Top Ten Television

I need a bit of fun today, especially as this bloody surgery has been moved forward to next week and I need to keep myself occupied. 

So this was on Instagram today. What are you top ten television shows. Ever. Do you know how hard this is to pick you ten favourite television programs? 

I think this would change a bit depending on my mood, but there are a few shows here that are just timeless. Like the first one on he list:

1. Six Feet Under 

I remember seeing the first episode of this in the early naughties. It was always on really late at night. But that first episode. I'd turned it on the show and stood routed to the spot, amazed at this amazing show. I stood, mouth agape, for a good twenty minutes. I felt like this after every episode. A show about a funeral home, with a completely disfunctional family. Who knew? If you haven't seen it, hunt it out. You don't get better than this. 

2 .Fleabag

Oh Fleabag, Fleabag, Fleabag. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a genius. Tightly scripted, feminist, blackly comedic, very English, naughty and cutting right through the fourth wall, it is like fine wine. And we won't mention the Hot Priest. I think the second series is just a little more perfect than the first. I watch it when I tell myself I can be a writer. It's so on point it could be used for working leather. 

3.The West Wing

This show has kept me sane though all sorts of tough times - including the last American Election. It's a little bit of Utopia in a hellish world. The walk and talks, the situations, the common sense and the humanity of the show is wonderful. And then there's Josh Lyman... ah. I've watched it end to end many times over. I love every minute of it. 

4. Quantum Leap

This was around when I was at uni. Scott Bakula played Sam, a scientist who believed in Time Travel. IMDB says " Theorising that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap Accelerator, and vanished. He awoke and found himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Dr Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home." Just as he sorted things out in the body he landed in, he'd jump to another body at the end of the episode. I just remember loving it. Innocent days back then. 

5. M.A.S.H

I recently rewatched a couple of episodes of MASH with my step-dad - and it's still hilarious, and fun, and sad, and empathetic. It came out when I was twelve. It's always been a part of my life. You can always find it on terrestrial television playing somewhere. Classic television, great acting. It's amazing it lasted longer than the war it was portraying. It's still quality. 

6. The Hour

Englsih fare once again. Set at the BBC in the early sixties, it looks at the characters behind a news magazine show, The Hour. The cast is stellar - Ben Wishaw, Romola Garai, Dominic West, Anna Chancellor and the incredible Peter Capaldi. It's gripping television, based around intrigues and politics of the upper classes. Being a BBC drama, how they couldn't make a third series is beyond me. I still scream, "Freddie! No!" in my nightmares. Not many have see it. I adore this show. 

7. Mad Men

The clothes, the times, the people. Don Draper, the quintessential Ad Man, with a heart and soul, not that anybody ever saw it. Oh my. Never has a show captured the late fifties and early sixties with such aplomb. There is so much to unpack in every episode. 

8. Parks and Recreation / Schitt's Creek

I can't separate these two shows. In many ways, they are similar. Apparently irredeemable characters who you grow to adore. You should hate Lesley Knope, but you can't. The Rose family should never have made it past the first series, but by the end of the sixth series, you're crying along with the rest of the cast. Some of the best of American comedy, it shows that Americans (and Canadians in the case of Schitt's Creek) can do irony, pathos and subtle humour. I just love the humanity in these shows. 

9. The Young Ones

Thirty five years on I can still quote most episodes. Seminal comedy. Still funny. And my family rue the shows existence because barely a week goes by when I don't qoute it.

Ra ra ra, we're going to smash the oiks!.

10. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Many people don't get why I love Buffy, but the writing is excellent. To each generation a slayer is born. One girl in all the world, a chosen one. It can be silly. It can be kitsch. It can be infuriation (see Season Four) but it is glorious when you get into it. Joss Whedon has built an incredible world. All of the characters are amazing in their own right (Even Dawn) It's probably dated, but I still love it.  

Also rans that didn't quite make it to the top ten list, but I still love regardless:

• Suits
• Lucifer
• The Good Wife
• The Nanny (only because I have a HUGE thing for Mr Sheffield)
• Doctor Doctor
• Moonlighting
• Frasier
• Drop the Dead Donkey (U.K.fare)
• Hogan's Heroes
• I Love Lucy
• Fawlty Towers
• Gray's Anatomy
• True Blood (the first threes season anyway)
• Sex in the City
• The Librarians
• Orange is the New Black

Today's Song: