Oops, forgot to hit the post button. Consider it done. Thanks Andrew for pointing out just how old and forgetful I became last week (turning SIXTY and all).
#25 The Good Wife
Farewell folks who have brought The Good Wife to critical acclaim. So good, even I had to agree it was top notch production AND highly entertaining. A multiple time best show on TV as far as I am concerned. This season's capper to the saga? Not so much. If I was being honest here, it is on the list because such a body of great work SHOULD be on this list. And Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who has this 'aw shucks, hanged dog' look that apparently drives women of an age wild, wasn't half-bad as a replacement for Archie Panjabi. Cush Jumbo was startingly good in her American TV debut, but I've known her to be great from watching her on Vera and Torchwood from British TV. And the show did really well to not only invoke the memory of Josh Charles' Will Gardner in the concluding hour and a half, but to actually make his memory something real and substantial. Applause. But how did somebody not speak up and note that the ending scene was actually as muddy as the last scene in The Soprano's? As uptight as Christine Baranski's Diane Lockhart was, her relationship would not have ended with Julianna Margulies' Alicia Florrick the way it ended. Sorry. But nope. The show obviously didn't have a single concrete thing for Matt Czuchry to do, but kept him on for cameos. And Alan Cumming made Eli Gold entertaining to a point as a bathroom lurker, but it passed from amusing to farce to annoying rather quickly. The whole start of the year in that bond court was only saved by Cush Jumbo coming on as Lucca Quinn ... who is reputedly in talks for a spin-off. I'd watch THAT before I'd re-watch The Good Wife season seven. Still, a below-par The Good Wife is above-par for most of TV.
#24 Girl Meets World
I adore the whole cast of this show. Girl Meets World is a Disney screaming message-fest. But it's about kids and between bouts of moodiness, screaming is what they do. It's funny and the kids don't think all adults are stupid. Said adults don't think the kids are all morons that need schooling 16 hours a day ... preferably under the tutelage of somebody else. I thought Corey Fogelmanis as Farkle was the most impressive improver this year. The rest of the gang have caught up to heartthrob Peyton Meyer (Lucas), so he doesn't stand out as a sore thumb anymore, caught in a "I REALLY like him" triangle with the girls, Rowan Blanchard's Riley and Sabrina Carpenter's Maya. The gang, including the original Boy Meets World Cory Matthews (Ben Savage) got to high school just as spring turned to summer this year. I see no reason not to expect the program still to be running as the decade runs out four years from now... with them all in university. It is a superbly casted show (and no, I won't leave you out, Danielle Fishel as Topanga), but it's not perfect. I had been promised that we'd see George Feeney endcaps to the seasons and if William Daniels showed up, I missed him. And just to show you I'm not completely oblivious to some minor technical faults in the show, I honestly think Riley could make better choices in the shoes she wears (from the costume department). So there, the show no longer has a perfect report card and won't carry that pressure of trying to stay perfect into this fall's shows.
#23 Humans (UK)
The most recognizable name in Humans is William Hurt, who plays a spaced out old inventor who is largely responsible for the fact that most families have androids in the house to do the work foreign-born nannies would do and to fill in some of the 'other' gaps in the social miasma that is civilization in a near future. Hurt's been hiding a defective early model of his inventiveness and treating the obviously failing/defective model as a son of sorts. In the meantime, while Hurt's George Millican is fending off the questions of detectives, a family suddenly grows to include a new synth (synthetic appliance) named Anita (Gemma Chan) to help out with a household in turmoil. Mom Laura (Katherine Parkinson) is working too much for the liking of Joe (Tom Goodman-Hill). In a bit of spite combined with exasperation, he buys Anita to change the dynamic in the family. The three kids all welcome Anita into the family at different speed. Little Sophie (Pixie Davies) is the first to attach herself to Anita. Then son Toby, a younger version of his father, finds Anita too attractive to ignore. That role's played awfully well by Theo Stevenson. Finally, the eldest, Mattie (Lucy Carless) lets her mask of smirking and nastiness drop just enough to concede that Anita is better than the sum of her binary bits. Which, as a super hacker, she knows rather more intimately than most. It seems Anita and a few other rogue synths have become self-aware. And that's not something the government can abide. Like computers, synths are now uibiquitous and finding out that they are slaves rather than chattel could destroy what's been going on. This remake of a Swedish series is reputedly not as good as the original. But I found that in the absence of a better handling of the idea, that this show was thought-provoking enough to make my list.
#22 Jessica Jones
At last. A comic book TV show! How could I have taken so long to get to one? Kidding folks. Be prepared for comic references galore from here on down. Jessica Jones is a Marvel property, one of the first reality bound characters in the Marvel Knights imprint. She'd been a bit player in several earlier series, being super strong and fetching looking in Spandex. But Brian Michael Bendis turned Jones into a detective that worked the streets of New York, mostly foregoing using her super powers. She was basically turned out as detective noire. The series didn't last long, but the whole Knights imprint has become the basis for Marvel's shows on Netflix. Jones married Luke Cage in the comics and is the mom of a daughter. The TV show starts pretty well at the beginning of her relationship with Cage. And at the beginning, Jessica Jones was a hurting, walking bruise, (also a lush) as played by Krysten Ritter, who has been mostly a comic actress to this point. She does a superb job of battling David Tennant in a contest of wills that draws other super-entities into the battle, but never really is anything but Jones and Kilgrave, the Purple Man going womano-a-mano. No question that Trish Walker (future Hellcat and played by Rachael Taylor) and Mike Colter's Luke, are important pieces in the battlefield. But this is how Jones summons reserves from somewhere to reverse the spiritual beat down she took at Kilgrave's hands years ago. And is still taking them. Tennant is skin-crawling horrifying as Kilgrave. Kilgrave is purple in the comics, which the TV show decided to not do for TV. Shame really. But this show doesn't suffer for that without the preconceived notion of The Purple Man. This is a show about street level grime and crime. If a super-hero show could ever feel real, this is the one.
