And here is the top 25 ... honestly JUST 25. Well, NO more than 26.

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. 

1. Gotham
2. Tyrant
3. Alan Davies As Yet Untitled
4. Madame Secretary
5. Adam Ruins Everything
6. Distant Shores S2
7. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
8. Hundred Code
9. New Tricks
10. The Last Ship
11. The Flash
12. Hack My Life
13. Daredevil
14. Shark Tank
15. Dark Matter
16. The Blacklist
17. Arrow
18. Brooklyn Nine-Nine
19. The Tunnel
20. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah / Real Time with Bill Maher 
21. Limitless
22. Jessica Jones
23. Humans
24. Girl Meets World
25. The Good Wife

The Top 25 (Give But Not Take, About a Dozen) TV Shows of 20-15-2016 ... That I Enjoyed

The first comic books that I can distinctly remember reading (and collecting), hit the racks and spinners at drug stores all over western suburban Toronto in late 1961. I had turned six earlier in the summer, but had had a rough couple of months that required more than a single visit to my doctor of the time, Dr. Korntager. The drug store near his office in Malton had the BEST selection of comics you could imagine. And I had a mother who had two other young 'uns to look after, so a sick kid willing to stop making a fuss if only I could have a comic book made me an excellent eldest son. And like potato chips (another of my vices), I was not satisfied with having just one comic. In fact, I stopped counting after first 120,000. 

All of this is to certify that I'm a card-carryin' member of the comic book collector's collective's hive mind. I LOVE comic books. And that makes this year just about how I'd imagined a perfect future would be ... back when I was six. The reality is that I count ELEVEN comics in my top 40 this year. And there could have been more. Even properties you do NOT think are actual comic books in video format, you discover are truly funnies in four colours sprung to life. Or into animation. At any rate, if you truly despise comic books and hate how they have taken over the small screen AND the big movie screens, then I urge you to read with caution. Don't NOT read for heaven's sake. The whole art of finding stuff worth binging on is all about digging through the stuff you don't like to find the one or two series (or more, fingers crossed) that you will find worthy of spending a weekend watching episode after episode, only to wander back into work Monday as if you had spent all weekend in your PJs, hands shovelling popcorn into your maw as often as possible. 

As usual, before I get to my Top 40 25, or so, I have to get some of the other stuff out of the way, starting with the warning about the truly awful, the sins against small screen cinema, the worst of the worst, the "What were they thinking?" disasters that absolutely should be costing people jobs so that kind of thing never happens again, the ... well, you get the drift. 

 

This season was marred by some bad stuff. Outright soft porn managed to gain a foothold on the screen this season. There's been sex scenes on TV for years. Game of Thrones being a leading example. Gruesome sex most of the times, but all the various naughty bits on display in the course of a story that MANY find interesting while being titillating every now and then. But The Girlfriend Experience and then Submission came and went with nary a CNN 'Breaking Newsflash' on the fact that nominally third-tier channels thought either would be a good use of bits and bytes. It's tough to make sex boring. Sad to say, but it has to be said. Or typed. Or whatever.

Then there was the comedies, of which the cringing Ken Jeong starrer Dr. Ken (semi-autobiographical from what I understand) was bad, even with Dave Foley doing the 'Foley Role.' Liked Suzy Nakamura as always, but Jeong thought playing a cringing Oriental made good TV. Oops, Nope. Just another side-show act (from Community and those Hangover movies) seen in small samples playing a LOT less successfully in the title role.

Dr. Ken was ALMOST as bad as the almost award-winning Truth be Told, an NBC failure of epic proportions. A young black couple, a young white couple, and utterly charmless writing, made for a contender as the worst TV experience of the year right out of the box, a clumsy show about prejudicial thinking. This was scraping to the bottom of the guano pit as it turned out. I managed four shows before declaring the show without hope. And maybe it's just co-incidence, but Vanessa Lachey has now done this show AND the execrable Dads a couple of years ago. A beautiful lady ... with a REALLY bad habit of showing up on worthless TV drivel. Sigh.

As bad as those shows were, I actually declared The Player dead during the third commercial break. Thus, an easy winner of The Worst of the Worst Award. An action star vehicle for the returning-to-TV Wesley Snipes. I think paying off tax bills had something to do with Snipes taking on this incredibly vapid 'action thriller'  with the usual dose of conspiracy nut sauce. The show ACTUALLY starred a charisma-starved Philip Winchester and the only saving grace, a charming Britt, Charity Wakefield (who I hope reappears sometime soon on something else). THEN the afore-mentioned doughy, haircut-challenged Snipes as something of a mysterious mentor. That this show lasted nine episodes was an example of NBC's futility at making good TV these days. A bad show with LOTS of external filming in Vegas, made the price tag even greater. That sound you heard was stock in NBC/Universal taking a hit. Wow, was it bad. 

