A coworker said it would be a challenge to find 5 shows currently on TV worth watching. He was right. It took me a while, but I did come up with 5. But more on that later.

I don’t watch that much TV. Not on a daily basis anyway. I tend to go weeks without spending any real time in front of one. I don’t have cable and I don’t have a TV set up in my house. I tend to watch shows that are complete or canceled. This way I don’t have to wonder what I am getting into. I ripped through Buffy the Vampire Slayer in an embarrassingly short amount time. I’d sort of watched it the first time around on broadcast, but the night and channel it was on kept moving, and for most of a season is wasn’t even available to my market, and then there was the occasional missed episode where I had something more exciting going on in my life (this happened once or twice at least!). Recently, I succumbed to a desire to see it sequentially and in it’s entirety. There was probably about a third of never-before-seen shows for me. I then punished myself with Angel (all 5 seasons). Sadly, I think I’d already seen almost all of these. In both cases though I’d managed to miss the finales, so it was kind of cool to find out how they ended.

After these two shows though I was in a vacuum. I had no idea what to watch. So I sought out Carnivàle using Netflix, and loved it, but I found out it was canceled sometime around when I was watching the season one finale, and I went online only to find out it was never going to be completed. It would have been a thing of beauty, I was the ideal target audience, but I decided to not disappoint myself by slamming up against that stony wall of cancellation, so I never finished season two. Maybe someday. Deadwood was next, but this time I went in knowing it only had three seasons. I was amazed at this show and do hope they come in and wrap up the story lines, but they would probably just fuck it up at this point. A neatly packaged package would probably end up being boring. Then came Rome. It was about here that I realized this was the way to watch TV! There’s no forgetting between episodes, no missing an episode, no commercials, you can pause when you like, and there’s nothing keeping you from watching just one more before bed (even if the sun is coming up). I watched both seasons in as many months.

Don’t get me wrong. I still give other shows a chance. I watched Damages and Burn Notice. I gave the Sarah Connor Chronicles a chance (got bored with everything other than Summer Glou). And I discovered Dexter and wondered how it slipped past me (no cable is how). Hell, I even tried Bionic Woman and wanted those hours back (Ok, that hour, since I barely made it through the first episode). What were they thinking? At least I was smart enough to stay clear of the Knight Rider remakes.

Anyway, without further ado, since I think I’ve adid enough, my list of five TV shows that done suck:

1. Battlestar Gallactica
2. The Shield
3. Dexter
4. The Tudors
5. House, M.D.

The saddest part of this list is that for sure two of these shows are going away after the upcoming or current season. And none of these are network TV shows. It’s nearly a desert out there, folks, and I think it’s getting worse.

Damages didn’t make the list, since it’s too early to tell. It is quite good, I just have no idea if they can keep my interest. Burn Notice didn’t make it because I really wasn’t that impressed with the content or plot. I just like the actors.

Some other cool shows of note:

1. Firefly
2. Six Feet Under
3. The Wire
4. The Sopranos