#21 Limitless
A movie film made into a TV show rarely has a long life. It happens, citing M*A*S*H as the best possible example of surviving, even after low ratings in the early years. I might have mentioned Minority Report earlier. I should have expected that early plug-pulling from Fox. But having CBS, the network of the immortal M*A*S*H, bail on Limitless after one year was disappointing. I was a bit slow to warm to this show, but warm I did. The story's a familiar one by now. In the movie Bradley Cooper takes a little pill and that little pill makes him computer smart and more importantly, computer fast. Turns out, that's a good thing for Cooper's Eddie Morra. Cooper STILL plays Morra here, but a Morra headed for the White House from his perch as a Senator. He decides to pass along his chemical legacy and his inheritor as wise-cracking layabout turned brilliant is Brian Finch played with due irreverent attitude by Jake McDorman. McDorman belongs to a group of actors, Cooper and The Good Wife's Matt Czuchry are others, who can play that kind of attitude with some fun and a little gleam in their eye. Finch goes from a waste of oxygen to a key member of the FBI, as handled by Jennifer Carpenter's Rebecca Harris. Not a fan of Carpenter, but it's a minor nit. The REAL problem is that the FBI is dealing in the brain pill and there's so much of it floating around out there, that it spoils Finch's uniqueness almost completely. Finch fights back by nicknaming everybody (including his FBI 'team' and employing a meta approach to each week's episode that beggars the creativity of the Community crew. Very entertaining most weeks, as Finch exasperates by-the-book Agent Spellman Boyle (Hill Harper) and saves leader Naz Pouran (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) more than a few times. It was good that the creators wound down the show to a stopping point. But I wish they'd been able to figure out a way to get a second season on the air. If for nothing more than the special effects people imagining the mind of Finch, a very busy and confused place. RIP Finch.
#20 The Daily Show with Trevor Noah / Real Time with Bill Maher
Political discourse has ground to a halt in the United States over the last 30 years as the Party of No refuses to engage in the legislative process, preferring to sit in their gerrymandered kingdoms and act like petulant two year-olds, freshly discovered of the power of NO! It's been extremely disappointing to watch Republicans refuse to try and find compromise and produce effective solutions to the uniquely Washingtonian word, gridlock. Having abdicated their responsibilities for so long has created the atmosphere that begat them Donald J. Trump as a nominee. Having let the fox into the henhouse, all anybody is doing is running around like chickens. Which means comedians of the stripe of Bill Maher and a nice young man, Trevor Noah, have comedy fodder falling like mana from heaven. It's inexhaustible. Except for the fact that it puts America into a frightful state where, thanks to the non-stop impugning of Hillary Clinton and her own clumsy handling of an actual mistake she made, there is some evidence that Trump might actually become President. Starting an unprecedented migration of Americans over our borders and into Atlantic Canada. Shudder!!! The problem with Noah has been the reliance on Jon Stewart leftover Jordan Klepper. READ MY TYPE. HE IS NOT FUNNY. I've railed against Klepper earlier, no sense repeating it. But honestly, please, NO MORE KLEPPER. As for the other half of the political commentary tie, Maher's been moving a little further out as he sees a future not to far distant off, where marijuana becomes legal country-wide, if only that oaf from Manhattan doesn't get in the way. He's championed some pretty out-there types, bordering on snake-oil salesmen, without producing anywhere near the knockout blow attempt that John Oliver tried. He also gives voice to right wingnuts on his show (and even let that harridan Ann Coulter back on the show) in an attempt to be fair, all the while denouncing the Republican practice of equivalency when it's no where close to being road apples to road apples. Frankly, Bill's disappointed me this year. I FEEL his frustration. But I came to his show in search of laughs. Has enough New Rules still to make his show must-see TV.
#19 The Tunnel (UK/FRA)
This is a season of overlooking imperfections. The Tunnel did not have a second season of the calibre of the first. It's sure hard to beat the shocking last scene of the first season's pilot show. So, the folks behind The Tunnel didn't try. Instead of somebody (to use that term rather loosely) dying right at the mid-point of the Chunnel between England and France, the deaths that drive the second season happen in the air over the Channel, just about half way between England and France. Once again we have English DCI Karl Roebuck (Stephen Dillane) put into a partnership with French commander of detectives Elise Wasserman, played by Clémence Poésy. Roebuck is old and tired with a wife and too many children at home. Wasserman is ... strange. She's a highly functioning sufferer from Ausberger's Syndrome. She strives soooooo hard to get around her lack of empathy with others while wanting to make the world a better place, safe from anarchists who blow things up and murder people seemingly at random. The randomness isn't true, of course. And the whole eight episode season is spent proving that. Wasserman makes some curious choices at the end, given what we had seen through a season and a half of the show. But the turn of events wasn't that far afield from what I thought her character was. The operating name for the season was, "Saboutage." A highly accurate name, that.