Disappointing award does NOT go to The Arrow this year. It's actually in the top 25 again. No, I had to go elsewhere for my disappointment this time. I was disappointed in Jon Stewart leaving The Daily Show, (a fact I MIGHT have mentioned RIGHT here last year) but I like Trevor Noah as a stick-in replacement for Stewart, rather than making a Stewart-like overhaul of the show when Stewart succeeded Craig Kilborn. The problem is that the producers let key talent depart (Jessica Williamson just last month, and Samantha Bee) and kept the unfunny Jordan Klepper. I'll keep my fingers crossed that they let Hasan Minhaj, Desi Lydic, Ronny Chieng and Roy Wood Jr. occupy the correspondent role more often than Klepper.  It's almost CONVENTION TIME. Will Cleveland '16 bring back nightmares from Chicago '68? Might need a few laughs if that happens. 

Castle went out with a whimper, repeating the same tired "We can't speak to each other" nonsense for one last season. You can argue the show went four or five seasons too many. But it was great in the beginning. Heroes Reborn had no reason to come back. Save when Japanese stars Kike Sukezane (anime character Miko) and Toru Uchikado (as Miko-worshiping Ren) were on the screen, my reaction most of the time is, please make this go away and never come back. Again. Might be safe from this gaining ANY network exec's blessing ever again. And Blindspot with it's artsy-fartsy flashback story-telling style, was almost as mindlessly imbecilic as Heroes Reborn. Maybe imbecilic is too harsh. Implausible writing in a major way, especially spoiling what was a nice side story-line featuring Ashley Johnson's Patterson and her geeky charming boyfriend David (Joe Dinicol). Plus Jaime Alexander is on my list. You know, the one that says, 'stay away.' Check out season 1 of Kyle XY and then the second season with Alexander added to the cast. I hold grudges.

Sharon Stone is NOT on that list. Just the opposite, I've been crushing on her since my teen years. I USED to say I could watch a squirming, smiling Sharon Stone and be content. Turns out I was wrong. STAY AWAY from Agent X, another conspiracy claptrap show. Still Gerald McRaney (how they don't find him a movie butler role ... Jeeves, I'm looking at you) and Fred Dryer was a delight. And so was Russian ex-pat Olga Fonda, who I assumed was going to be frenemy to Stone and her Agent X(Jeff Hephner) for what was hoped to be many, many seasons. But they somehow created something with Sharon Stone that I did want to watch. This was ALMOST 'The' award winner.

But nope, The Disappointment of the Year Award goes to Quantico. Take the implausibilities of Blindspot, marry it with  the stretched time-bouncing SF story-telling from Heroes Reborn and the mating would look something like Quantico. A series built around the undeniable beauty of Priyanka Chopra, making her North American debut. But the time looping back and forth and the implausibilities piled on top of improbabilities of behaviour and logic, just made me want to shout at the screen. I gave up after eight episodes of this big budget disaster about a terrorist disaster (or two or three). It felt like getting belted upside the noggin just to enjoy Chopra, Johanna Braddy, Josh Hopkins and Graham Rogers. Thankfully, I stopped the insanity of expecting coherency to suddenly start. But what a shame, with that cast.

So were some of the following shows, each of which I judge to be A Guilty Pleasure: Uncle Buck, Rush Hour/The Catch, Fresh off the Boat, Chasing Life, Mr. Robinson, Faking It, Private Eyes and Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons. Do I R-E-C-0-M-M-E-N-D each of these shows? Not without plenty of reservations. But honestly, there's something about each of them that makes me tell you SOMETHING about each is worthy of taking a look at in summer re-runs (or on one of the ubiquitous TV smorgasbord re-play services).

Uncle Buck is the second TV version of the famous John Candy movie (and there's been at least two other failed pilots to boot). I was completely prepared to give this a pass when I got stuck playing remote control roulette and happened upon the first episode. And I liked the kids (Iman Benson, Sayeed Shahidi and the adorable l'il one, Aalyrah Caldwell), it had James Lesure, who's always good, and Nia Long, who's usually good. Mike Epps was a mumbling Uncle Buck, which is why the show is NOT in my tops list. But it WAS charming. (and yeah, 'WAS' is right. It's been canceled).

CTV here in Canada hoped a summer pairing of another movie turned TV show, CBS's Rush Hour, paired with caper show The Catch from ABC, would catch fire and get the ratings. Rush Hour was badly planned as the show never understood the need for the fights to be thrilling AND funny, as only Jackie Chan does with certainty. Turns out, secondary players Page Kennedy (as crooked Gerald, the cops' best pal) and Aimee Garcia as fellow cop and single parent Didi Diaz, were wonderful on screen. Diaz is all grown up from her days on Dexter. Welcome into my home Aimee. The Catch was also a wonder of background casting. In fact, had they simply switched female lead Mireille Enos with Rose Rollins, the show would have been great. But, as self-indulgent as this complaint is, I could never get over Enos' false eyelashes. Or if not false, mascara'd to a silly length. I never got the chemistry she supposedly had with the able Peter Krause. And the show wasted Jacky Ido, who I had such high hopes on from Brooklyn Taxi. I might be cursing Elvy Yost by predicting big things for her in the future (as I did once with Ido), but this is my right as the writer of this blog. Darn waste of other pros, like Sonya Walger, Alimi Ballard and John Simm. A caper show that I can't recommend ... over eyelashes!!!

