'Severance' on Apple TV

[Doug Jensen]

That first season of Westworld was all-time though

Westworld started strong but I can't remember exactly at what point it went off the rails. Didn't it turn out that almost everybody in the show was a cyborg, or something dumb like that? That's where I lost interest.

Westworld the movie, with Yul Brynner is a guilty pleasure.

 

[hamburger]

Okay, here is a list off the top of my head of recent series that I would give either an A or A+ ranking. I'm not saying that every episode or season should get an A, or that they didn't jump the shark at some point, but they were great while they lasted.

Not in any particular order: Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Deadwood, LOST, Sopranos, House of Cards, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Homeland, Ozark, Narcos, River, Slow Horses, The Crown, Band of Brothers, Chernobyl, True Detective, Bloodlines, Family Guy, Seinfeld, Fleabag, Halt an Catch Fire, Silicon Valley, The Diplomat, The Last Kingdom, White Lotus, 1883, True Blood, Carnivale.

I'm sure there are many other series that I would also give a high ranking, but I just have not watched them yet. I have high hopes for The Wire, The Last of Us, Handmaids Tale, and a few others. Odds are however, that a few of them won't meet my standards and I will bail out after a few episodes. We'll see.

I have very little gray area for movies, books, or music. Either I like it or I don't. And if I don't, I move on.

I don't know what series I would give a D because I'd never watch anything that bad. However, I can list a few series that I watched at least 2-5 episodes before bailing out. Would I give them a D? Not necessarily, but bad enough that I stopped watching. If I don't really like a series, I won't keep watching.

Not worth my time: Succession, Peaky Blinders, Boardwalk Empire, Stranger Things, Westworld, Wednesday.

Everyone has different taste in television. Of your "A" shows that I've seen, I agree on GoT, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Seinfeld. I didn't have HBO when it originally aired, but the bits I've seen of The Sopranos I couldn't take seriously, and would laugh whenever they'd whack a guy in the woods. I might be doing the show a disservice by just seeing out-of-context youtube clips though. I tried watching a couple episodes of Silicon Valley and Fleabag, but both made me cringe - kind of too self-aware, but not in an endearing way. I've heard White Lotus is good, but have gotten bum recommendations before. A friend made me watch Weeds and I ended up rooting for all the characters to die. A 3-month free trial of Apple TV came with something I bought recently, so I checked out Friends and Neighbors, because I enjoyed Mad Men, but found myself hoping for the worst outcomes for that parade of jerks. There's definitely an art to writing characters that the audience cares about. On topic, Severance was good. I really liked how they built the separate worlds. I fear they may have plans to "milk it" though and string us along for a while, as a byproduct of its success.

A couple of "A" shows I can think of right now are Flight of the Conchords, and What We Do in the Shadows.