#18 Brooklyn Nine-Nine
And the imperfections keep on coming. I think this show is as tight a comedy as we have had on the TV for awhile. It's anything but a family comedy, unless you call the Nine-Nine a family in and of itself. You can make the case for that. But it's really about a bunch of misfits who really don't have a normal family life to retreat from the zaniness of work to. So, this whole show rises and falls on the workplace. And honestly, the workplace suffered this year on Brooklyn Nine-Nine due to Melissa Fumero's pregnancy and the need to keep her on the sidelines. Thus, we had her character Amy Santiago doing a riff on Orange is the New Black. With her and Joe LoTruglio's Det. Charles Boyle busy in prison, Andy Samberg's Jake Peralta was set adrift. The 'Adrian Pimento' sequence that brought in the perfect romantic partner for Stephanie Beatriz's Det. Rosa Diaz just completely fizzled. Balanced against all those CON points, we had a great year from Terry Crews' Sgt. Terry Jeffords and more deadpanning than I thought possible from Andre Braugher as Cpt. Ray Holt. And yes, Chelsea Peretti as Gina Linetti continued to be a key part in the mirth and frivolity. We also got a chance to see deadpanning of a different sort from Dirk Blocker and Joel McKinnon Miller as Det's Michael Hitchcock and Norm Scully. (I still wonder why they hadn't renamed Hitchcock Mulder before it started but, then again, I'm hardly subtle in my humour choices). That's more PROs than CONs and it adds up to Brooklyn Nine-Nine still being a top twenty show. (But no more kids Melissa ... unless they come from a hookup between Amy and Jake).
#17 Arrow
I've ragged on clench-jawed lead Stephen Amell on this show for years. STILL don't like HIM. But that seems the consensus in the fictional universe Green Arrow of DC Comics fame inhabits. Even his fictional wife to be, Felicity Smoak, as embodied to near perfection by Canada's own Emily Bett Richards, chose not to like his fictional alter-ego one little bit between the borders of the start and end of the season. But enough about Oliver Queen. The surrounding cast got quite a lot to do this season with David Ramsey front and centre as John Diggle aka Spartan. His wife, Audrey Marie Anderson as Lyla Michaels, brother Eugene Byrd as Andy Diggle and adorable daughter (hey, all babies are beautiful between poopy pants) were the emotional core of the show, a spot previously held by Felicity. And the ups and downs of the Diggles as the team battled the season long baddie (Neal McDonough was AWESOMELY snarky as the delusional Damien Dahrk, the magic villain with a home life!). Things got nasty between the Dahrk's (can't forget Janet Kidder as his wife, Ruve, a spouse with an iron hand in a velvet glove kind of approach to Queen and company) and the Diggles. John struggled mightily with trust and betrayal issues. But in the end, Spartan was all hero, as usual, given his lack of actual, you know, POWERS! The other family dynamic was Felicity's family as Charlotte Ross and Tom Amandes made some really entertaining time on screen, albeit not with each other. Momma Donna actually was getting cuddly with Paul Blackthorne's Quentin Lance, while Amandes was busy being a baddie, The Calculator. All good fun. As was the introduction of Echo Collum as Curtis Holt, the future Mr. Terrific. Plus, the show spun off everything I didn't like about the show, save for those continuing to be dreadful flashbacks) sending former Black Canary turned White Canary Caity Lotz (dying apparently having that kind of effect on you) as well as Brandon Routh's Atom to the spun-off DC's Legends of Tomorrow. Hurray for the supporting cast. Great year all!!
#16 The Blacklist
Spoiler alert if you are going to binge this show. Nobody got fired and had their contract paid off. That's to reduce the wear and tear on you if you get stressed out about plot twists. Now, those turns inside turns inside reversals inside plot twists are to be expected in any CONSPIRACY show on TV. Hey, it's what makes binge-watching so rewarding. You do NOT have to wait until next week/month/YEAR! to see what happens after the cliff-hanger. And this show probably had the most cliff-hangers of any show on TV this year. It also had the always FAAAAAANtastic James Spader cracking wise and also letting the viewers into the real head of Red Reddington. The 'is he or isn't he' question about whether Red's the dad of FBI Agent Elizabeth Keen gets more definition if not exact truth during the year. Megan Boone, NOT one of my favourites when remembering the first season, did great, despite being very visibly pregnant during a LOT of the season. Have to admit, the switch from real life pregnancy to a prosthetic belly while doing some very stunt-filled shows made me respect Boone a whole heck of a lot. And like Arrow, the background guys were more foreground than usual, despite the attempts to spin off a show starring Keen's TV hubby, Ryan Eggold. Like Boone, Eggold turned his character into must-watch TV. But also let's give a hand to computer guy Amir Arison as Aram and Red's faithful sidekick Dembe played by Hisham Tawfiq. Both did an awful lot with little dialog, especially little in Tawfiq's case. The rest of the FBI Redddington unit, Harry Lennox as Cooper, Diego Klattenhoff as Ressler and Mozhan Marno as Samar didn't carry a false note through a really traumatic season. I'm SOOOO over conspiracies that I wanted NOT to like this show. I failed. Miserably.