Jason Priestly will be forever stuck in Beverly Hills 90210 (the ORIGINAL one) But he and his TV daughter Jordyn Negrii (playing bind young Jules) have more then a few good moments in Private Eyes. Biggest problem for the now grizzled Priestley is that I just don't see the chemistry they are trying to create for him with co-star Cindy Sampson. Sigh. The show is shot in Toronto and isn't afraid of admitting it to be so. 

Lastly, Bill Simmons is a polarizing figure made more so when you can actually see him smirking. If you aren't a multiple Boston fan (with a minor affection for the Los Angeles Clippers), then Simmons already has caused your axe to start grinding. But so far, (three episodes in), Simmons has been around on the set when his guests said something interesting. This show works hard to alienate all but the most ardent sports fanatics. I am one, having let Simmons--the writer, change my mind on the best basketball players of all time (Oscar Robertson, Magic Johnson, Bill Russell. Michael Jordan and Larry Bird, convincing me Wilt Chamberlain didn't belong near the top). If he made the EXACT same arguments to me on TV, I'd change channels. Ignore him and pay attention to the guests. Unless you're from Boston, which means you really, REALLY like him.

I also understand that I like (and will watch), shows for just one character. Take Fresh off the Boat, loosely based on the life of famed chef and TV presenter, Eddie Huang, the show is really great whenever the youngster playing young Eddie, Hudson Yang, is off-screen. Eddie, the little guy, is ... boring. Not so his TV mom, played by Constance Wu. I've come to understand that I enjoy the funny aspects of broken people. And Jessica Huang is broken. But in a funny, funny way. Everybody else is okay in the show, but too much Eddie and too little Jessica could spoil your TV experience. Getting it the other way would make for a lucky day. Chasing Life was strictly chicklit stuff but I developed a real crush on Italia Ricci and truly enjoyed Haley Ramm as younger sister Brenna, who has lots of problems, one of which was NOT having cancer. That was all Ricci's April Carver. Her best friend Beth (Aisha Dee) and Grandma (Rebecca Schull) were brilliant. But the decision to let Scott Michael Foster's Leo go bye-bye while Foster moved to the odious oil stinker Blood & Oil was a series killer. Still, Chasing Life was a standout in the genre.

Mr. Robinson was a summer series featuring ... Craig Robinson, which PROBABLY had something to do with the title. Robinson plays a high school music teacher (accidentally) and the front of a house band that is looking for that all-elusive Big Break. And overly entertaining, if only for Robinson (and his most-excellent song-writing) and Peri Gilpin. Keeping things in a high school vein, this brings me to Faking It, the MTV show that featured American Idol competitor Katie Stevens and Rita Volk faking being lesbians in order to gain social status. Turns out Volk's character, Amy, is curious. In so many ways. Volk's yet another import from the Russian area of the world (Uzbekistan) and she's going to do well. So are the REAL reasons to watch the show, gayer than gay Shane, as played by Michael J. Willet, and hellion princess (in her own mind) Lauren, played with potty mouth rage by doe-eyed, diminutive Bailey De Young. Her ragers played off the always scheming Shane to steal the show. Like Mr. Robinson and Chasing Life and Rush Hour and possibly The Catch, we are talking about the dead, series life-wise. They've been canceled or are near it.

Time to turn my attention to Honourable Mentions, shows that I liked, but that I didn't like as much as others. Remember, this is not only purely subjective, it's NOT a list of the BEST shows on TV. Indeed, there are some series who have made this list, but disappeared in subsequent seasons. I like Homeland's first season, as an example, of agreeing with the TV credits. Afterwards, not so much. They say familiarity breeds contempt. Well, I rarely have contempt for shows I liked before, but they have to change and do things to keep my interest going to remain on this list. Sometimes that happens. Most times not. NCIS, for example, was my top show one year and has never appeared on the list in any other season of the long-running show. So, if you are expecting to see the usual litany of critic darlings here, be aware you will be wrong. But keep on reading. Something from here on will intersect with your interests. 

Two rookie shows turned out to fill the JUST-MISSED slots. The first was Lucifer, based, ta-dah!!!, on a comic book, although it was more loosely based than usual. Tom Ellis was hugely entertaining in a role not greatly removed from Rush, a show last year that forced him to give up his Welsh accent for something generically American. Letting him loose with his native accent and a glee in playing Lucifer as the male half of a detective duo pairing amateur male with woman cop (see Castle, as a working example), was devilishly fun. Lauren German was a wonderfully stressed out Chloe Decker, complete with cute kid Trixie played with devilish delight by Scarlett Estevez. Got a career ahead of her, that one. The season ends with a single word that is almost the equal of 'Rosebud' in Citizen Kane. If THAT is a spoiler, then you, the reader, have failed me, the writer. So, NOT SORRY!!!

