TV: HF's Top 50 Television Shows: Redux

[Shareefruck]

As someone who has silently used you as a curator in the past, can you please name a few films, Kubrick aside?

I mentioned Kubrick because I figured that would be the most agreeable and obvious example. YMMV:

Ozu: Tokyo Story, Late Spring, Floating Weeds, An Autumn Afternoon
Fellini: La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2
Kurosawa: Ran, Yojimbo, Seven Samurai, Rashomon
Ray: Charulata, Apu Trilogy
Wong: In the Mood For Love, Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express
Antonioni: Blowup, L'Avventura
Carne: Children of Paradise
Melville: Le Samourai
Miyazaki: My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away
Bergman: Persona
Kieslowski: Double Life of Veronique, Three Colors Trilogy
Godard: Breathless
Truffault: Jules and Jim
Zvyagintsev: Loveless
.. and more (there are tons of revered films that I'm still working my way through)

There are so many filmmakers throughout history who were absolute masters of their craft, whereas show-runners don't really reach those heights of perfectionism and artistry, even when they're amazing, IMO.

If you're just looking for recommendations, I personally got the most out of these ones:
1. Tokyo Story
2. Blow Up (though I didn't like it until the allegory clicked with me)
3. Charulata
4. In The Mood For Love
5. My Neighbor Totoro

 

[RealGudbranson]

If you're just looking for recommendations, I personally got the most out of these ones:
1. Tokyo Story
2. Blow Up (though I didn't like it until the allegory clicked with me)
3. Charulata
4. In The Mood For Love
5. My Neighbor Totoro

Thanks! I have a soft spot for Miyazaki and Wong. What jumps out at me on that list is Kurosawa. I have been meaning to watch his movies for years now. I'll have to check out the Double Life of Veronique too, as I was mesmerized by his trilogy.

 

[Shareefruck]

Thanks! I have a soft spot for Miyazaki and Wong. What jumps out at me on that list is Kurosawa. I have been meaning to watch his movies for years now. I'll have to check out the Double Life of Veronique too, as I was mesmerized by his trilogy.

Yeah, me too. They're probably the only two guys who I got so deeply into that I actually watched every movie in their filmography. Probably more accessible than everyone else mentioned, at least for me.

 

[RealGudbranson]

Yeah, me too. They're probably the only two guys who I got so deeply into that I actually watched every movie in their filmography. Probably more accessible than everyone else mentioned, at least for me.

Speaking of accessible, in the past I was also smitten with Jia Zhangke (Platform, the World, and Still-life), partly because of what I studied in undergrad.

But I digress... Top 50 TV shows starts with the Wire. Twin Peaks season 1 and Deadwood belong on there, along with Fargo season 1.

 

[member 151739]

Half the fun of the last time I did this was the debate that ensued over shows and their specific spots. A list made by the community can spark that type of continued discussion. I don't think the same debates happen when we're just sharing our opinions randomly in various threads. It is way too scattered.

But I guess that's just me.

 

[Leafsdude7]

Off topic pet peeve. Personally, I'll never understand why everyone prefers keeping apples and oranges separate. To me, as long as overall value is the thing being compared, nothing is lost the less in common two things being compared has. If anything, the comparison just becomes more interesting and worth discussing and considering.

I mean..... what's fun about going down a checklist and assessing the difference in quality of identical components.... and why would we only want to compare things when it's possible to do that? To me, that approach makes the whole process feel kind of soulless and passionless, and I prefer to avoid it even when things are similar.

When talking of art, where things are consistently purely subjective. I tend to agree. That said, I prefer trying to keep things separate more so that the list of available options is much smaller, thereby resulting in a larger concordance in voting. If you let literally everything be allowed, you're more likely to never see any work get more than 1 vote. If you split by comedy, drama, sci-fi, miniseries, reality, cartoon, etc, etc, your chances of people picking the same options increase dramatically.

 

[Shareefruck]

Half the fun of the last time I did this was the debate that ensued over shows and their specific spots. A list made by the community can spark that type of continued discussion. I don't think the same debates happen when we're just sharing our opinions randomly in various threads. It is way too scattered.

But I guess that's just me.

That's true, and that's probably why I get pulled into them-- it's an excuse to talk about stuff that we want to talk about. For me, the format/idea of it just makes it feel a bit like you're relentlessly on the giving or receiving end of "Too bad, the mob has spoken", which never feels right to me in principle.

When talking of art, where things are consistently purely subjective. I tend to agree. That said, I prefer trying to keep things separate more so that the list of available options is much smaller, thereby resulting in a larger concordance in voting. If you let literally everything be allowed, you're more likely to never see any work get more than 1 vote. If you split by comedy, drama, sci-fi, miniseries, reality, cartoon, etc, etc, your chances of people picking the same options increase dramatically.

True, but as someone who doesn't really see value in consensus polls, I don't know why I'd even want the chances of people picking the same thing to increase dramatically. If it's just an obvious scientific equation between two things trying to do the exact same thing and succeeding to different degrees, then it's just kind of a forgone conclusion that's easier to determine and barely worth discussing.

 

[peate]

It's difficult when comparing different styles. Take for example All in the Family and The Sopranos. Both would be in most top ten lists. One was a groundbreaking comedy which broke all the taboos at the time and is a blueprint for today's sitcoms.