#15 Dark Matter (CDN)
Syfy paired this show with Killjoys (featuring good ol' local town actor Rob Stewart) and I thought, briefly, about making the shows shared holders of this spot. But as much as I liked Stewart and female lead Hannah John-Kamen) that show was too into colour filters and mind game plots. Watchable, just not Top 25 material. Dark Matter, another comic book adaption, on the other hand, worked wonderfully. The first season did the first arc of the comic book quickly and then moved on. It's a show about a spaceship full of interesting people, all of whom have no memory as to how they got ONTO the ship. In fact, the group just call each other by the number in the order in which they woke up. So, from One to Six, we had Marc Bendavid, Melissa O'Neil, Anthony Lemke, Alex Mallari Jr., Jodelle Ferland and Roger Cross. The other 'person' aboard is Zoie Palmer, who gets the two-word moniker, The Android, often shorted to just Android. Palmer does a great Data for the new millennium. O'Neil's Two turns out to be the leader type, and basically takes over, frequently with the help of the mysterious Five, a blue-haired waif who just happens to be both hacker supreme and small enough to fit into the tunnels that run throughout the ship. So, onboard the ship, it's girls RULE! All of the memory-wiped crew are actually criminals of great renown. Well, that's not strictly true. Five's definitely not a baddie full-time. And another baddie is an imperial Prince on the run. And there's the mole. And the one who isn't a crook but a guy looking for a crook (by looking LIKE a crook), but who is 'probably' a threat for season two if THAT season's premiere is any indication. Hmmm, not so crooked are the six. I like the non-dystopian view this show brings to the screen. Creators Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie are vets of the Stargate series (the REASON I started binge-watching in the first place) and the show's a Canadian production. Yeah! (plus season two is already better than season one!)
#14 Shark Tank (US/AUS)
Well, the Dragon's Den franchise (Britain and then Canada) begat the American Shark Tank, which has now birthed the Australian Shark Tank. And there's even an American spin-off called Beyond the Tank. Almost all of these shows are watchable, but the Den versions are ossifying with too many repetitive KINDS of investment opportunities being pitched while a lesser host of investors make their bids for startup shares. The American one continues to be pretty good with ex Canuck Den guys Kevin "Mr. Wonderful" O'Leary and Robert Herjavec being signature cornerstones. Along with Mark Cuban, who is always entertaining to me (to NBA Commisioners, not so much). The regular even chairs have been rotated for awhile between Daymond John, Barbara Corcoran and Lori Genier. But they expanded a fair bit this year, bringing in other rich guys like TV twit turned serious mover and shaker Ashton Kutcher as well as acerbic Chris Sacca. The producers of this show have turned the beggars and dreamers that wander into the Tank with these guys and gals into a very entertaining hour each week. What boosted the show into the Top 15 was a successful Australian version with Janine Allis (think Grenier), Andrew Banks (think Jim Treliving from the Canadian Den), Naomi Simson (think Arlene Dickinson from the Canadian Den) and Steve Baxter, who's an Australian O'Leary which means he's blunt and to the point most pitches. But he's Aussie. And Aussie's are just nicer. What's even MORE interesting is the level of the financial pitches, all made in Australian Dollars, at levels only seen on the American show by teenagers coming on more for the mentoring than for the money. A really likable Shark Tank to play yin to it's American forebears' yang.
#13 Daredevil
Honestly, the second season of Marvel's Daredevil was really the first season of The Punisher. Jon Bernthal ran away with the second season as Frank Castle, the man who's family was in the wrong spot at the wrong time and got killed off in a mob vs. mob skirmish. Castle takes his time donning the distinctive duds of The Punisher, but getting there is not even a bit of the battle. It's him against any gangsters willing to congregate in one place, letting him pump lead and explosives in rather large quantities. At the same time, he seems to be able to survive anything short of a nuclear explosion. Even from his almost death bed, he climbs back into action just in time for season one baddie, The Kingpin, to make a brilliant jailbreak and re-assume his mantle as the worst of the worst in the aftermath of the triangular battle waged by Castle, Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock/Daredevil and the gangs. Cox has a bad-luck season, making a hash of his law firm and his friendships with co-workers Elden Henson as a much braver in many ways Foggy Nelson and Karen Page, played by a more language-restrained Deborah Ann Woll this year. But the real fun when Castle isn't front and centre is Elektra, played by Elodie Yung, who is pitch perfect as the female counterpart to Murdock with both becoming kids under the tutelege of Stick, the all-seeing blind martial arts master played by Scott Glenn. The flashbacks (see, not ALL flashbacks are horrible) add definition to both Murdock and Elektra, who was adopted into the Natchios family. The Murdock/Page future romance was put on hold for Matt and Elektra to do their self-destructive thing. And the result was hugely entertaining. We all knew that Elektra's comic book costume wasn't going to make it to the little screen. But the costume they DID come up with was really quite good. All in all, a good season with a good after-the-credits type cliff-hanger that portends a DEADly season for series three. Can't wait.
#12 Hack My Life
I like Kevin Pereira's ability to be an every-man klutz with a 'what if'/'can do' approach to this series on productive hints to hack together solutions for problems we all face at one point or another. Well, maybe NOT all, but as a fellow klutz and forgetter of grocery/department store lists, I identify with the ex-front man for G4's Attack of the Show, the home for many years to many a geek. Now, Pereira isn't alone on Hack My Life. Smarmy Brooke Van Poppelen is sort of the counter to Pereira's optimism. Which means I'm not strongly in her corner. It's sort of like deja vu all over again, given how much I disliked Pereira's most common co-host back in the AOTS days. Van Poppelen isn't THAT horrible, but I think another take on a co-host could work. May I suggest Sara Jean Underwood who was pretty decent in the post-Pereira days at AOTS or even Candace Bailey. Maybe the chemistry with a change would take this staple of weekly watching (I honestly think binge-watching this show would explode your head) up to another level and into the top 10. Sounds like I'm pretty down on the show. But how could you NOT love a show where a sidewalk hot dog stand cooked the dogs with a car battery and two forks? Honestly, there ARE helpful household hints in every show. But that's the teaser to get you to the comedy.