The strong finish with Lucifer is counter-point to the horrible season-ender for Rosewood, dropping it SIX spots in the standings. Boy, did I hate that last episode. Until then, a amateur male sleuth (although amateur is a tad harsh, as Rosewood is a police consultant who ends up doing more morgue work than the official coroner) and the usual female cop, Jaina Lee Ortiz playing Detective Villa. And for the first few episodes, it was DETECTIVE Villa, not Annalise. But given time, Villa warms to the considerable charms of Dr. Beaumont Rosewood, Jr., as embodied by Morris Chestnut. Chestnut is an always charming rapscallion in every role he plays, it seems. And he gets to the point of making a real connection to Annalise, a widow as the series begins, when the last episode goes implausibly off the tracks. Twenty-one pretty good episodes and then a clunker. That's why there's an honourable mention consolation prize. Also loved the pairing of Gabrielle Dennis as Rosey's kid sister Pippy, and her partner, TMI Izikoff (Anna Konkle). Plus Domenic Lombardozzi as Villa's boss. But that last episode ...

A GREAT final episode pulled Jennifer Lopez-starrer Shades of Blue up into 30th overall. A fairly taught show with attention to detail regarding the pressure of being on the good guy side, even while stepping (sometimes JUMPING) over that line.  A whole final season that was truly final, dropped my perennial favourite, The Musketeers, down to 35th. I just couldn't handle the deaths of so many characters, and peculiarly, D'Artagnon's apparent invulnerability to sword-skewering turned even worse, when a building (or was it two?) was basically dropped on him. Sigh. No question that there will be no fourth season. I suspect that there WILL be a second season of Stan Lee's The Lucky Man (aka Lucky Man), starring James Nesbitt as a London police detective headed down the road of self-destruction to oblivion when he turns his luck around with a chance encounter at a casino that turns him into literally the luckiest guy around. Said luck has to come from somewhere and it's his partners that end up paying the price for his luck. All of this while uncovering a great conspiracy at the very head of the organization he works for. Only one question. Exactly what did Stan Lee contribute to this show from across the pond from where he normally does his work?

Star Wars Rebels had the best of a fairly disappointing animation season. To bad the trailers for next season portend different looks for the characters and the changes are NOT for the good. Apparently, a different studio overseas is producing the artwork. Still. tje show finished 29th and is joined in the HM's by Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, which featured the best humour of the myriad of Marvel and DC animated properties. Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Sinister Six was in the ballpark, but the reliance on Dr. Octopus sunk it far enough that it did not make the top 40. As for anime, there was one Korean series I liked enough to watch all the episodes, not that I could recommend it here. I WISH I could have found an English sub-titled or dubbed version of Re: Zero Starting a Life in Another World. Eminently watchable despite not speaking Japanese, I eventually decided I would await a translation. Never came. But the animation is SOOOO good, that you could figure most things out for yourself. 

More near misses from the comic book sector. iZombie slipped because turning major baddie David Anders' Blaine human made for less ominously-tinged fun for (here's a switch) amateur detective Liv (Rose McIvor), the coroner's assistant/zombie, and detective cop Clive (Malcom J. Goodwin). Loved Rahul Kohli as Ravi and Alyson Michalka as Peyton, but my dislike for Robert Buckley's Major was not overcome this year. CBS let us have a look at the extremely likable Melissa Benoist as Supergirl, but then banished her to CW for season two. If only they'd left Fort Rozz in the Phantom Zone and not flooded Earth with super-powered Kryptonians. Still, points for involving Dean Cain and Helen Slater. May season two discover Arrow-like improvements. Hated DC's Legends of Tomorrow mostly, but I couldn't help but like the snark of Wentworth Miller as Captain Cold and ... I'm having trouble typing this given my dislike of him in Arrow (and other things), but the eternal sunshine-y optimism of Brandon Routh's Atom. Plus, we have been promised The Justice Society of America in season two. 'Nuff for me. Barely. Not strictly speaking a comic book series, Comic Book Men, still has me as a regular watcher of the Kevin Smith vanity project. Did I mention I am a collector (and former comic book store flunkie and a software programmer who sells comic book store point of sale software?). I like comic books and there's plenty more series to talk about in the top 25, which, honest, I am close to getting around to.

What else in the Honourable Mentions. Not a great year for animal material despite a flood of stuff relating to Sir David Attenborough's 90th birthday. I like The Secret Life of the Zoo, which once more visits the Chester Zoo. But all that interesting elephant stuff goes for naught with a dreadful (crashing right out of the rankings) last episode. Echo and the Elephants of Amboseli benefits from a wonderful narration by Noma Dumezweni, who was born in Swaziland and lived in Botswana, Kenya and Uganda, thus retaining a wonderful accent that distinguishes her from other BBC narrators. But the series was twice as long as it might have been with tighter editing. Still, a great show on elephants. 

To close out the HM's a couple of quickly canceled shows. Angel from Hell starred Maggie Lawson (always awesome) and Jane Lynch (pretty well perpetually perfect) and was very funny, at least through the five episodes that originally aired. But I guess the CBS execs saw some of the episodes it has been burning off in July and decided that it had to go despite that strong handful of episodes out of the gate. Too bad. Thought this one had legs. The other quick cancel button victim was Minority Report from Fox. I mean, SF + Fox = a premature death ... who could have predicted that? Apart from any SF viewer or Fox watcher of the last twenty years. The show had warts all over, not the least of which was trying to run a TV show on the carcass of one of the biggest budget SF movies of all time. I thought Meagan Good (female cop Lara Vega) and amateur sleuth Dash (Stark Sands) as the pro-amateur pairing that screams "Like us!!" at me, were pretty good. Rakish Nick Zano as Arthur, Dash's brother was also delightful. Weirdly, the show DID get the notice the plug was coming out and finished off the story to a reasonable degree. Shame of it was I thought this MIGHT evade the Fox curse. Why I trust that network with SF projects is beyond me.

