In all my boredom at night I decided to do a top-10 of my favorite TV shows of all time. Really a quite simple task, except I stopped watching TV in 2007 pretty much altogether. I was fed up with all the fake-ass competition shows, stupid reality shows, uninspired series, and most of all those never-ending fucking commercials, a.k.a. propaganda. I didn't even have any TV channels for almost three years when I lived on my own, before I met my girlfriend. Now she wants TV, but I rarely watch it to this day.
So basically this is now rather a list of a top-10 few shows I actually did watch at some point, but I still managed to try out a bunch more throughout the years via Netflix, watching with friends and whatnot. But these ten are the shows I remember with most joy.
10. Biker Mice From Mars
This was likely the first show I ever truly loved. I remember in like 1995, as a kid, sitting on the floor before the TV and watching this show in awe. I loved everything about it: they were cool mice-men, rode motorcycles, had attitude, listened to heavy metal, and drank root beer - which in Sweden was dubbed to "läskeblask", meaning soda pop rather than root beer, which I of course thought looked like Coke, which was and still is my favorite drink ever. I guess this show had a great impact on my future, as I grew up listening to metal music and loving motorcycles. My favorite character was Throttle.
9. Hell On Wheels
The latest TV shows I've watched about cowboys. Perhaps not so much about cowboys as I initially had hoped for, but it's still a very interesting show from a historical point of view, and some of the acting is very good as well. A rather underrated TV show in modern TV history, that sadly has gone through a lot of trouble and is now sadly ending after a delayed, but also partially disappointing, last fifth season. My favorite characters are Durant and "the Swede" (who is really Norwegian, and totally hilarious).
8. Prison Break
I watched this faithfully during in its entire original run from 2005-2009. I even remember the third season being delayed and shortened to a half-season in 2007, because the economy crashed and Hollywood was striking, if I remember correctly? Anyway, this show had an an absolutely amazing and thrilling first season with a great plot, characters and MacGuyver-ish solutions for the escape plan. But the show's downfall was in a way it's own name, as a prison break can only go on for so long. The break was done and over by the first season's end, and after that it was just a constant bland soup of repetitiveness and new story turns.
The second season was really an unimaginative and very repetitive 22-episode series of cat-and-mouse play where several characters, including keys, were caught and escaped, over and over by several times. By it's end, some of them went back to (another, more brutal) prison. Season 3 dealt with a prison break from the new prison, which was nowhere near as good or interesting as the first, but managed to at least keep relevant to the series name. Season 4 was the last season and dealt with another irrelevant story line, which only served a few purposes for the story's background to the first imprisonment. Not very interesting or original, to say the least.
Though most people probably didn't reflect on it, this show pretty much doomed itself right from the start by choosing its name. Season 2 were basically cops and robbers, while season 3 only served the show's name and initial story theme half-hearted, while season 4 certainly had gone from Prison Break to Conspiracy Break. Lame. It was sad to follow such a good and promising series just become dull and uninspired, for the money-hungry assholes willing only.
My favorite characters are Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell, John Abruzzi, and Alexander Mahone.
7. The Simpsons
Teen cartoons. I kind of started with South Park when I was 12 or so, but later stopped watching it (probably because MTV is gay and stopped airing it just like music), only to later watch The Simpsons daily after school. It's so light, fun, and down-to-earth. I love it still. My favorite characters are Homer, Bart, Otto, Mr. Burns, and Chief Wiggum.
6. Hem Till Midgård
An old Swedish series which in English translates to "Home To Midgard", and is a comedy show about failed vikings. It's rather silly at pretty much all times, holding itself at a rather childish level with a lot of poop jokes and similar themes. But they're so funny in their different personas and how they fight among themselves, not to mention how they always fail at trying to be successful vikings. If you could find it with English subtitles, I'd totally recommend it. My favorite characters are all four of the key characters, they're just so awesome each one of them.
