on BBC )
more mature/intricate plots and ideas

Dunno, any views?

What is interesting about this Golden Age is even though there are more good shows, they have a smaller audience than before.

Due to the balkanization of TV they lack some of the shared cultural experience of say.... the old TVmini-series like The Blue and the Grey, The Thornbirds, War and Remembrance, Lonesome Dove, V, etc.

There will never be another Roots, or Shogun, or....Cosby Show.

The closest we have is Game of Thrones, and the audience for that is tiny in comparison. If it weren't for the memes, GoT would have the cultural footprint of a My Two Dads.

As a Brit, this is definitely a Golden Age, because I’m no longer two, sometimes more, years behind the countries of origin.

Seriously. That’s immense! That it’s also very easy to access them is just icing,

Never seen Roots - is it worth it?

All decades have awesome shows

I would class any of the following as equally good and important:

MASH, Killing Eve, 24, Buffy, Edge of Darkness, Yes Minister, Ken Burns Civil War... and so many more.

We are lucky that we have all the old ones and now new ones.

GoT and Homeland are both utter arse-gravy; total rot of the highest-order.

Stranger Things and Chernobyl are 'ok', at best. You do what you can when you're tasked with making anti-Communist propaganda, you know?

Every single X-Files episode - that wasn't part of the 'conspiracy' series - jumped the shark. Hard. And every location in the U.S. looks exactly like Vancouver/Surrey/lower B.C..

Weird.

Did......did we watch the same shows?

Breaking Bad is at best 'ok', too. It has lots of seriously questionable dialogue, villains-of-the-week, plots that go nowhere and women obviously written by men.

And cops dumber than the entire 99.

It feels like, Rather then truly great shows, we have shows that have changed to the point where they can essentially novels that are like books.
Like think about it, seasons used to be like, 20-24 episodes, sometimes more. alot of these episodes are downright useless and serve no fucntions, you can skip quite a bit.
However, with TV no longer constrained by time and budgets(More like, they have a budget and they dont need bottle episodes)
Seasons are no longer just how episodes are aired. They are essentially full length movies or book with a beggining middle and end.

when something comes along to top Pushing Daisies I'll concede

till then it's very much shirt at a wall, and we only tend to remember the small percent that stick

the other issue with fast turnover times and more services a lot of bandwagons get jumped very fast

 Excommunicatus wrote:
GoT and Homeland are both utter arse-gravy; total rot of the highest-order.

Stranger Things and Chernobyl are 'ok', at best. You do what you can when you're tasked with making anti-Communist propaganda, you know?

Every single X-Files episode - that wasn't part of the 'conspiracy' series - jumped the shark. Hard. And every location in the U.S. looks exactly like Vancouver/Surrey/lower B.C..

Weird.

I really enjoyed the non Conspiracy epsiodes - good fun - on the other hand I found the consipracy episodes tedious and incredably uninteresting.

Game Of thrones was good for me - well until Season 6/7

I think something that has shifted is that more companies are open to making long running series which are not based on a weekly formula; and which are prepared to mess with things and have big story revelations and changes at points other than the start and end episodes.

Of course we still get a lot of weekly style shows and they are great - Supernatural, Merlin etc.... are all based off that weekly formula that doesn't change for the greater part of their series.

However alongside we get things like Game of Thrones which has high production values and doesn't have to slave itself to trying to create a single experience that they repeat over and over.


That I think is the powerful element that TV has taken a very long time to build toward. Of course its not been a sudden change, its been gradual and even way back there were series that tried to and did beat the weekly trend. I just think that the market is more open to creating such stories now.

Plus CGI and more studio names like Amazon have taken a step into the market and given smaller niche shows better and higher end production capabilities which lets them realise far better concepts - esp for fantasy and sci-fi which rely heavily on effects; esp if they are going far off into ancient or futuristic times.

I really wish there had been more SeaQuest. Seriously, the best show in the history of science fiction television for me. It was such an underrated show, never really got the love it deserved unfortunately.

 Togusa wrote:
I really wish there had been more SeaQuest. Seriously, the best show in the history of science fiction television for me. It was such an underrated show, never really got the love it deserved unfortunately.

started well, sunk into sub-trek and kaiju of the week in S2, bit of a shame as there was a half decent show buried in there somewhere

I think it helps that today's TV audiences are more willing to watch a series that tells a continuing story, especially since we have streaming services to easily allow people to catch up on an episode they may not have been able to watch live. We also now have movie-level production values in even the most basic TV shows, thanks to advances in digital video technology and special effects.

I think it’s less the show’s themselves, and more that the internet lets you connect with fellow fans easier.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Breaking Bad is at best 'ok', too. It has lots of seriously questionable dialogue, villains-of-the-week, plots that go nowhere and women obviously written by men.

And cops dumber than the entire 99.

Eh. I lived in Albuquerque. That last bit isn't necessarily problematic for the show.

But based on my coworkers there who did watch it, the general consensus was the show was too tame.



---
But in general, I can't be asked to watch TV shows. Or even stream 'whatever-the-medium-is-called-now' shows.
There are a handful of things I'll eventually pick up seasons of, but they're really rare at this point. Used to do that with Dr. Who, but stopped bothering years ago. About the only thing current I want to get my hands on is Young Justice Outsiders.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Never seen Roots - is it worth it?

