Wanted: TV Recs

[dchan]

So. Being out of school right now, I have a lot more free time, so I've recently discovered the wonder that are TV dramas. I always forget how much I love visual storytelling media until I come back to it.

Thus, I am asking for recs! I really haven't ever been a big TV watcher and my life got really busy after I got into high school, so I've missed just about every big show that's come out since about the year 2000.

Here's the pitifully short list:
Torchwood (S1 & S2) - Love the characters, but the show itself is actually kind of painful to watch. Mostly I get my fix on this through fanfic.
White Collar (up to current episode) - My current obsession (just ask whatawaytoburn)
Chicago Code (up to current episode) - New show, but the first two episodes have been good so far. My headcanon says this show is taking place in an alt!Rift.
Castle (parts of S3) - Liked what I've seen so far
Stargate SG-1 (whichever episodes Riley happened to be watching when I was around)
random anime

As you can see...that's really not a lot, and I'd like to fix that. So, feel free to rec just about anything you like!

Generally, the things I like:
- Strong partner/team dynamics
- Good character development
- Strong female characters
- Snark!
-Good costume/set design

Things I don't like:
- Overly sexy/shippy shows. I don't mind if characters develop romantic feelings for one another or even get together, if it's done well. I don't like it when the show starts to revolve around that romance to the exclusion of other plots or if the producers feel they need to throw in make-out scenes every other episode to up the sexiness factor.
- Bad science. Getting the technobabble wrong is one of the fastest ways to throw me out of a show. I'll take vague but correct any day. Forensics shows are notoriously bad with this.
- Sitcoms, or anything else that tries too hard to be funny. This is not to say that everything has to be SRS DRAMA all the time, but I've got a very dry sense of humor so less is generally better with me.

Comments

[rubyprism]

You might like Arrested Development because of the type of humour. It is a humorous show, but it's snarky and cutting and a lot of the humor is political. It doesn't expect you to actually like any of the characters, even though some of them are likable. It moves very fast, with a ton of things constantly going on in the background-- a lot of it was ad-libbed-- and because of that it's one of the only TV shows, period, that can really capture my attention. As a bonus, you'll get the random in-jokes that make fun of Orange County.

Other than thaaaaat, though... I have trouble sitting through TV shows because they force me to take stuff in at a certain pace, and I'm not so good with that. I only like Arrested Development because it moves so fast and it's so jam-packed.

[storyinmypocket]

Leverage is one of my current favorites. Wonderful team dynamics, from the touching to the snarky. It's subtly shippy, but that runs more on sexual tension than anything happening onscreen, and the relationships actually take time to build up.

Oh yes, and crime. The concept is the standard Robin Hood type story, in which a five-person team (hacker, grifter, thief, muscle, and mastermind) takes on people and corporations who can't be touched by conventional legal means. They use their own less than legal methods to help people who've been wronged get back what they've lost, whether it's money, property, or even their adopted children. It's really, really awesome to see them slowly become a family, and then go through varying degrees of dysfunction, while crime is happening.

And the crime is fun. Elaborate cons, thefts, and so on. I've read fic that crosses Leverage over with White Collar, and it works beautifully. It's often funny, but most of the humor comes from the cons themselves, due to the sheer audacity involved, and the rest springs up naturally as a result of team bickering. There's none of the Wacky Misunderstandings Lead To Sitcom Hijinks crap that makes me cringe. (Wacky misunderstandings and embarrassment-based humor are extremely unfunny to me, so it's likely anything I rec will be light on that stuff.)

The only warning is if you're downloading instead of getting the DVDs, S1 was aired out of order, and that screws up the character development. I don't know why networks do this. But if you're interested, I can dig up the correct viewing order for the season.

I'm also really fond of Stargate Atlantis: the show does pull a bait-and-switch, with the premise changing drastically after the first season, but it's still a really fun show. And full of "What the hell, hero?" moments, where severely morally dubious things happen for the sake of humanity not getting eaten by alien vampires. The screwed up morality is actually one of the things I dearly love about SGA. It's kind of like Torchwood that way, which may or may not be a good thing.

And both shows have great characters, to the point where I can't just point at one character and say, "This is my favorite." I love them all.

On the BBC front, there's Misfits, where a group of young offenders doing community service get caught in a storm that gives people superpowers based on their own worst personality traits. The insecure girl gets the ability to read minds, the creepy lonely boy with stalkerish tendencies can turn invisible, and so on. And it's not just them: there are a lot of random people who were affected by the storm, as if the Rift had thrown up all over London. It's particularly notable for making me utterly loathe all the characters before making me fall in love with them. They seem absolutely irredeemable, and then they'll do something that turns your entire view of them on its head, without reforming them.

Aaand that's probably enough recs for now, but I could probably come up with more if you really wanted them. ♥