I haven’t been watching much in terms of actual shows for a good while, then while listening to a podcast a host casually mentioned they had rewatched Chernobyl, how it still holds up, that there’s a reason it got as much acclaim as it did, etc. So I thought I’d give it a go and wow, loved it (still one episode left to watch).

Had me thinking, what else have I missed out on? What are some “absolute cinema” TV shows that still hold up and and are considered must watch?

  • SupremeJerk9999@lemmy.world
    11·
    3 months ago

    TV Shows

    Must Watch

    • Breaking Bad
    • Better Call Saul
    • Chernobyl
    • Peaky Blinders
    • Dinosaurs

    Highly Rated (With Caveats)

    • The Wire: A timeless masterpiece, but the extremely slow pace requires pushing through the first season.
    • Band of Brothers: Excellent, but historically did Captain Sobel dirty—he wasn’t like that.
    • Primal: Extremely good, but the story ends at Season 2. Season 3 is an unnecessary overextension.

    Good Shows (Minor Caveats)

    • Narcos: Enjoyable until Escobar (the star) is captured, then it loses its appeal.
    • Pablo Escobar, The Drug Lord (El Patrón del Mal): Less dramatic but more accurate and highly enjoyable than Narcos.
    • Dune: Prophecy & House of the Dragon: Good overall, but heavily woke. They take too many liberties and squander their superior source materials.

    Great for Uniqueness, Story, or Style (Major Caveats)

    • Game of Thrones (Seasons 1-4): The absolute best TV ever made. It doesn’t top Breaking Bad only because the later seasons are absolute garbage.
    • The Sopranos: Great episodic show, but slow. The overarching story wasn’t the main focus; six seasons could have been condensed into three.

    Shows That Don’t Live Up to Their Name

    • Dark: Starts great, but convoluted rules in Season 2 and Deus ex machina plot devices in Season 3 ruin it.
    • Shōgun (2024): Unremarkable. Unfaithful to the source material due to wokeness, specifically erasing Blackthorne’s protagonism because he’s white.
    • The Expanse: A convoluted, messy dumpster fire.
    • Westworld: A convoluted, messy dumpster fire.
    • Euphoria: Hot Gen Z garbage.
    • A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: Pure hype with no justification to exist. Spends 6 episodes on Dunk, an absolute loser and terrible fighter, whereas the show was advertised as being about Aegon Targaryen, who barely gets screen time in the show

    Anime

    Must Watch

    • Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (Sousou no Frieren): A beautiful, clean, family-safe show with no fan service. The appeal is the whole package.

    Good Shows (Minor Caveats)

    • Noragami: Beautiful, but not a masterpiece; sequels dip in quality.
    • Psycho-Pass: Genuinely good Minority Report-style premise. Season 1 is amazing.
    • Mob Psycho 100: Good comedy, but relies on repetitive tropes after Season 2.
    • One Punch Man: Extremely funny great premise, but the quality drop after Season 1 shouldn’t have happened.
    • Dragon Ball / Dragon Ball Z: Legendary but too long (Kai is the shorter alternative).

    Great for Uniqueness, Story, or Style (Major Caveats)

    • Neon Genesis Evangelion: Very unique. The writer projected his mental issues onto a weird cast, the protagonist is a loser, and it has no proper ending.
    • Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood: Good, but overhyped. Suffers from forced humor, quality drops near the end, and a predictable “happily ever after” ending.
    • Fullmetal Alchemist (2003): Much darker, serious, and extremely good, but the animation is garbage.
    • Tokyo Ghoul: Only good until Season 2 before major quality dips.

    Shows That Don’t Live Up to Their Name

    • Death Note: A bad show imo. The premise is amazing but the characters are so obnoxious that i dropped it

    EDIT:

    Forgot to mentione The Last of Us. Pretty good show with story close to the original. I rated it an 8/10 on IMDb.

    Issues it has if you liked the game though:

    • Bella Ramsey was severely miscast as Ella. Ellie in the games is a fierce, humorous and lovely girl, who’s matured too early. On the show she tries to be but isn’t funny, she’s aggressive and lacks self control. You’ll have to accept it for what it is, two different characters altogether.
    • Season 2 has some noticeable defects
    • It inherits the game’s plot, which is amateurish at best *Some parts are rushed
    • Take the already ridiculously written character of Abby Anderson and miscast an actress for it to, and there you have it
    • Kaitlyn Dever was supposed to be Ellie, and i think she’d work really well as her. They miscast that one and they used Kaytlin as Abby, who has a totally different personality

    In the end i think it’s not a terrible show, but it could easily have been a much better one

    • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 months ago

      wokeness,

      I thought you had some interesting insights until I saw you list “wokeness” as a caveat.

      Then I saw how you rated one of the greatest Sci-Fi shows of all time, The Expanse, and knew I could discard everything you said.