#11 The Flash
This is my geek show. It's about a geeky guy who becomes a super-fast super-hero. I've been reading the comics since the early sixties and count the Flash as amongst my favourite comics of all time. The ONE little thing that niggles at me is how the comic book universe has turned super speed into this kind of ... The Force, from Star Wars. It's mysticism when speed should be all about the hard sciences. And the comic book universe now has more speedsters than you can count on your hands and feet. Too many speedsters almost spoil the fine broth that this show generates. That said, more and more characters enter into The Flash TV show from the comic book universe. We see Carlos Valdes' Cisco Ramon becoming a better Vibe than his original appearances in the comics would suggest. Danielle Panabaker's ever so sweet Caitlin Snow has a dark side (Killer Frost over on Earth 2). Barry (played with better effect than the public gives him credit for, by Grant Gustin) finally sees a future with Candace Patton's Iris West, after an early season fling with extremely likable Shantel VanSanten as officer/detective Patty Spivot. And Jesse L. Martin as the rock of the show, Detective Joe West, has a lot of opportunities to shine this season. The show helped spin off Legends of Tomorrow, losing Dominic Purcell (Heat Wave) and, unfortunately, Wentworth Miller as Captain "The King of Snark" Cold. Wally West as embodied by Keiynan Lonsdale and Violet Beane's Jesse Wells, are well on their way to becoming Flash-Lites. Jesse is the daughter of this year's version of Harrison Wells, played with almost laser-like focus by Tom Cavanagh. The glimpses of Earth 2, a futuristic steam-punk version of Earth, was actually well-played. But the whole Jay Garrick thing was a baaaaaaaad plot device and it sullied the name of a great comic book character, the Golden Age Flash. Disliked it quite a bit, enough to drop the show nine pegs from my early season rankings. Teddy Sears SHOULD have been a great Garrick. He wasn't. The whole Man in the Mask reveal at the end was hardly a sop for those of us who suffered a virtual repeat of the first season's Zoom arc with Garrick/Hunter Zoloman in the second season. Again, a case against this whole 'speedsters on every corner' concept. But darn, as a FIFTY YEAR reader of Flash comics, the TV version still views like must-read TV.
#10 The Last Ship
The first of two summer series in the Top 10. That's a real good reason NOT to turn off the TV come June 1. The Last Ship didn't have a complete good first year. It started promisingly with an outbreak of 'The Red Flu' which becomes a global mass murderer in almost no time flat. But before it hits global pandemic status, the Nathan James, a US naval vessel is playing taxi to Antarctica for a scientist who MIGHT be developing The Cure (that's a pitch for a book penned by my friend, James McDonald). The problem is, that while Dr. Rachel Scott (Rhona Mitra) and the Nathan James are waaaaaay south of the border, the epidemic does become a pandemic. The Cure might be too late. And that first season ended in a dreadful horror show in Baltimore involving BURNING SICK PEOPLE to replace fossil fuels. Dreadful. But somehow, the second season managed to reverse course and become a thriller about not only further developing the cure and delivery capabilities, but it became a sea-based action series with plenty of time in the post-apocalyptic America for any land-lubbers (make that land lovers) like me. The reconstructed version of the USA was fairly well thought out and we started to form attachments to the heroes, from Dr. Scott to Eric Dane's Commander Chandler to XO Mike Slattery played by Adam Baldwin and on down through the crew. Other than Chandler's propensity to go all James T. Kirk (duplicating the dim premise that the captain of the ship LEADS all away missions), time spent with the crew was spent meeting and knowing good characters. Charles Parnell, Travis Van Winkle and Marissa Neitling all play crewmen that you come to care about. John Pyper-Ferguson's Tex is a scoundrel who always seems there in a pinch. The show MAKES sense, given the premise. And it IS a thriller, having pivoted almost completely to a geopolitical thriller in the third season with all the action divided between Southeast Asia (China, Vietnam and Japan) and the new White House in St. Louis. Mitra's gone, remembered frequently though. But the trade is we have Bridget Regan being an integral part of the good guys (so far). And Regan is a long-time fave. The Last Ship is summer entertainment, but it's not the video equivalent of light reading.
#9 New Tricks (UK)
Farewell old friend. Rather, farewell newish friends and don't forget to salute the original cast who made this show so entertaining. Not. One. Regular. Lasted. Until the last show. Twelve seasons. More than a hundred episodes, 99 of which starred Gerry Standing (the last original standing as it were), played by Dennis Waterman. Each and every episode starting with that infernal title music "It's all right ..." sung with cheerfulness by Waterman, knowing that the jingle would bore a hole into your memory forever. Ahh, good memories, New Tricks. Now before nitpickers bring up Anthony Calf as the always hovering head man, DAC Strickland, he didn't become a semi-regular regular until 2005. In fact, he only appeared in less than half the episodes in all, although Strickland did stick around longer than the others. With the original crew all gone after Standing pulls a runner in episode one, the last-season stalwarts actually do a really good job. Amanda Redman certainly had a more than decent successor in Tamzin Outwaite as squad head for a dead-case files team. I'd been slow to warm to Nicholas Lundhurst as the team's odd guy, Danny Griffin. But this last season, he got out-weirded by the even newer Ted Case, played by Larry Lamb. Still, they teamed up with the relative veteran of the team, Denis Lawson's Steve McAndrew to do a good job solving historically unsolved murders, while living entertaining lives. I know this show had had a lot of controversy back in England about the stars seriously disliking some of the writing during the end of their first decade of production. But I always enjoyed what the actors did with that writing they disliked, being the pros the were. Not many shows not named Law & Order something or other get to 12 seasons these days. That the show quit on a high note is great. Once more with gusto, "It's all right ..."