I barely remember it as a show. What I remember is that everyone had seen it. It was a nationwide cultural event. Also, a fun time to know a guy named Toby.

All decades have awesome shows

I would class any of the following as equally good and important:

MASH, Killing Eve, 24, Buffy, Edge of Darkness, Yes Minister, Ken Burns Civil War... and so many more.
.

I wasn't a fan of MASH, but that series had a huge impact. None of the series are comparable I terms of being important.

I think a massive amount of things have changed:

1) International audiences. The audience for anything is much larger than ever before, but that also means more political correctness depending on the markets you're targeting.
2) Historically people had one evening device to watch: TV. No internet, no shows on demand, etc. Scheduled TV shows now are in massive decline. Barely anybody bothers tuning in for an episodic routine.
3) No competing media (random internet, video games, cell phones, twitter, YouTube, etc.)
4) With shows on demand on Netflix, Hulu, Prime, etc...the companies have to find alternate ways of determining who is watching a show. A show might be on a Thursday evening and have small numbers...but may takeoff when its put into an on-demand source of entertainment.
5) Stuff like sitcoms are all but dead when compared to larger, heavier hitting shows.

The populace also seems far more comfortable with content viewed as "too risque" in the past, even if normal TV doesn't show it. We're fine with sex, violence, etc. So now the normal TV shows have to compete with a more realistic or visceral experience people are getting from Netflix, HBO, etc.

Loads of reasons TV is changing. Hell I don't think I've had a TV subscription in....a decade or more?

Episodic routine has merely changed. It still exists.

Mrs. Excommunicatus fairly hangs off her chair waiting for new episodes of Jane the Virgin every week.

These are sort of interesting.
Terrestrial UK and US VS GoT finale. #dwarfed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts_in_the_United_Kingdom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts_in_the_United_States#Most_watched_television_series

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonifitzgerald/2019/05/20/game-of-thrones-finale-by-the-numbers-all-the-shows-ratings-records/#7c9350a15f73

The problem is that there are too many good series now. our netflix list is full of stuff I'll probably never watch because everytime I go on netflix I look through all the other listings anyway and find something else.

Its nice to be able to watch decent programming on demand though.

Chernobyl was very good, never watched game of thrones. BB was pretty good too, but the Wire is one of my favourite series ever.

**** Chant's with other disciples*****

The Wire is the greatest show ever. The Wire is the greatest show ever. The Wire is.....

****Chanting continues ad infinitum*****

Though we don’t get this beaut anymore. Banzai TV Betting show.

FWIW, the best show currently on Netflix is Atypical.

This is a fact and not at all subjective.

Its very hard to compare the 1000's of play on demand shows we have available vs 2-4 free to air channels with fixed viewing times of yesteryear.

Are there more 'good' tv shows now? Sure there are, there has been a massive increase in content to feed the demand of hundreds of FTA and Pay tv channels that need to fill content.

Are there more 'good' tv shows as a % of content made? Probably not due to the lower costs of making 'content' these days, there is ALOT of gak out there and some of it even sticks

Do these 'good' shows compare to the viewing audience of the 60's, 70's, 80's? No, because in those decades you probably had 4 viewing options at a single time slot, so there was very little competition against that 'good' show.

Now, every show is on demand so there is massive competition for your viewing time and that's not even taking into consideration recorded media, or other forms of entertainment (gaming consoles, internet etc)

An interesting wiki shows that even though the US population has increased significantly over the past few decades, that audience is divided significantly from the 80's onward.

Some really interesting info here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts_in_the_United_States

I don't know about a golden age of shows but I have noticed how much things have changed over the years. We quit watching TV or cable on 2006. After that I was only ever introduced to new shows that other people were watching on DVD. Obviously I do watch trailers for shows and movies online but I am extremely selective about what I watch. I really enjoy older shows like MASH and the A-team. Mash has very clever writing and the A-Team just has a good formula for little fun stories.
I very nearly passed on GoT's and could take it or leave it. The first episode didn't at all pull me in. My Brother said I needed to see more and I would say after getting through the first episode it did get more entertaining/interesting.
There are only a small handful of new shows that I have seen. I did enjoy Hannibal until the last season which was a drag. the red Dragon story was not very exciting.
I am also enjoying Legion but that's really it for now.
Another area I pay attention to is replay value. There seems to me to be more and more media that after one viewing I see no reason to sit through it again.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Though we don’t get this beaut anymore. Banzai TV Betting show.

#

I remember that - mad fun

And the lovely Emily Booth seeing how much she could get as a hooker.....

Emily Booth from outTHERE?

It's an older reference, Sir, but it checks out.

Depends on the kind of show. Comedy-wise, not a chance, as that depends on good writing and timing ratger than fancy sets and effects. Then again, the likes of 'Allo, 'Allo, Blackadder, Python or even Married with Children are just hard if not near-impossible to top. As near to universal comedy as it gets except maybe for Python.
Scifi-shows, I'd say we're past the prime (Stargate, B5, Farscape are again, hard to beat), although there's still lots of good stuff on, and effects keep getting better.

...

Or maybe I'm just becoming a bitter old man.