5. Vikings
And another series about vikings, simply called "Vikings", but this time in a serious and historical/educational way. This series is not only good but indeed very educational. I don't quite know how accurate its facts are, but it's interesting to watch and learn anyway. The show also keeps a good pace throughout with a lot of fighting and progression, as well as spontaneous character killings, going on at all times. It's very unpredictable to say the least, but it's also well-acted and looks good - nice settings, scenery, clothing, etc. My favorite characters are Ragnar, Lagertha, and Floki.
4. Miami Vice
I obviously wasn't around when this show originally aired, being born the year after it ended in fact. But my love and fascination for the 1980's grew strong early on with the music, clothing and great movies that decade offered. I started watching Miami Vice when I was 15 and the DVD boxes were released. People were talking about the show as something of the best to come out of that decade, and I understand why. I've seen so many 80's shows like Knight Rider, Magnum P.I., and MacGuyver, and none of those hold up to this day in comparison with Miami Vice.
Now, what made me love this show so much is its way of perfectly put together story with scenery and music. That is also what really makes it hold up to this day, despite it really being overly 80's because of its traits. But, that is also exactly why it's still so good - because it's a great historical documentation about what the 80's were. Well, the American 1980's anyway. Watching this show really gives a nice look into that decade's clothing and car fashion, music, architecture and much else. I can only say that I was born and am young in the wrong era. My favorite characters are Sonny Crockett, Zito and Gina.
3. Married With Children
The first and last sitcom on this list. I never was much for them to be honest. I always found shows like Seinfeld, How I Met Your Mother, and The Big Bang Theory to be rather boring, while other shows like Friends were a lot better. But Married With Children took the cake for me. It was actually the last show I discovered through TV and started to watch regularly, still to this day. I was talking with my buddy on the phone in 2007 while he suddenly shouted, "dude, turn on channel 6! There's a really hot girl on right now!", and so I did. Kelly Bundy, that's who he meant of course. It was a re-run of one of the earlier seasons, like 1989 maybe, when she was this mega-hot rocker chick with big hair, which I just love. After that, I started watching the series simply because I wanted to see more of her.
Quickly I started to recognize the series from my childhood. It was Al Bundy sitting on that ugly-ass couch that I recognized rather strongly. I must've watched it with my mom or something as a small kid. Anyway, I was turning 17 in late 2007, so I was probably 16 when I first saw this show, and a 16 year old puberty rocker into 80's hair metal girls ... let me tell you, my friends, ... that certainly is something to get the testosterone and hormones going. From that moment and for the two years to come, Kelly Bundy actually became my teenage crush, even though Christina Applegate at the time was pushing 40. But still, her Kelly Bundy character (and appearance) was immortalized in this show, and I was living in my own little made-up 80's world during all my teens.
But looking beyond that, the show was not all about Kelly Bundy, but I actually found it to be a great and fun show as well. All the characters, especially Al, are just hilarious and in many ways even role-models for the common man. In the end, I watched through all the episodes and I still to this day think of Al Bundy in many everyday scenarios, especially when life sucks (haha). I also remember Kelly Bundy as a big part of my later teens, and though she was a fictional character which happened to be my teenage crush (15 years too late, but still), she made a better, not to mention sexier, dream-girlfriend than what my actual girlfriends did during my teens.
2. Game of Thrones
Everybody knows GoT, right? Perhaps not everyone watches it, but they are certainly well aware of it. It's just, like, the biggest show in the world right now, and rightly so if you ask me. Initially it took me like three times trying before I got into it - it was just too many characters and too much blab to go through. But I started to like it eventually. Now I am somewhat of a fanboy over it, despite not having read the books (I hate reading books). I just love the deep characters and unpredictable story, and of course, the sex and violence. My favorite characters are Tyrion, Bronn, the Hound, Oberyn Martell, and Dolorous Edd.
1. Sons of Anarchy
And here we have the king of this list. Like with Game of Thrones, many of you people surely did follow SoA during its run, at least at some point. It had a good seven season long run and ended about a year and a half ago. The biker lifestyle depicted in this show is just very interesting to follow, to me as a motorcycle enthusiast. The acting was also very good most of the times, with only a few very minor character sometimes not being quite up-to-par with the otherwise amazing regular cast. This is the kind of show I'd like to follow, a deep and rich story arc that ends in a bittersweet way.
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