#8 The Hundred Code (CDN/SWE)
You journey across the ocean to track down an evil man who has killed too many people, and almost killed your career. You arrive in Sweden where they all speak English, it seems, if you ask nicely. But you don't ask nicely, you demand. Still, all those blonde and blond characters seem to be good at the job of catching bad guys. So, two episodes in, you've caught the bad guy. And that's when you find out that there is a bigger bad out there. Who you also catch. Only to find that there is STILL a bigger bad to run to ground. (And that guy isn't the end of the badness ratings either). Welcome to The Hundred Code (aka every variation of The, 100, Hundred and Code you can think of), based on a book by Ken Bruen, Merrick . Dominic Monaghan is often-grating American cop Tommy Conley. He's more than willing to wear the mantle of Ugly American if it will help him catch a serial killer he's tracked back to Sweden. The killer that gives him nightmares. And now, he's sharing those nightmares, most notably with reluctant partner Mikael Eklund, played by Michael Nyqvist. It's an uneasy mix because Eklund is thinking about quitting the police force and the abrasive American is tough to handle. Actually, Eklund's not good at handling much at this point. His daughter Hanna, played by Felice Jankell, is really a passive-aggressive obnoxious woman in the making, who wants to hurry that part of her life along. Actually, when Hanna gets herself in serious jeopardy late in the series, I was cheering, just a little bit, for her to exit the scene. Does that make me a bad person? Watch and decide. MOST of the rest of the detective room is made up of good actors from Sweden. Charlotta Jonsoon, Danilo Bejarano, Kristoffer Berglund, Peter Eggers and Hedda Stiernstedt. You get to know them, even though most of the dialogue is in Swedish, but there are non-intrusive sub-titles. Roison Murphy does a good turn as a local ex-pat barmaid, Maggie, who listens to Conley. This being a Nordic police procedural, the overall tone is dreary on dreary. But the fascination that a bigger bad lies ahead in the next episode drove the series for me. And yes, I hear there's a season two ahead. I can't imagine bigger bads. But the Swedes can.
#7 Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
This MIGHT be the best show on TV. MIGHT. The problem is that in the humour that drives the show, there is the fact that the long-form investigative pieces are almost always shining the light on the worst of life in America (there were two shows on Donald Trump ... just sayin'). The show makes you laugh, but it also makes you angry. Angry enough that this great nation south of the 49th, is beset by imbecility and avarice, often both at the same time. How much greater would America be if "Truth, Justice and The American Way," was most definitely NOT just a corny line from a Superman comic book (or maybe the radio series) penned by an ex-pat Canadian. Every country has its own dullards and doofuses. Certainly true here in Canada where we had a wannabe lord and master running the country for most of the last decade. And there's that problem our image suffered because of a now-late mayor of our largest city. In fact, I think Oliver might have devoted a segment on that guy. But it is sad that we now have to turn away from newspapers to get actual real factual provisions from joke shows on Comedy Central. Political commentary is now about how half of America learns it's news, albeit those commentators being comedians on Last Week, Real Time with Bill Maher and The Daily and Nightly Shows. The other half, of course, get their facts from the charlatans running right wing radio. Oliver is a ex-pat Brit who just seems to see the funny side in everything upsetting about America. He admits that he wonders just how far he has to go to force his bosses at HBO to reign him in. Thus far, no boundary. Even when he set up his fake church and accepted donations DESPITE SAYING his church was nothing but a fraud! They ended up collecting SEVENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS in donations before shutting down and giving that money to REAL charities. I was thinking of doing the same thing here, just saying I'm a charity worthy of your donations and giving an address for those cheques and real cash to just start rolling in. Would probably fail because I am not as funny as Oliver. Probably. And I'm Canadian and unwilling to do that to my six readers. BUT, if you have a spare buck for the Mugford Relief from Poverty Fund and want to send along a thousand bucks or two, my address is ....
#6 Distant Shores (UK), specifically Series Two
More than ten years ago, ITV in Britain produced a wonderful six-part series called Distant Shores. Unbeknownst to me at the time, there was also a SECOND six-part series that followed up on the shenanigans of the first series. It took the producers two years to broadcast the second half, in 2007. Here in Canada, that second series did get a couple of replays over the intervening decade, but never where I was watching. I though the second series was a fake, not real. It wasn't listed at www.TVRage.com, my goto site for TV episode info. Besides, the first series had ended perfectly with Peter Davison jumping ship (literally) and swimming back to shore on the island that had become the home and hearth for the Shore family. (Soooooo many metaphors to play with.) And the whole series reminded me so much of Scottish director Bill Forsyth's Local Hero, one of my favourite all-time movies. The whimsy of life on an island off the shores of North Northumberland (ONLY the British could get away with a place called North Northumberland), continues in the second series, with all of the Shores, Bill, wife Lisa (Samantha Bond), Harvey (Matthew Thomas Davies) and Kate (Claudia Renton) becoming even more integrated into life on the island. Of course, Bill, the island's doctor, continues to have his own trials and tribulations with NOT living in London. But it's Lisa that surrenders to some wanderlust, making waves about leaving. Harvey and Kate have their reasons for wanting to stay, not the least of which is that both have grown and matured because of island life. In Kate's case, heartbreak and happiness are two sides of a relationship with the Newcomer, Jake, played by Oliver Boot. Jake the Newcomer is the fox set amongst the hens, but with a good heart. Chief amongst the hens are Kate and Lainey, played by Emma Fildes. Lainey's got her hands full with Duncan's baby, but a romance with Jake blossoms nonetheless. Or with the apparent knowledge of Kate. While Jake does demonstrate a good, if not truthful heart, there is a far more serious threat to the harmony of the island in the form of Christine, played by Connie Hyde. Christine is a one-time fling of Bill's, now bent on turning the island into a wind farm. Thank heavens for TV repeats. I strongly recommend Distant Shores series one, one of the great little British gems of the early Aughts. A slightly lesser recommendation for this series, but not by much.