Well, ready for a Top 25? Thanks for reading to this point. From here on, solid recommendations for binge-watching ... especially if you like comic books.

The Top 25 (or so) TV Shows of 2014-15

FAIR WARNING: The following is 12,000 words long and contains rants, hosannas and descriptions of naughty language. I apologize for none of those things.

Birthday day is here. Time to trot a few thousand words about the DC Universe, cartoons, crazy info-bit websites, a shocking soccer citation and lots of animals. Plus lots of crap.

Yep, I start my list of enjoyable TV by talking about crap. That's CRAP, all in pretentious capital letters. Actually, it's not about the word itself, it's about that OTHER four-letter euphemism about excrement. It's become ubiquitous on non-cable TV shows, as the constraints of not offending Bible-Belters sitting in their living room with their progeny a couple of hours after supper, lose influence over the Cable-verse. So, you hear it ALL. THE. TIME. I'll be complaining jointly about my 22nd-ranked show and it's potty-mouth 'might have been' partner soon enough. But here's one thing to think about. Having ONE character say it 48 times in one one-hour show is not writing to character. It's LAZY writing. I know TV is dumbing down the audience at unprecedented rates, but why hurry it along? The thesaurus that any reasonably capable writer kept handy has given way to WordWeb and Google and other electronic devices. But it's actually given way to the very thought of even using it. Or so it seems. 

Lazy writers not only have characters say it ad nauseam, they have ALL the characters utter it like it wouldn't be wrong to hear it out of the mouths of babes, of whatever age. It's an ugly word and an equally uglier admission that the user simply doesn't have the mental wherewithal to do better. It's a grunt of noise, meaning whatever it needs to mean in general, at any given time. It shows a certain lack of mental acuity to assume EVERY adult uses it without reservation, even when meeting new people for the first time. I don't cut a blue streak until I know who I can swear at/to without offending them greatly. Or whether to do it to actually offend them. It also happens, regrettably, when I lose my temper and go ballistic. I do get out of control at times. And yet, I've never said that word. Not once. And maybe, the bovine version of the word might have escaped my lips once. In now 59 years of patrolling the planet. I can't even WRITE the ##)&$^# word. It offends me that much.

Does that make me a Pollyanna? Yes, so what? My parents raised me right. First time I ever swore (and it was a mild epithet), my mother DID wash my mouth out with soap. I have a Pavlovian response that causes me to get a sudsy taste in my mouth in saltier language times. Enough going off on something STUPID PEOPLE CANNOT CONTROL. I'm a thinking person and can. Writers? You should be too.

Alright, let's kick this off with the biggest disappointment of the year. I thought long and hard about it, lots longer than in the past two years when Arrow was SUCH an easy choice, and came up with The Late Show starring Jon Stewart. Originally, I had it in my tenth slot. And here it is, not in the top 25 and the world is spinning completely out of control. There's nothing wrong with the work of Jessica Williams and the beleaguered Stewart. But the bunch that was brought in to carry the water in the absence of sooooo much talent leaving the show this past year, obviously broke Stewart. Sure, the sure idiocy of the right wing lunatic society known as the American Republican Party and their supporters was always going to push a sane man REQUIRED to watch and comment closer and closer to the edge, to wanting to become ANYTHING ELSE. But we all thought it couldn't happen. It did. Stewart's gone next month. I think Trevor Noah will do an interesting show. But it won't be Stewart's show. A generation has grown up with Stewart. And they've all been set adrift. I feel lost at the thought. So, yeah, even though it really still was a top ten show, the biggest disappointment was The Daily Show (and Larry Wilmore's The Nightly Show was a close second). Bill Maher's Real Time was a distant third, only because of his insistence at allowing evil people air time. It's core Americana to allow all their free speech. But there's no reason the free speech has to be on HIS show. NOTE to BILL: Let them yak on Fox, Bill. Otherwise, you really did have a good year. But I've kept including your show each year and there comes a time for having duplicitous twerps on to offend my ears has a price. And ya, putting that price on a piece in a blog nobody ever reads will surely force Maher to my point of view. IF you believe that, then I DO have some swampy Florida real estate that will soon be home to something important. No offer refused. 

Moving on to the 'I've been VERY VERY BAD, Santa' list, we have a bunch of truly heinous shows, including the second season debut show just this week of Spun Out. Add Young Punch Drunk and you have the nadir of Canadian comedy happening before our very feet. I Live with Models, by comparison, looks like Neil Simon writing. It's still dreadful when not compared to Canadian sludge.

