This Old Neon Forum

What are your favourite TV shows? What have you been watching or following lately?

Mrs. Kong and I have been watching a few shows this season, although most of them are done for the summer. We just finished up season 4 of Game of Thrones, season 4 of Louie, and season 2 of Derek (great Netflix exclusive from Ricky Gervais). Season 7 of Mad Men is on its weird mid-season break until next spring as well.

Probably my favourite show overall is HBO's Rome, though. Excellent casting. The only problem with that show is the pace is a little screwed up in the second season since it got cancelled for being too expensive and they had to cut and condense material.

Game of Thrones and Silicon Valley were my two big shows this year (not counting True Detective), so I've got a long wait. Walking Dead will start up in September, which is pretty consistently solid. There's an upcoming show on HBO with Clive Owen and Stephen Soderberg at the helm, so I am definitely keeping my eyes peeled for that. Over the summer it'll be Master Chef, Under the Dome (not good, but still curious enough to watch), deciding whether The Blacklist and S.H.I.E.L.D are worth catching/keeping up with, and that pretty much covers it. Otherwise I watch reruns of cartoons, and try to keep up with the news and satire programs (Stewart/Maher/Oliver/Rick Mercer).

*oh, and there's a ton of Netflix series I haven't even touched.

I fully caught up on the last three seasons of Mad Men since moving to China....I have to say I found it rather underwhelming. It just seems to be treading water and going over old ground now. It's still well written and well acted but I'm kind of glad it's finishing soon.

Unfortunately, I don't have access to HBO or SyFy. If I had, I would be following more than a few series. As there's nothing else of interest on regular TV, I just (re)watch some old series on DVD. Probably will get GoT on DVD at some point when a complete series box gets out. Last new series I watched (on DVD) was Merlin.

VictorViper wrote:Game of Thrones and Silicon Valley were my two big shows this year (not counting True Detective), so I've got a long wait. ... Over the summer it'll be Master Chef, Under the Dome (not good, but still curious enough to watch), deciding whether The Blacklist and S.H.I.E.L.D are worth catching/keeping up with, and that pretty much covers it.

I forgot about True Detective—that's another one we followed this year. I'm sure we'll give the next season a shot too, but whether we stay "into" it depends on the story, setting, and cast.

We gave The Blacklist and The Following a shot, but we couldn't get into them so we had to cut them loose.

Now that we're borrowing Mrs. K's sister's Netflix, we might spend the summer getting into (and caught up on) House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black. Oh, and also thanks to Netflix, we've just about finished season 1 of Fresh Prince.

A Beta Fu7ure wrote:I fully caught up on the last three seasons of Mad Men since moving to China....I have to say I found it rather underwhelming. It just seems to be treading water and going over old ground now. It's still well written and well acted but I'm kind of glad it's finishing soon.

I definitely agree with you. It seems like most of the interesting drama is done, leaving us with only boringly disconnected characters. The period / setting are pretty much keeping the show going at this point. Still, I'm interested in seeing how they finish it off.

Maybe I'm just caught up in the hype-train, but anyone who isn't watching Hannibal needs to stop what they're doing and give it a chance right now. I know countries like Canada have access to both full seasons on Netflix, but so far the U.S. isn't as lucky in this regard and only has Season One available on Amazon Prime. Be sure to give it a chance if you tend to like thrillers, brilliant acting, and/or cooking shows . The show-runner, Bryan Fuller, has so far been making what amounts to prequel material to the movies/books about Hannibal, but will soon be adapting elements of Red Dragon/Silence of the Lambs/Hannibal, which should be really cool to see since everything in the show has its own twist on all that material so far.

Mad Men is a show I've been watching on-and-off since I find it a bit harder to binge on than most shows. Not to say it isn't good, but that I can only have so much of it at once...it's like how I feel about cheesecake. But yeah, I'm done with Seasons One and Two so far and absolutely love it. What I keep hearing over and over is that it seems to sort of lose its luster around season 4(?) so I'm a bit disappointed I don't have much more to fall in love with, but I'm looking forward to it all nonetheless.

