BCB's Top TV shows poll - FINAL CALL FOR LISTS!

..and why not?
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby Goat Boy » 27 Feb 2018, 14:44

You were clearly spending too much time stoned in front of the telly watching Hill Street Blues and eating crisps!

TV can deliver more, yes, of course, it’s a different medium. It can deliver cooking shows and live sport and documentaries etc but we’re not really talking about those things when we talk about one versus the other, are we? And when people say it's better they are referring to drama, generally speaking.

Put a list of the best TVshows of the 80s up against the best films of the 80s and one will be superior to the other. As art. And that’s what we are talking about. Not variety. Not live sport, not Floyd on Food. I think that’s a different thing and one that gives me great pleasure at times but that's not the battlefield
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby Rayge » 27 Feb 2018, 15:01

Goat Boy wrote:You were clearly spending too much time stoned in front of the telly watching Hill Street Blues and eating crisps!

TV can deliver more, yes, of course, it’s a different medium. It can deliver cooking shows and live sport and documentaries etc but we’re not really talking about those things when we talk about one versus the other, are we? And when people say it's better they are referring to drama, generally speaking.

Put a list of the best TVshows of the 80s up against the best films of the 80s and one will be superior to the other. As art. And that’s what we are talking about. Not variety. Not live sport, not Floyd on Food. I think that’s a different thing and one that gives me great pleasure at times but that's not the battlefield


As it happens, whatever you and the other youngsters on here are talking about, I am talking a lot more about TV as a medium that can deliver made for cinema movies, made for TV dramas, and everything else, rather than a face-off between movies and their broad equivalents on TV
I seriously doubt that any list anyone (even me) could put together of 'great' films of the 1980s would give me a tenth of the total pleasure I got out of watching (and, thanks to the VCR, rewatching and bingeing on) say, (and apologies for the US bias but that's the list I used to remind me of what was when) Cheers, The Young Ones, Hill Street Blues, Moonlighting, MASH, Cagney and Lacey, The Next Generation, Married: with Children, Roseanne, Quantum Leap, Dallas, Taxi, Kate & Allie, Barney Miller, Happy Days and Mork & Mindy: and that leaves aside staples such as Gardener's World, Match of the Day and hundreds of one-off documentaries, magazine programmes and so on.
And I am talking about art: i just obviously have a different aesthetic to you. For one, funny beats serious most of the time, and for another, immersive long-form dramas/soap operas are on the whole far, far preferable as an entertainment/aesthetic medium than one-offs.

And I never eat crisps and haven't been unstoned to the cinema since I turned on to dope in 1970 or so.

So there ;)
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby The Modernist » 27 Feb 2018, 15:35

I don't find that a particularly persuasive argument Ray. I mean it's perfectly fine to prefer reading comics to reading literature, but it's just a personal preference, it doesn't tell us anything about why one might be superior to others. Television is no doubt more accessable because it's in our living rooms but ease of use doesn't mean it is more capable of attaining the artistic heights.

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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby Darkness_Fish » 27 Feb 2018, 16:08

Rayge wrote:Cheers, The Young Ones, Hill Street Blues, Moonlighting, MASH, Cagney and Lacey, The Next Generation, Married: with Children, Roseanne, Quantum Leap, Dallas, Taxi, Kate & Allie, Barney Miller, Happy Days and Mork & Mindy

Fuck me, I'd rather watch Lesbian Vampire Killers again, rather than sit through 5 minutes of most of that.
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby clive gash » 27 Feb 2018, 16:15

_Fishy already preparing a list of thirty times he tuned the tv between channels, sat back in his uncomfy chair and enjoyed an evening of static and white noise.
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby Goat Boy » 27 Feb 2018, 16:26

Looking forward to seeing The Word crack the top ten
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby Quaco » 27 Feb 2018, 16:43

Rayge wrote:Cheers, The Young Ones, Hill Street Blues, Moonlighting, MASH, Cagney and Lacey, The Next Generation, Married: with Children, Roseanne, Quantum Leap, Dallas, Taxi, Kate & Allie, Barney Miller, Happy Days and Mork & Mindy

Yeah Zabriskie Point really sucks!...
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby Rayge » 27 Feb 2018, 17:57

The Modernist wrote: I mean it's perfectly fine to prefer reading comics to reading literature, but it's just a personal preference, it doesn't tell us anything about why one might be superior to others. Television is no doubt more accessable because it's in our living rooms but ease of use doesn't mean it is more capable of attaining the artistic heights.