#5 Adam Ruins Everything
I raved about this show to just about everybody I knew during it's fall run. Adam Conover, he of the bizarre haircut, glasses and a willingness to stick his nose where it shouldn't belong, is a sort of an Americanized John Oliver lite. Where as Oliver shines his light where the bad guys and gals would prefer he didn't, Conover's schtick is dispelling myths. And there are myths aplenty. Adam Ruins Everything's first series ends with Adam Ruins Death (more accurately, ruins Death as an obsessive chance for some people to make money). But that first series also ruins giving to charity, security, cars, forensic science, restaurants, hygiene, voting, work, summer fun, sex (no, NOT the same thing as summer fun) and nutrition before getting around to good ol' death. I had NO IDEA of the power the car companies had in shaping laws, highways and even the design of most of the cities in America. Makes me want to shout for a do-over. And the Dr. Oz-like TV personalities really get the slap upside the back of the head in the Nutrition episode. But the final one did have a major impact on me. I had NO idea about the ever-changing laws in the States dealing with internment. I bet YOU didn't know either. Now, Adam and his graphic animators (half of every show features OUTSTANDING cartoon infographics), do not solely spark my interest in the show. Hayley Marie Norman and Emily Axford were the two ladies that mostly had their lives, marriages, almost marriages and even deaths (BOOOOO, HISS, HISS if Norman's not back for series two) interfered with by Adam the Noyd. The best part of the show is the pop ins by genuine actual experts to site source and fact for what myth dispelling they are doing. It's like the ultimate click-bait for the internet. I think there will be some VERY INTERESTING essays handed into school teachers this year, if the kids caught this Graded A+ show. I LOVED this show.
#4 Madame Secretary
There are two shows on TV that are perfectly casted. The first is Girl Meets World. The second is Madame Secretary. When you have to search the supporting casts for bit players to dislike, you know the casting director has assembled that rarest of rarities, a group of people you like and want to spend an hour with on Sunday nights. Kudos to those folks. I know couples like the McCords, Elizabeth (Téa Leoni) and Henry (Tim Daly), who argue once a year and that argument lasts less than the time to the next commercial break. But they are as rare as hen's teeth. Leoni and Daly have such good chemistry, you just know they aren't carrying on an off-screen love affair. The writing and the acting have them going hand and glove when administering to the not annoying kids played by Evan Roe, Kathrine Herzer and Wallis Currie-Wood (and yes, I was NOT a fan of Currie-Wood's Stevie in year one). But, as much as the home-life is a Life Magazine illustration, this is a work-place show. The workplace is also where the professional lives of the McCords continue to have serious overlap. There was Elizabeth's corner of the world, riding herd THERE on a group of staffers led by the incomparable Bebe Neuwirth (who did most of the herding). Sebastian Arcelus, Geoff Arend and Patina Miller had less impact than in year one, but that was to be expected with so much story time being devoted to Henry McCord. The Elizabeth side also, obviously, involved the President (Keith Carradine) and his henchman errrr Chief of Staff Russell Jackson (the brilliant as usual Zeljko Ivanek .... I think I might start calling the henchman role the Ivanek Role, he deserves that) in all kinds of hush-hush secrets. Still, the season belongs to Henry who becomes a manager for a spy within the circles of a Russian ruling secretariat that is drawn together like a garrote when the President of Russia, an American sympathizer, is murdered by order of a megalomaniac Mrs. President. The ensuing global tensions are riveting and the spy proves critical in maintaining world peace. But not without a price. The exact nature of that price is not known until virtually the last shot of the season. Powerful stuff.
#3 Alan Davies' As Yet Untitled (UK)
There have been times this last year and a half when I needed a smile. Not a laugh, because some times things were hurting too much for a big belly laugh. But a smile, something to brighten up even the darkest of my nights. A smile is such a wonderful thing, replete with healing power and will-regeneration. It's like an oasis in the desert, absolutely necessary for life in certain circumstances. And consistently this year, I smiled while watching Alan Davies at work on As Yet Untitled, hosting four comedians in an hour of sit-around-the-bar yakking about the joys and travails about being them in particular, comedians in general. With drinks on the table and little fanfare before the show starts, this British version of a sort of the American The Green Room with Paul Provenza worked, letting you in on the neat people's table at the local bar for a Thursday night post-work get-together. Too early in the week for folks to go off the edge, just pleasant chat with stories and laughs and yes, smiles. Davies is also the co-star of the ever-great QI (which suffered this season through the other co-star, Stephen Fry, and his magic talents as they were). There, he is comedic foil for the put-downs of Fry and the show's gag staff. Here, in his own eponymous show, Davies is the deft director of the story-telling. Each visiting comedian gets to drop names (sometimes from across the table, at least during one episode where Jon Richardson was involved) and tell stories about how they started and how they survived their worst of embarassments. In other words, the basic working goo that makes people laugh. The show's schtick is that they must look back at the end for once catch-phrase to use as the show's title for that episode. I will tell you the titles run from naughty to raunchy in most cases. The word Penis DOES pop up rather often, even though one or two of the guests each week is a lady. Or may be BECAUSE there are ladies in the house. Either way, the reality is that this is a show designed to amuse and delight rather than try to put you on the floor in spasmodic laughter. I need one of those around here. Thankfully, I've got one.