Mulaney was about a comedian I've never heard of with a cast of actors and characters that needed Elliot Gould off the bench and the 'should have been benched' Martin Short to avoid the totally forgettable label. Gould was the only slightly dim light in the cast. I'd list the rest of the players, but I can't remember their names, including that one who the series was named after. I DO remember that John Cho and Karen Gillen were in bad fax copy of Pygmalion called Selfie that had no business ever appearing on the air. And look what they did with the incredible beauty of Katharine McPhee in Scorpion and Debra Messing in The Mysteries of Laura. McPhee could read a phone book for all I care. But I still couldn't watch a show about stupid supposedly smart people, even with Robert Patrick trying sooooo hard to stop the rot. And it is coming BACK this fall!!! The idea of making Messing a schlump or slightly less surprising Kate Walsh as a train wreck in Bad Judge, well those are ideas that NEVER should have seen the light of day. Come on, people! Gorgeous, intelligent women and THAT was the best you could come up with? And no, I didn't need my thesaurus for the Messing reference.

Still not the worst. Neither was Black-ish with Anthony Anderson in a show where the jokes would have been just as flat, just as unfunny, if the cast had been about all white. Marsai Martin had a bit of comedic presence. But that was it. How can you make (another) non-funny Anderson comedy? With two strikes on the scoreboard thanks to Guys with Kids, Anderson's a second season of Black-ish from being permanently banished to drama. Anderson is truly gifted comically. Somebody knock him upside the head and tell him stop with the stereo-typically dopey family and get with writing smart stuff that doesn't depend on ethnicity. Laurence Fishbourne, I'm talking to you, sir.

No, the worst crime against humanity this past TV season was Stalker. It was, there's no way around saying it, stalker porn. Hateful. Spiteful. Utter trash. Worse than Dads of last year's infamy which was just massively inept and offensive. Stalker was a how-to manual for the criminally insane. What else can I say? I think every participant should be barred from TV for twenty years for their involvement in making this ... crap and letting it on the air. 

There's no way to go but up from here, right? Let's dive into the honourable mentions with Sir David Attenborough's Conquest of the Skies. Attenborough is one of Britain's national treasures, a silky-voiced man who has made nature acceptable to the nation, indeed, to the world, for more than SEVENTY years now. And it isn't just that famously informed purr of a voice. It's the fact that Attenborough thoroughly loves nature in all of it's glory and loves talking about it and showing gorgeous pictures of it on the telly. Conquest of the Skies stands on it's own, but this placement is almost a life-time achievement award for Attenborough. He is approaching his nineties and it's tough to even contemplate a time when we won't be hearing and watching Attenborough explain how and why nature is as nature seems to be. How much longer he can go scooting over a Scottish loch in a speed boat while a flapping goose wing is inches away from his noggin, is anybody's guess. I'd rather the answer to be measured in decades when I know that's not possible. I've collected what I can of the Attenborough collection of outstanding nature TV. Conquest of the Skies is very good in that company, telling the story of how flight developed amongst the various animals that have lived on earth over the millennia from the first winged insects to the flying dinosaurs to today's birds and flying mammals. It's all interesting stuff. And the best episode was the 'Making Of' fifth episode. Gawd, I hope he has another twenty series in the can. I wish him the best of productive health into the far, far future.

Although the cream of the animated crop was very good indeed, I was still hurting for finding ways to get Beware the Batman's second half of it's single season or Karen Senki (Japanese anime) onto the ranking list. Karen Senki came close as an interesting take on future distopias, with the source of all the 'dis' in the distopia being robots turning into overlords for the human race. Karen Senki was actually really well done, but suffered from the usual anime-obsessed butt shots from a mini-skirt perspective. I was the only Beware the Batman fan last year, so it's okay to be lonely with the same happiness that I got at least 13 extra intelligent shows this year. And it WAS a comic-book year extraordinaire, after all. Quick thank you to Netflix for a third season of Dragons. Plus, the taste I got of Mechanima's Justlce League: Gods and Monsters makes it a must see this coming year. 

Comic Book Men couldn't wrangle a fifth straight year in the nether regions of the top 25. These are my peeps. Brian Johnson IS me, with a longer beard, a bigger presence and important friends. But the reason Comic Book Men, Kevin Smith's vanity project with his comic store, is down here is that there's just a LITTLE too much crushing of people coming into the store to peddle their little treasures. It's educational, the going rate for comic stores to purchase other people's treasures being around 25 per cent of value. But there's a certain sameness to the whole series and I'm detecting a little disdain and even some dislike for customers from Walt and the boys. Brian always was disdainful, but now he has peers. 

Hotel India and The Queen's Castle were two extraordinarily good shows about palaces. The first show features Mumbai's Taj Mahal Palace, the country's grandest hotel. The history, culture and contrast that is the Taj Mahal was hugely entertaining. It even discussed that horrible terrorist attack where the hotel was almost taken over by the religious zealots from Pakistan, bringing hatred and death directly to the lives of the rich and famous. The Queen's Castle show was NOT about Buckingham Palace, but about Windsor Castle, the true family home of Queen Elizabeth II of England. The creators were given unprecedented access to the castle over almost a year and the results were spectacular. The two shows contrasted and compared showpiece homes with frequent visitors. Very worth your time to hunt for them on BBC Canada.