How so very condescending of you. And a bit of a misread of what I said, or at least what I meant to say.
And it's "accessible" ;)
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby Rayge » 27 Feb 2018, 18:02

Darkness_Fish wrote:
Rayge wrote:Cheers, The Young Ones, Hill Street Blues, Moonlighting, MASH, Cagney and Lacey, The Next Generation, Married: with Children, Roseanne, Quantum Leap, Dallas, Taxi, Kate & Allie, Barney Miller, Happy Days and Mork & Mindy

Fuck me, I'd rather watch Lesbian Vampire Killers again, rather than sit through 5 minutes of most of that.


Well of course you would, it's who you are, and I've never heard you express a great liking for anything that came out of America (except Homicide: Life on the Streets) or any comedy at all.
You may find something more to your liking here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... d#mw-pages
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby Rayge » 27 Feb 2018, 18:06

Goat Boy wrote:Put a list of the best TVshows of the 80s up against the best films of the 80s and one will be superior to the other.


OK. Put up a list of the best films of the 1980s – your choice or of any website – and if I've seen any of them, I'll give you an honest assessment of how they stack up against my favourite TV shows of the period. Because that is what we're talking about on this thread, favourite TV shows, personal opinions.
Or we can just leave it and get on with our lives
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby Samoan » 27 Feb 2018, 18:12

Anyone fancy a brew ?
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby The Modernist » 27 Feb 2018, 18:26

Rayge wrote:
Goat Boy wrote:Put a list of the best TVshows of the 80s up against the best films of the 80s and one will be superior to the other.


OK. Put up a list of the best films of the 1980s – your choice or of any website – and if I've seen any of them, I'll give you an honest assessment of how they stack up against my favourite TV shows of the period. Because that is what we're talking about on this thread, favourite TV shows, personal opinions.
Or we can just leave it and get on with our lives


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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby Rayge » 27 Feb 2018, 18:32

The Modernist wrote:
Rayge wrote:OK. Put up a list of the best films of the 1980s – your choice or of any website – and if I've seen any of them, I'll give you an honest assessment of how they stack up against my favourite TV shows of the period. Because that is what we're talking about on this thread, favourite TV shows, personal opinions.
Or we can just leave it and get on with our lives


"The Double Life of Veronique"
"Not as good as Mork and Mindy. Next".

Don't be silly.
I'm sure you can manage it if you try.

As it happens, I haven't seen, nor remember reading about, The Double Life of Veronique.
So I looked it up. It's from 1991.

Next.
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby Goat Boy » 27 Feb 2018, 18:35

Rayge wrote:
Goat Boy wrote:Put a list of the best TVshows of the 80s up against the best films of the 80s and one will be superior to the other.


OK. Put up a list of the best films of the 1980s – your choice or of any website – and if I've seen any of them, I'll give you an honest assessment of how they stack up against my favourite TV shows of the period. Because that is what we're talking about on this thread, favourite TV shows, personal opinions.
Or we can just leave it and get on with our lives


Why bother? It's like saying the 80s were better than the 70s for music and using Bros as an example.
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby Rayge » 27 Feb 2018, 19:11

Goat Boy wrote:
Rayge wrote:
Goat Boy wrote:Put a list of the best TVshows of the 80s up against the best films of the 80s and one will be superior to the other.


OK. Put up a list of the best films of the 1980s – your choice or of any website – and if I've seen any of them, I'll give you an honest assessment of how they stack up against my favourite TV shows of the period. Because that is what we're talking about on this thread, favourite TV shows, personal opinions.
Or we can just leave it and get on with our lives


Why bother? It's like saying the 80s were better than the 70s for music and using Bros as an example.

No, it isn't. It's completely different.
For what it's worth, the reason I said that the 'golden age' of TV started in the 1980s (which is I think all I did claim) was twofold: firstly, Hill Street Blues, which was genuinely groundbreaking with its long-form story arcs and character development, interlocking stories and portrait of an entire community, with large casts of recurring minor characters (all things not really possible in the basic movie format) as well as its application of unusual aesthetic choices in realism in sound and shooting and so on, something it is difficult to appreciate unless you had grown up with US drama series of the 60s and 70s, which were essentially scaled down movies, each episode usually self-contained, mostly shot on box studios or Hollywood locations; and secondly, the VCR, which as well as providing the means of transforming the cinematic experience into a home-based one, using the television, so triggering the decline of cinemas and helping to create multiplexes and the concept of the blockbuster that would be a lesser experience on the TV, also helped people (OK me) to record loads of episodes of various things and to binge-watch them, and repeat watch, which enabled me better to appreciate the art and craft that went into making them, making nuances and details of construction manifest.

That list of TV shows I gave was me checking someone else's list and copying off the ones I enjoyed at least some of. Most of them were sitcoms (something else that cinema can't really do, although L&H, Chaplin and Harold Lloyd came close), but I happen to think that comedy is more profound than tragedy (so sue me). It doesn't mean that I think Mork and Mindy as a whole is better than a random Polish art movie form 1991 (I probably got more laughs out of the former than anyone did of the latter, but the bits without Robin Williams are generally much less than stellar). And how are you supposed to say what's 'better' between a great movie comedy from the eighties (if such there be), lasting no more than two hours or so, and Cheers, with 275 22-minute episodes?