#2 Tyrant
It's hard to know how to approach a show about a bad guy. Think back to the run of Dexter as a must-see TV show that eventually just became too creepy for watching. Breaking Bad, which was about a reluctant bad guy, that needed canceling just about the time when the reluctant bad guy became less reluctant. The Sopranos, a killer with a family, who eventually winds up in the gun sights of the very people he had commanded for so long, before becoming too .... nice. Nice on a scale, but too nice. Stories about bad guys have a beginning, a middle and very definitely an end. How long is Tyrant going to last? It's now in the midst of its third season and I see plenty of ways for the actors to serve out the industry standard seven year contracts. After all, we are talking the ages-old tribal warfare that is the Arabic world. Ashraf Barhom is really, REALLY good as the crazy AND evil AND very human Jamal Al-Fayeed, ruler of Abuddin, thanks to the timely (and expedited) death of his cruel tyrant of a father back in the pilot two summers ago. The funeral served as the means of a home-coming for Jamal's brother, Bassam, who had escaped to America for the life of a doctor with doctor wife Molly (Jennifer Finnigan) and two spoiled brats of children, Noah Silver (Sammy) and Anne Winters (Emma). Bassam (Adam Rayner) goes through somewhat of a rebirth while back in the home land, leading a coup against Jamal in the first year and becoming Jamal's saviour in the second. Much is made of the situation in Syria where a London dentist eventually becomes the monster that is that country's ruler. But watching the first two seasons of Tyrant, and you can see how the world inhabited by the ruled and their rulers in that part of the world easily can produce a devil and an angel (or should I say Iblīs and malāk, given the locale). It's peculiar watching evil get a human face, which is completely due to Barhom's acting quirks. It's also peculiar watching the titular good guy Barry/Bassam kill. The seventh episode of season two, The Awful Grace of God, was the best hour of dramatic TV I saw last year, a powerful ode to how awful war is. In addition to Sammy doing a lot of growing up in the second season, I should also mention Jameel's boy Ahmed, played by Cameron Gharaee also did a pretty good turn at maturing too. Might be hope for him yet.
#1 Gotham
Sub-titled Rise of the Villains through the first part of the year, Gotham became what Batman became after a rocky start in the comic books ... a classic. This second season took giant strides in fleshing out the Villain's Gallery of foes for the future Batman. Whereas, we really only saw Oswald Cobblepot, the Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor in a bravura performance) plus the nascent Catwoman, Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova), plus a bunch of street level thugs and the occasional forgettable freak in season one, the second season brought us crooks aplenty. Azrael, the revived corpse of mayor (and major crook) Theo Galvan, was brought to life with smirking presence by James Frain. Future Two-Face aka Harvey Dent made more impact, thanks to Nicholas D'Agosto. The Firefly and Mr. Freeze both came back from the dead. All that coming back from the dead was because of B.D. Wong's Hugo Strange. Wong's chameleon-like ability to inhabit personnas make him a go-to actor. And he comes through here as the over-arcing bad guy through the year. Amongst the bad guys we also have to include one-time James Gordon paramour Barbara Keen, played by Erin Richards. She was bad, badder, and then good when it counted, which was a tad disappointing as I'm always intrigued into what turns a good person bad. Is it circumstance or something within them or a combination of the two? Whatever, we know what makes guys like Ben McKenzie's future Commissioner Gordon good. It is an indomitable will to overcome evil. Gordon has it, as does young Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) and his dashing butler Alfred (Sean Pertwee). Selina has more of it than she'd want to admit, putting her in the same boat with Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue, looking as disheveled as ever). Which brings me to the biggest metamorphosis of the year. Cory Michael Smith's Edward Nigma's evolution from police CSI to major loony-tunes The Riddler. It completed this year and the battle between The Riddler and the cops will be a lynch pin of however many seasons are left for this show. If it's anything like the comic book, we can sit back and watch the fun for the next 75 years. Or rather YOU will be able to. I'm just hoping to see the first half of that run.
That's it, my Top 25 in less than 13,000 words. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope even more that you'll check out the shows ... and maybe even the comics.
- Gotham
- Tyrant
- Alan Davies As Yet Untitled
- Madame Secretary
- Adam Ruins Everything
- Distant Shores S2
- Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
- Hundred Code
- New Tricks
- The Last Ship
- The Flash
- Hack My Life
- Daredevil
- Shark Tank
- Dark Matter
- The Blacklist
- Arrow
- Brooklyn Nine-Nine
- The Tunnel
- The Daily Show with Trevor Noah / Real Time with Bill Maher
- Limitless
- Jessica Jones
- Humans
- Girl Meets World
- The Good Wife
