Welcome to Television
This community is for discussion of anything related to television or streaming.
Other Communities
Television Communities
A community for discussion of anything related to Television via broadcast or streaming.
Rules:
Technically a remake of the 2013 UK show of the same name, but I had never seen or heard of it - so I went into the US version blind and I absolutely loved it.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (2016)
Similar to the above, a UK TV show preceded this one; both based on a Douglas Adam’s (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) novel series.
I loved Utopia so much, We just came across it and couldn't stop until it was over.
The soundtrack by Cristobal Tapai de Veer is pretty great too and was a big part of what made it so memorable to me.
Obscure because it comes from my country but
Kim’s convenience is an amazing show. Like fucking incredible! Netflix had a the diffusion right for a time but I don’t know if they have it anymore, exactly like the next suggestion (this one is in French)
Série Noire where two writers tried to write a crime story and get embroiled with the … gay mafia. Personally I prefer Les invincibles
Not obsucure (still consider one of the pioneers in New Waves documentaries) but I cannot help myself, Pierre Perrault’s Shimmering Beast and Pour la Suite du Monde (for the next world, the link have English subtitles) where he investigates what it is to be Québécois, to be human in the modernity
Mr Robot. It did well but I don't know anyone that's seen it.
I always think of google as Evil Corp because of that show.
Farscape is a classic
It was truly special. The characters had real, believable motives and flaws and they grew with every season, while trying to survive in a gloriously chaotic universe.
Corner Gas is a pretty good Canadian sitcom. It's got a number of seasons and then a animated continuation that was made during covid.
Its not the best sitcom, but has good dry humor and a somewhat unique setting for a sitcom.
Damn this thread about to make my "Watch Later" list twice as long
Danger 5
South Australian tv show that is a “what if Charlie’s angels tried to kill hitler” presented as a bad Spanish soap opera from the 70’s in the first season and a shitty action drama from the 80’s in the second.
Deliciously bizarre, infinitely quotable, phenomenal soundtrack, very hard to explain. Think power rangers levels of drama with tastefully absurd offensive elements (blackface, misogyny, nazis) played for perfect comedic effect. Seriously one of a kind show.
Both seasons are posted as one 6hr video on YouTube. - https://youtu.be/vFzCQcHglFA
Snuff Box. Only 6 episodes but infinitely quotable. The theme song also fucking slaps. It’s the only show's theme song I actually occasionally listen to.
Life After People. One of the last amazing productions of the History Channel as-was, before it became all Ice-Road Truckers, Ancient Aliens and fucking Pawn Stars.
It's just the speculative history of all of what humanity would leave behind if, for some reason, every human disappeared in a single day. With experts in preservation, ecology, geosciences, history and infrastructural engineering, it asks: What are the cascading effects of a worldwide technological civilisation? And how long would it take for everything we have built to be buried in the dusts of time? Look on, ye mighty, and despair.
Sounds fascinating. By coincidence, I just listened to an episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage about "technofossils".
Brian Cox and Robin Ince dig deep into the strata of an imagined human history to unearth the curious concept of technofossils. Joined by paleobiologist Sarah Gabbott, material scientist Mark Miodownik and comedian and tech enthusiast Aurie Styla the panel unearth how the everyday objects that we throw away today compare to fossils of the past.
Together, the panel investigates how these modern artifacts could degrade over time to become the fossils of the future. From old smartphones buried in bedside drawers to sprawling landfill sites, they imagine how these remnants of the Anthropocene might puzzle future archaeologists—and speculate on what these researchers might infer about our technology, customs, and way of life.
Monkey Dust (2003). It was a very dark animated comedy series on BBC3.
It isn't easy to find as it was very dark (joking about terrorism etc.) and isn't in streaming services. But it was great satire and had many memorable characters.
The producer died in a car crash which did for the show.
Man Seeking Woman, Sureal Romantic Comedy with eric andre and jay baruchel, hitlers still alive, cupid is real, and other weird sht is just super casually accepted
Review, Andy Daly Comedy Central show, starts with a man reviewing normal things, goes off the rails and breaks the 4th wall with the reviewers life going to sht because he keeps reviewing fked up things, its one of the funniest shows I've seen, hard to explain, it just spirals
Animals, Animated Show about animals with humans issues, gets really dark, has some funny ass moments, has an asap ferg and rocky cameo as a bodega cat music video, it like makes me uncomfortable in a good way
I think my top pick has to be Ijon Tichy: Raumpilot. I gather it's pretty well known in Germany, but in the US pretty much no one has heard of it.
It's a sci-fi comedy, based loosely on The Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem, who is one of my favorite authors. The first season was all web episodes made on a shoestring budget; the spaceship is just the main actor's apartment for the interior, and a coffee press for the exterior. There's also a lot of use of puppets and amusing costumes. It's just incredibly creative. The stories involve things like Tichy's navigation system malfunctioning, so he accelerates out of control around a gravitational anomaly and starts experiencing time slips. Which could be kind of convenient, because fixing the navigation is a two-person task, but the first time his future self asks for his help he thinks it's a dream, and the second time he knows it's real but won't help because if they actually got it fixed then obviously his future self wouldn't still be coming back in time to get his help, so what's the point? etc. I know Lem isn't the best-known sci fi writer these days, but it's criminal that this show hasn't gotten more attention.
Maybe not super obscure and more my wife’s suggestion than mine (though I also enjoyed it), but Merlin (2008) was a great show that unfortunately had a low budget for the first couple seasons and got cut short with very little warning to the directors at the end, but it’s still a great family friendly fantasy show. It’s my wife’s all-time favourite TV show, and while it’s not mine (I’d probably say Doctor Who for me), I totally get it. It’s very entertaining.
Whites
The Goncharov TV mini-series was 5 episodes of pure perfection. Best thing NBC ever did.
Oh you :)
I liked the premise for The Lone Gunmen as a spinoff from the X-Files but I don't think they got the overall production quite right.
I don't know how forgotten it is since I only learned of it a few years back, but Sliders. People say around the quality starts dropping in the 3rd season before the 4th season being pretty bad, but I enjoyed all 5 seasons with few exceptions.
Edit:
Probably plenty of episodes missing ( original English dub ) but I just remembered Class of 3000 and think that takes more precedent than Sliders because you can find all the episodes of Sliders through piracy. Same cannot be said about Class of 3000.
Class of 3000 has things Sliders would never have: amazing songs made specifically for the show. Songs like the jazz song My Mentor or the rap ( rock? ) song We Want Your Soul or the blues song Rich Shade Of Blues.
I absolutely adored sliders when it was on tv. Glad that you enjoyed it after learning about it somewhat recently.
The nineties reboot of outer limits was also something I very much enjoyed. I bet some episodes hold up. Not a show like sliders but had some decent 90s scifi in it if I remember right.
Space: Above & Beyond and Earth 2.
The former is a gritty wartime drama against an unknown alien species, and follows a Marine squadron.
Come for the cool spaceships, stay for the great storytelling.
The latter is about the colonization of another planet that we thought was uninhabited and also never visited by humans.
Come for the wagon train, stay for Tim Curry saying “poppet”
Both only lasted a season.
Metalocalypse which has probably one of the best first episodes of all time.
And Corporate
The line 'I think I lost some weight because my belt doesn't fit around my neck like it used to' had me rolling.