Top Ten TV-Shows? Note: My Favourites, not the Best of All Time. There’s a difference. You’ll see.

OK, this may be going a bit far with the “I know! I’ll write a top ten instead of a review that way I can just waffle instead of having to actually think” mania that I seem to have adopted for myself. I will be thoroughly surprised if this one actually makes a grapefruit appearance as I have been a third of the way through a non-insane Buffy Top Ten and a Top 25 Movies for about a year the former, and 6 months the latter. Oh and there was that “Bottom 10 Buffies” as well, but it was so hard to narrow down to only 10 that I gave up and had a cry about a series that started oh-so-promisingly… Anyway, back to GOOD series…

What I really wanted to do here was a four-way tie for Number 1, but then, that would defeat the whole ‘ranking’ idea. I need to be clear though that the difference between my appreciation of my top four shows is so miniscule that its defies measurement. My mood for today has caused 1 — 4 to shape up that way, and tomorrow I may very well play switcheroo just for the sake of it. And to annoy Tom.

My Top 10 has morped into a ’12 that I will haphazardly mention for their various coolnesses’, plus a top 10. I warned you at the start, this is prattle for the sake of varying authorship on Grapefruit. I’m taking one for the team, and as such cannot be bagged. Ner.

In descending order, first of all, to get the hysterical laughter out of your systems, I am going to mention…

22 | Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

Now, when this show came out in 1993 I was all of 9, and I fell right in the middle of the demographic for this one: a fantasy edge for the intelligently challenged. I had a big crush on Dean Cain, I taped every episode (which were promptly overwritten a year or so later in shame), and I even remember the elation of buying the Lois and Clark showbag at the royal melbourne show in ’94. I kid you not. Folders, pencil cases, stickers… I was one of those pre-teeny girly fanatics that I now shoulder extreme distaste for. Why am I unloading this blackmail-worthy information on your innocent eyes, gentle readers? Who knows. It’s a Saturday, I can do what I like.

21 | Party of Five

The drama-arena to suit every taste: The older-scruffier-stubble-ridden brother, the younger pretty-boy looking brother, the eldest teen-angst-ridden sister, and the youngest sister around my age who I suppose was the one I was meant to identify with. No doubt you boys had the crush on her. It was the early-90’s Dawson’s Creek, which my tv set told me last week was the late 90’s The O.C., which I refuse to watch but my darling brother seems somewhat addicted to. Hmm, where did I put my point?

20 | Ally McBeal

Down here at number 20 on the list come Ally McBeal. This show got a good giggle out of me, and I liked a number of the characters, however (and this is a big however) the lead character irritated me beyond words. As a result, I could rarely stomach the show, despite Gil Bellows’ and Robert Downey Jnr’s respective cuteness.

Moving right along to the sole Australian contender…

19 | Blue Heelers

If you happen to turn on your plasma this Wednesday and flick over to the seven network, you will not be watching the show of which I speak. Blue Heelers: The Good Seasons, as I am renaming it, consisted of a cast including William McInnes, Tasma Walton, Damian Walshe-Howling, and oh yeah, Lisa McCune. Ten years later, there are only two originals left. While I’m sure there exist some series which can sustain a life this long and the gradual exodus of their finest characters (I’m thinking primarily of ER, which for blood and guts reasons, I don’t happen to watch) but Blue Heelers is not amoung those that can pull it off. The desperation of Aussie drama to measure up to some of its American or UK rivals was witnessed in the insanity that was the “Blue Heelers: Live” episode. However, with budgets that I estimate to be about a 1,000,000,000,000,000,000th of what the US and UK put into making their shows, I still think aussies do OK.

18 | Beverly Hills 90210

If I could think of some creative way to segue from Blue Heelers into Beverly Hills 90210, I would, but I suspect it would just creep everyone out so I’ll just be quick, like ripping a band-aid off. Again, early 90’s (1990-1994 were the high school years, mini Shannon was aged 6 — 10), pre-teen girly-girl fanatic would have literally held her for breath for an entire week waiting to see if Dylan would choose Brenda or Kelly, if she hadn’t posessed just enough intelligence to realise this would result in her death and then she would NEVER KNOW who he chose.1. OK, I’m half-kidding here. I would like to say I never watched nor enjoyed this show, but it would be a lie. 90210: The High School Years, had me. Through and through.

17 | Seinfeld

“No Soup for You!!”. Enough said? Aaah, Sienfeld. What can one say? This was just a really good show. Being a half-hour sitcom, it was good for that slot on weeknights as you wait for the show you actually want to watch to come on… But that’s not really giving this gem enough credit. While it will never hold a place in my heart like a good fantasy/sci-fi or even one hour drama can, on the scale of ‘good-for-a-laugh’, it was a porker!