Let's see here...I think that's about all I watch from the serious dramas. I'll probably start on Game of Thrones this summer with how much everyone is raving on and on. I started the first book a while back, but I'll probably be able to catch up quicker with watching versus reading.

I'm looking forward to Doctor Who coming back this August. I know the show isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I love how completely different it is from everything else out there and always look forward to a new episode, even when it is disappointing. It's one of those rare works that makes me feel like a kid without seeming like it is for little kids.

With How I Met Your Mother over, I think the only comedies I'm watching with regularity next season are Parks & Recreation and Modern Family. Parks isn't the funniest show on TV, but it has some of my favorite characters, so it'll be bittersweet saying goodbye to it with this last season. Modern Family is a show that I would think nobody watches if I didn't know the ratings it's getting (seriously, it's like nobody I know watches the show). But it's a show that has stayed remarkably consistent with its quality considering it is now going on its sixth season. It really does a clever job reflecting on the modern family dynamic and juggles a large cast with relative ease. Give it a shot if you're considering it.

Sinnthro wrote:Maybe I'm just caught up in the hype-train, but anyone who isn't watching Hannibal needs to stop what they're doing and give it a chance right now.

We watched a few episodes of it—maybe 5 or 6 episodes from season 1—and while it was entertaining enough, we couldn't really get hooked on it enough to watch it all. The one weakness that stood out for me was that it didn't feel like it was written as a comprehensive whole, like it wasn't paying off enough of its own setup or something. The acting is great, though, and I just love Mads.

Sinnthro wrote:I'll probably start on Game of Thrones this summer with how much everyone is raving on and on. I started the first book a while back, but I'll probably be able to catch up quicker with watching versus reading.

The show is better than the books anyway, so you don't have to feel bad about that strategy if you do adopt it.

Has anyone watched Community? A few of my friends have recommended it to me, and it does seem like the kind of show I would like, so I may put that one on my summer watch list too.

I just got into Game of Thrones this year, I actually started watching the series right when the forth season started. I managed to catch up in 3 weeks and watched the rest of the 4th season as it aired. It's definitely a show where anything can happen, there were certainly a lot of shockers this season and last. I liked where this season left off, sets itself up for some big changes for season 5.. They sure gotta start adding some more characters now though. I also started reading the books, just about done the first.

I watched season 5 of Community this year as well, which I thought was a lot better than last season but overall inconsistant. It certainly landed on the comedy side of things but I felt like the overall plot was all over the place; which is an odd thing to critize about a comedy but they really started the season with big plot points so it was kind of weird to see them essentially disregard most of them half way into the season. But to be fair, they only had 15 episodes or so to work with and they lost members and had to give light to a lot of new ones. They also weren't sure if they would get another season so it was a lot of throwing big ideas around for the sake of entertainment. The show is canceled now, might come by through Hulu or another provider. I hope it does, and hopefully they get Donald Glover back on the show and they focus less on guest stars. Overall, the season was fun and had some of my favourite episodes.

And Kong I do recommend the series, season 2 is fantastic, 1 and 3 are really great, 4 was okay, and 5 was as good as 1 and 3 but different in content and delivery.

I also started watching Modern Family, and I agree with Sinnthro that it's pretty consistant in quality. I've only seen episodes here and there but it's always a laugh and I feel like they do a good job of letting the characters grow up through seasons.

I just finished watching the last episode of Star Trek: Deep Space nine on TV.
There's some Anime that's being broadcast on TV that I been Watching
On the local Community channel 44 I currently watching Star Driver as subbed.
On Autralian Broadcasting Corpration's (ABC) youth orientated ABC3 Channel I'm watching Sword of Art online & Puella Magi madoka Magica
So far all the Anime mentioned appears to be sponsored by Madman Entertainment
as for online TV I been watching Anime on Crunchyroll & Youtube (officially)
Series that I'm currently watching ATM are
Cardfight Vanguard
Future Card Buddyfight
Pretty Cure

Can't get enough of The Big Bang Theory. Watched every episode and own every DVD.

Also I watch F.R.I.E.N.D.S. a lot when it's on TV.

Also when I'm up late I like to watch the late late show with craig fergerson.