I split on repeats of the two violent offenders. Vikings makes honourable mention for a second straight year. Banshee's third year? Disappointing. It has petered out, as has Strike Back. The Americans lost the paranoia at it's core and turned into a "Let's save Nina" adventure. I'm glad we had not seen the last of Annet Mahendru as Nina, but the show suffered greatly in it's third season from the almost complete absence of Margo Martindale's Claudia. At least she got one show in. Not enough to keep The Americans in a higher perch, but to still comfortably recommend the show.  Gadget Man just hangs on to it's HM spot. Love the show, the gadgetry and I don't mind NOT BEING ELIGIBLE for the bling contest it runs. But you have to really have a passion for tech to overcome the continuing fact that Richard Ayoade has replaced Stephen Fry permanently. The man's deadpan delivery, 'fro from the wild side, and candy-coloured suits tends to offend the eye and ear. But did I mention the tech BLING!!!! Did you just catch me sneaking in Would I Lie to You here to keep it, as always, forever on my list? Hope so. 

By the way, I once swore fealty to The Big Bang Theory. This is the only mention of the show this year. And it's NOT an Honourable Mention.

Time to throw in all these show notes I've been keeping this year. Here's the Top 25. I frame this list as always with no implications that these are the best 25 (or so, but less than 50, I promise) shows. They are the ones that entertained and informed me the most. My tastes. My list. Them's the rules.

25: The Lion Queen (South Africa) ties The Lion Man (South Africa/New Zealand) via UK's Animal Planet

Why choose amongst the safari parks run by either Andi Rive or Craig Busch? Now, admittedly, I've just discovered The Lion Man which has head ham Busch making the most of the magnificence of Jabullah, the white lion and star of South Africa's Jabullah Big Cat Sanctuary. Jabullah is simply awesome, a huge cat with a kitty-kat disposition, most of the time. Busch is (was, this show started in 2007) in love with the sound of his own voice, but you can see the love he has for big cats and he honestly looks like he is doing the best he can for them. A bit of a hammy Tarzan, with Ranger Rick-type outfits. I haven't chosen BETWEEN the two lion-oriented shows, but if I did, I'd admit I'm utterly infatuated with Rive, the owner and last hope for the Glen Garriff Lion Reserve. I can't help myself. Let's get my admiration for Rive, the real life Lion Queen out of the way. If it were remotely possible she'd consider a proposal, I'd be on the first plane to South Africa and get down on one creaky old knee and ask if she'd accept a hand in helping out with her lion preserve. This is one seriously capable person, a mid-wife by training, who showed up to help a friend with her failing, lawsuit-threatened sanctuary for Lions that she inherited from a husband, ill-suited to fulfill his truly noble venture. Rive and fellow idealistic Lion-lover Kathy, preside over a group of lions with personality plus. The plucky twosome and their African helpers go from one finance-created crisis to the next, which is the only flaw in the show, since it borders on whining. But being reality TV, such flaws are expected and accepted. I hate cats, and lions are really just big pussies with REAL BIG teeth. But for this show, and for the male counterpart, I'll make exceptions. 

24: Hack My Life ties with Hacking the System ties with Crazy Russian Hacker (YouTube) ties with Mental Floss (YouTube)

I just realized I'm going to have more than 30 shows in my Top 25. That's what I get for writing this piecemeal, again. Oh well. Four 'shows' occupy the not-so-coveted 24th slot in the rankings. Each of the first three shows are really about life-hacks, not my programming brethren with a bit of nefarious in their personalities. Hack My Life brought Kevin Pereira back to my screen, long missed by me since his departure from Attack of the Show heralding the end for that long-running computer-oriented show. He and Brooke Van Poppelen have decent chemistry in trying out various hacks that legendarily work ... or not. Failure was one very funny option. It's been renewed by truTV and I'm looking forward to more. The YouTube channel Crazy Russian Hacker features Russian expatriot Taras Kul who does most of the testing himself. Or at least when not trying things out on his gorgeous Siberian Husky, Luka. He starts each episode with "Safety is the priority." I THINK that's what he says. The accent's pretty thick. He's honestly very likable, with a kid-like ability to answer questions that start with, "What if ..." You can't NOT like a guy who likes dogs and science. The Mental Floss channel, most notably known as a shoot off of famous VLogBrother John Green, frequently features hacks (mostly of the demystifying kind). Green is the author of many popular touchy-feely books, including one that is the basis for the upcoming Paper Cards movie. Lastly, Hacking the System is a Brian Brushwood starring vehicle. And Brushwood, who is legitimately a star in the computer world, as well as a gambler, magician and performance artist of some renown, spent whole shows either helping you out or scaring you witless. You'll never trust your security again, after watching Brushwood stalk a man who KNEW he was coming, and was powerless to prevent Brushwood from taking over his home. Try these shows as bits and pieces, a little dessert after some other heavy-handed show. 