And from there I’m going to…

16 | Play School

Even now I can sit with my cousins and watch Play School and catch myself smiling. Yes, its a show for toddlers. So what? This is a listing of my favourite shows, and since I have been placing no boundaires on which era of my life it happened to be my favourite in, Play School cannot be forgotten. Benita, Noni, Phillip, and Monica taught me numbers, letters… BLAME THEM for this article, I wouldn’t be able to write it without them.

Going straight from Play School to Coupling would be just too large a leap, so I’m segueing with…

15 | Dawson’s Creek

I’m not sure how this show ended. I don’t know who ended up with whom. I didn’t watch the last several seasons. All I know is, I liked it in the beginning. And that’s really all there is to say about this show. It was a hearty dose of teen melodrama when I was a teen melodramatic. It suited me just fine.

14 | Mad About You

I come now to Mad About You (we’re getting to Coupling, I swear). Paul Reiser, Helen Hunt, and some very simple yet beautifully executed storylines. The characters were really loveable, right down to their dog Murray. The supporting characters (and the leads, for that matter) had the perfect balance of comic insanities and realistic natures. There weren’t so quirky that you couldn’t identify (either with them yourself, or with the people in your life), yet they weren’t so real as to be dull.

13 | Coupling

If you’ve seen Coupling quotes randomly loading as you peruse Grapefruit sometimes (ie “When man invented fire, he didn’t say, ‘Hey, let’s cook,’ he said, ‘Great, now we can see naked bottoms in the dark!” or quite simply “Nipples!”) and wondered what on earth that show is, it’s an unsung BBC series which provokes the loudest out-loud laughing you will ever do. I get embarassed by my laugh when watching this show becuase it’s the kind of unrestrained laughter that makes me sound like a gander in mating season. Spanning four years, but with only 7 episodes a season on average, there have been a grand total of 28 over four years. Few, but fulgent.

If you’re a boy who’s ever met a girl and been slightly baffled, or a girl who’s ever met a boy and been utterly perplexed, watch this show. It boils them down to their simplest. And they talk about sex every 6.2 seconds. Even if you’re gay, you’ll like it. I don’t know why its hiding over on the ABC in Australia instead of running right alongside Sex and the City on commercial TV, but hey — commerical TV are the people who brought you Big Brother: Yet Another Season, so nothing can really surprise me.

Coming in at number 12…

12 | Gilmore Girls

This is for the girly girl in me. I would love to say I don’t watch this one currently, but seeing as channel nine plays it on Saturdays when other fans (who don’t have a life) are free, I download it! I know… the shame. But look, give it a chance. Its a WB show so you know its got some of those ‘good family values’ themes (think Seventh Heaven) but its also got really great writers working on it (think Angel… well, discount season 4). The dialogue in this show is The Best Dialogue on Television. Their style of speech is really refreshing. It’s a bit like the way the Dawson’s Creek kids used to talk, except that you can believe that the characters of Gilmore Girls actually know what all these big words mean. The two main characters in this dramedy are a first-year college girl who did well in school and kind of breezed past teen-rebellion into a quiet maturity, and her mother whom she has a sensational relationship with. Can you really blame me for liking it?? Plus it’s got all the other things I like in my TV — plenty of sexual tension, lots of cute boys running around, and characters who actually progress and develop over the seasons. If only it had flashbacks it would be perfect!

And for my final ramble, before I move onto the official rambling of my top ten…

11 | Stargate Atlantis

I am enjoying this new series more than I am season eight of Stargate SG-1 at the moment. It is very similar to SG-1 (which as you will see in the top ten is one of my all time faves) in a lot of ways, but hey its a spin-off, what do we expect? It is also different in its own right, and breaks away from SG-1 in a way that I didn’t think it would be able to do. There are the core four characters. One of whom is a high-ranking military officer and the leader, one of whom is a smart woman, one of whom is an alien, (and one of whom is a black dude, as Matt pointed out to me yesterday), its just that the woman happens to be the alien and the science geek is Dr. MacKay (of the SG-1 series).

The ‘Jack-equivalent/replacement’ was always going to be a very difficult character to create and cast, but they’ve hit right on the money. I already love John Sheppard, more so than I ever did Jack perhaps. He’s less sarcastic, but still quite funny and is very personable. There is plenty of sexual tension between Teyla and Sheppard and unlike on SG-1 where we knew it could never happen (literally, for legal reasons) these two are so gonna get together by the end of this season… I can feel it! Maybe the start of season two… Well look, I can at least dream that they will get together because they are setting up the sexual tension and there is no pesky court-martial hanging over their heads. Dr. MacKay, whom I HATED WITH A FIERY PASSION OF HELL in SG-1, is also growing on me. He’s still supremely ittirating, but now in kind of an endearing way. Plus, he cracks me up. And Lt. Ford is the hotty. Mmm. Anyway, it is still too soon to see if this show can live up to the high standards I am giving it, 7 episodes in, but its shaping up to be as Angel was to Buffy.

Footnotes

1. He chose Kelly for those of you wondering. Big dramas. He SO should have picked Brenda.

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Tuesday, September 7th, 2004. It concerns such pressing issues as . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.