Anyway, if anyone gets a nominations thread together, I'll join in, and nominate several things that most people won't (and why should I leave out Gardener's World, which I've been watching, admittedly with mixed levels of enjoyment, for 30 years or so?). But I've got my photo thread to curate, and some good telly to look forward to later, so I'm ducking out of here while there's still a few people awake.
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby Penk! » 27 Feb 2018, 19:18

Rayge wrote:a lot of waffle about the '80s or somesuch


In the time it took you to write all that you could have just thrown together a list of 30 shows and sent it!
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby Penk! » 27 Feb 2018, 19:20

Super-Jank wrote:I want to see Black Mirror too, but worry it's another of these gimmicky sci-fi things.


It's very varied. You should try it but not give up after one episode - they all have different tones and themes. Some of them are very cutting or effecting, some a bit too blunt, and I found the ones I saw from the latest episode went too far in their cynicism and mean-spiritedness. But there are moments of power and brilliance to be found.
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby Rayge » 27 Feb 2018, 19:27

PENK wrote:
Rayge wrote:No, it isn't. It's completely different.
For what it's worth, the reason I said that the 'golden age' of TV started in the 1980s (which is I think all I did claim) was twofold: firstly, Hill Street Blues, which was genuinely groundbreaking with its long-form story arcs and character development, interlocking stories and portrait of an entire community, with large casts of recurring minor characters (all things not really possible in the basic movie format) as well as its application of unusual aesthetic choices in realism in sound and shooting and so on, something it is difficult to appreciate unless you had grown up with US drama series of the 60s and 70s, which were essentially scaled down movies, each episode usually self-contained, mostly shot on box studios or Hollywood locations; and secondly, the VCR, which as well as providing the means of transforming the cinematic experience into a home-based one, using the television, so triggering the decline of cinemas and helping to create multiplexes and the concept of the blockbuster that would be a lesser experience on the TV, also helped people (OK me) to record loads of episodes of various things and to binge-watch them, and repeat watch, which enabled me better to appreciate the art and craft that went into making them, making nuances and details of construction manifest.

That list of TV shows I gave was me checking someone else's list and copying off the ones I enjoyed at least some of. Most of them were sitcoms (something else that cinema can't really do, although L&H, Chaplin and Harold Lloyd came close), but I happen to think that comedy is more profound than tragedy (so sue me). It doesn't mean that I think Mork and Mindy as a whole is better than a random Polish art movie form 1991 (I probably got more laughs out of the former than anyone did of the latter, but the bits without Robin Williams are generally much less than stellar). And how are you supposed to say what's 'better' between a great movie comedy from the eighties (if such there be), lasting no more than two hours or so, and Cheers, with 275 22-minute episodes?

Anyway, if anyone gets a nominations thread together, I'll join in, and nominate several things that most people won't (and why should I leave out Gardener's World, which I've been watching, admittedly with mixed levels of enjoyment, for 30 years or so?).


In the time it took you to write all that you could have just thrown together a list of 30 shows and sent it!


Or indeed done something interesting or useful. ;)

As it happens, I started writing it before I noticed that the Revisionist had got the nomination thread started.
And it will take me at least a month to compile and polish a list.
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby Goat Boy » 27 Feb 2018, 19:31

K wrote:
Rayge wrote:
Super-Jank wrote:The real creative talents in Hollywood have been working in TV for the last 20 years or so. You might not want to believe it, but if you’ve watched more than a handful of films and series recently it’s kind of self-evident.

I’m up for this - there’s a hell of a lot to choose from especially if we go right back to the 50s (Hancock, Bilko, Twilight Zone) AND if we include everything (chat shows and satirical programmes, for example).

Shockingly, I agree with every word.

It's not quite as true as that. Many "great" shows go on too long. The first two series of the US House of Cards were fantastic, but it turned into a ludicrous self parody.


It’s a common flaw but one that’s often overlooked. Even Twin Peaks, which I adore, had some very weak episodes in season 2. The Wire had season 5 and so on. There’s some great Tv shows that should have ended long before they did like Simpsons and Frasier. American shows are more prone to this because they churn them out so you don’t get the succint greatness of, say, Father Ted.
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Re: BCB's Top 50/100 TV shows

Postby Penk! » 27 Feb 2018, 19:33

Goat Boy wrote:Twin Peaks


For the record I think it makes sense for this poll to count the original Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: The Return as the same show, so no voting for both.

Or would people really be opposed to that?
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