Due to the writer’s strike and ever-increasing intrusion of reality TV this was a less than banner year for American TV viewers. Here are some of my personal highlights:
- The Wire: The final season of an awesome show was 10 episodes that layered on the death of the American big city newspaper to a stack of stories that were already deeper than the aggregate total of the 500+ episodes of the three editions of CSI. If you’ve not seen this just get the DVDs and thank me later.
- Sons of Anarchy: A new show on FX about an aging Northern California motorcycle club, I was reminded of the The Shield by its visual language and of Deadwood by its take on the changes engendered by time and the encroachment of others.
- Burn Notice: Funny, smart and pacey. A cross of The A Team and James Bond. The new episodes start in three weeks and I will be looking to see how well the writers do with the continuing mythology back story, three seasons is a long time for that kind of thing.
- In Plain Sight: Nothing like the short-lived Karen Cisco except also featuring a female US Marshal as the lead (Mary McCormack is totally whacky, Carla Guigino was simply strong but sad at the core), this series is much funnier, has better designed characters (her partner is a man named Marshall Mann, for example) and strong supporting cast (Leslie Ann Warren and Paul Ben-Victor, to name two).
- True Blood: Intriguing and different, this ‘vampires are real’ show is from Alan Ball, his follow up to Six Feet Under. Like that series, True Blood is largely about sex, family and friendship under strained conditions. Season one was pretty good though I remain unconvinced this concept will last six or seven seasons.
- Dexter: Brrrr! Despite the hot Miami setting, this show takes me back to the New Jersey winters of my childhood, but in a good way. Michael C. Hall (who was the second lead in Six Feet Under) is one of the best good bad guys in TV history–he’s a freaking serial killer who not only has run rampant in South Florida for over a decade, he works for the cops! This season his character was brilliantly paired with Jimmy Smits and the movement of their relationship through friendship, deception and death was outstanding.
- Brotherhood: American politics has a much closer relationship with American crime than any politician will publicly admit but to have a show where one brother is Speaker of the state assembly and the other is captain of a crew in the same city is a seriously good setup.
- Chuck: Another take on the James Bond out of water theme, also funny and smart but much sweeter than Burn Notice. I love the way Chuck’s family and day job are always an integral part of the story. Plus Adam Baldwin, he is terrific with this type of character.
- Life: Another quirky detective show (Monk, Pysch, the Vincent D’Onofrio half of Law and Order: Criminal Intent) I watch this mainly for the hands-down brilliant Damian Lewis.
- Eureka: Another quirky detective comedy but set in a semi-secret town where America’s most brilliant scientists live and work. Sheriff Jack Carter solves those human kind of problems that geeks never can and the writers give the show a very light touch, the polar opposite of, say, channel mate Battlestar Galactica.
- House: Speaking of polar opposites, try Gregory House and Marcus Welby. Two more different TV doctors you will be hardpressed to find. Every week House, his team of starstruck residents, buddy Wilson and frenemy/boss Cuddy stumble through several wrong answers to a new life threatening malady before (usually) saving the day.
- Numb3rs: Geeks rule, how can I not enjoy this FBI + math wiz smoothie? Rob Morrow may be playing the tough bro here but his years as a New York Jew in the Alaskan wilderness are too firmly fixed in my mind to not get overlaid on this performance.
- Barclays Premier League: The day we get Fox Soccer Channel in HD I will be so happy I will schvitz in my living room (don’t worry, TS1 will clean it up). I watch more soccer than any other sport, and I’d watch more if they had more good matches. That damned sub-rights deal Fox did with Setanta massively sucks Rupert Murdoch’s posterior and you can quote me.
Honorable mentions to Family Guy, The Simpsons, Fringe, Terminator, Heroes, The Shield, Battlestar Galactica, The L Word and Entourage.
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