The other was a fascinating look into the everyday lives of criminals and their surroundings, with great characters and story lines. Again many of today's crime dramas owe their existence to The Sopranos.

The big question is which is the better show?

 

[Shareefruck]

It's difficult when comparing different styles. Take for example All in the Family and The Sopranos. Both would be in most top ten lists. One was a groundbreaking comedy which broke all the taboos at the time and is a blueprint for today's sitcoms.

The other was a fascinating look into the everyday lives of criminals and their surroundings, with great characters and story lines. Again many of today's crime dramas owe their existence to The Sopranos.

The big question is which is the better show?

I would say the fact that your description of the latter is the only one that mentions anything about how strong the actual experience is, separate from their historical influence, suggests that it's probably the better show. Besides, being the blueprint for today's sitcoms kind of just makes me want to shake my fist at it for being responsible for a lot of trash television (even though it may not be bad itself).

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

While I love some television, I just don't think that the peaks have quite hit that transcendent masterpiece level that dozens and dozens of films have in the past. There's always some compromise, typical TV manipulativeness, commercial considerations, financial/scheduling constraints that hurt the product, focus on intrigue over art, excess bloat from the sheer hours it needs to fill, or dips in quality in early or later seasons, that typically need to be excused, I find. You can count the number of shows that are as masterfully/perfectly crafted as a Kubrick classic on one hand, if there are any at all. Also, good TV only comes from a few sources (independent television isn't much of a thing) so the opportunity and creative freedom is a lot more limited. You're not going to overtake decades of global, independent or massive-budget film culture with HBO alone.

The Sopranos and The Wire are only a small step into that conversation, and I don't put them in the same stratosphere as movies from my favorite film directors, personally, nor would I consider David Chase or Dave Simon actual artistic geniuses like I would certain filmmakers. Hell, these are arguably the two stronger examples of great television out there, and there are entire seasons of both where people agree that the quality noticeably dips. Beyond that, outside of that brief 2000s golden age, the quality of television has died down. And hell, it was only ever strong in countries like the US/UK to begin with. Searching for foreign television doesn't often have great results, I find. Many countries with great film culture have terrible television culture, because it generally isn't taken as seriously.

I don't think it's impossible for TV to become as good as film or anything, and I do think it's pushing towards that level of respectability, but we're not there yet, IMO. The medium is still in the process of maturing. I find the types of articles you're referring to be grossly premature. Critically acclaimed pop culture entertainment that the general public is receptive to at the moment has probably shifted from movies to television, but that's about it.

I would take current release films over current release television, although that's pretty debatable, but when historical peaks are factored in, it gets way more lopsided.

This hits on a lot of my thinking on TV vs. movies too. Though the lines between TV and movies have become blurrier in some ways, there are still some inherent structural things that will always make TV TV.

I just wanted to add one thing. I love both movies and TV. But what critics/writers are really arguing when they say TV is as good as movies is that TV is now talked about like movies, which is to say SERIOUSLY. If you know the history of entertainment journalism/criticism, TV always has been ghettoized. How many movie critics can you name? Now how many pre-Soparanos era TV critics can you name? TV has always been second class to film. Movie stars are bigger than TV stars. The Oscars are bigger than the Emmys. Movies are the highlight of the Golden Globes, etc. Countless examples.

But once TV started to take itself more seriously and the internet opened up the world of criticism, there’s now far more talk out there (not to mention product). Those critics are the same ones touting the “TV is the new movies” cliche or something like it that’s been bandied about plenty. So there’s a lot of inherent self interest for those writers making those claims. Good for them. But what they're essentially saying is "my job is a great job too and people like it."

I’m not judging TV. Again, I like a lot of it and absolutely love some. But it really isn’t the same experience as a movie for me most of the time. Both forms have their challenges and advantages, but they aren’t same to me, so any time someone is like “TV is better than movies!” or something along those lines, you can call me snobby, but I just roll my eyes a bit.

 

[peate]

I would say the fact that your description of the latter is the only one that mentions anything about how strong the actual experience is, separate from their historical influence, suggests that it's probably the better show. Besides, being the blueprint for today's sitcoms kind of just makes me want to shake my fist at it for being responsible for a lot of trash television (even though it may not be bad itself).

I get what you're saying about today's trash TV. But if you've ever watched All in The Family, you can see how drastically different it was from the bland whitewashed stuff we had before and we somehow went back to when politically correctness reared it's ugly head . A lot of the dialogue and subject matter would never make it past prime time TV censorship today and I think it was the first to be filmed with a studio audience.

How about M.A.S.H. and Breaking bad? 2 more great completely different original shows worth comparing. Another tough choice if you've seen both.

 

[Shareefruck]

I get what you're saying about today's trash TV. But if you've ever watched All in The Family, you can see how drastically different it was from the bland whitewashed stuff we had before and we somehow went back to when politically correctness reared it's ugly head . A lot of the dialogue and subject matter would never make it past prime time TV censorship today and I think it was the first to be filmed with a studio audience.

How about M.A.S.H. and Breaking bad? 2 more great completely different original shows worth comparing. Another tough choice if you've seen both.

Oh yeah, I'm definitely not saying that the general crappiness of the stuff it influenced reflects poorly on the quality of the show or anything, just that I have a tough time counting it as a point in its favor.