23: StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Nothing heavy-handed about Tyson, nor any subtlety. Tyson is simply the most enthusiastic astronomer in the universe. He's Carl Sagan meets Richard Simmons, earnestness combined with expertise, a willingness to go outside his comfort zone and a TV presence that's made him and Bill Nye, the Science Guy the go-to people for questions about the skies. Indeed, Nye has a feature on each StarTalk. So you get all the astronomical telepresences we currently have, in one usually fairly-focused hour of talking about some aspect of science and it's impact on life on Earth. I like Tyson and his ability to talk to the masses. He's got a schtick that really does go back to Sagan, his boyhood hero. He met him and that set in concrete his life's path since. Hot as a nova after last year's remake of Sagan's seminal Cosmos, Tyson does a talk show that bears paying attention to. If he's in your interest spectrum, make sure you try and catch episodes.

22: Marvel's Daredevil

Honestly, this is the crap slot. And just as honestly, I've waited for years for Suits to grab this level of ranking. But I can't. And that is despite having Meaghan Markle and Sarah Rafferty occupying my dreams for a half-decade. Beautiful and feisty Rachel Zane (Markle) and sexy and all-knowing Donna Paulsen (Rafferty) are almost worth watching the show. But lead Gabrial Macht plays a truly unlikable lawyer in this legal show and if you aren't a fan of the human hamster, Rick Hoffman (plays Lous Litt), then you will not be able to work up enthusiasm for the show. I was borderline, just waiting for the writers to give up the cheap, lazy, shiftless (yeah, an intentional word choice) writing that keeps me from recommending you spend an hour with Meaghan and Sarah once a week. The writers simply take too much leeway in going off basic cable and turn the air into one crappy brown mess. Which also happens in Daredevil. An otherwise well-casted delight paean to Frank Miller comic book fans. One character, a female character, uses the word 48 times in a one-hour show that doesn't actually run 48 minutes in running time. That's a scatological bomb about once every 52 seconds of running time. Completely, and utterly, clueless. Sure, she's in the midst of a rough go, with a boss who dresses up, not quite in his jammies, but close, and fights crime in dimly-lot hallways for 13 episodes. About three hours too many. The pace, as my brother observed, was turgid. (Can I get any MORE obvious?). Complaints aside, Netflix has a winner with this one. Charlie Cox is perfect as Matt Murdock/Daredevil and Elden Hensen is even better as his partner Foggy Nelson. The foul-mouthed Karen Page is actually otherwise handled with aplomb by Deborah Ann Woll. I was disappointed in the rather ordinary hairstyle favoured by Bob Gunton's Leland Owsley. The Owl is one of the seminal Daredevil villains. But any disappointment in the Owl was more than overcome by the bravura performance put on by Vincent D'Onofrio as Wilson Fisk, The Kingpin. D'Onofrio's famous for his method acting, but he had ME believing his mannered but vicious Kingpin was every bit the evil doer I've known him to be over the last 40 years. A better pace and some smartly avoided potty mouth and this is number 22 with a bullet. I REALLY can see this being the best show on TV next year. Or the biggest disappointment. And yay for the battlesuit appearance at the end!

21: Mom (#15 Last Year)

A seriously not-funny thing happened to Mom. It turned into a drama with a few jokes thrown in. A REALLY downer of a turn. And one, that head honcho Chuck Lorre was rightfully afraid would cost him viewers. Said so on one of Lorre's vanity cards. So, how to evaluate the half-hour tragic almost-dramedy on these new specifications? The first impressions were really, really bad. The various Moms and Roscoe (Blake Rosenthal) and the ever-unpleasant Violet (Sadie Calvano) ended up homeless ... which isn't as funny as you might think. Or could imagine in your worst nightmares. But a half-dozen or so episodes in, with new digs seeming to have some permanence, Mom started becoming watchable again. I mean, really, the show was always worth watching because eldest Mom Allison Janney has turned Bonnie into an open invitation to attend the Emmy's forever (and expect to win most years). But it took awhile to have things settle. Before it became unsettled again. Up and down it went. Just like life, I guess. At the end, here the show sits at the tail end of the most entertaining show list. Anna Faris's Christy still remains eminently likable and Mimi Kennedy shows up to serve as the moral compass everybody else seems only to be able to see in rare moments, as cancer-stricken Marjorie. A word of gratitude for the appearances of Christy's ex, Baxter, played with mirthful befuddlement by Matt L. Jones. Mom isn't quite a dramedy and it's lost it's comedy credentials. IS there a word to combine tragedy and comedy. TragiDramaComedy? Watch and email me the answer to that one. Please! Lorre has made his point. Now, I just wish he could give me back my laughs without the utter sadness he surrounds it with.

20: iZombie

Puhlease spare me from zombies! It's a genre I hate with a passion. Zombie shows are brainless, created by the video game industry to legitimize brainlessly shooting guns off in games that would be banned on SOOOOOO many levels otherwise. That there's now a thriving book and movie industry to go along with the video games is one of the first signs of the apocalypse coming this century. Maybe even this decade. HOW in the world, did zombies become interesting, let alone popular? Well, in a word, they aren't interesting. Simple as that. Zombie lovers have no life. And this from a virtual recluse who needs nurses regularly. I hate zombies. I hope that's clear ... And I love iZombie, another borderline DC Universe comic (DC uses the Vertigo Books brand on it, most of the time). Hunh??? Okay, the comic itself has become something visually interesting thanks to artist Mike Allred. So, my guilty pleasure over the art is now in the open. And the TV show comes from the folks behind all-time fave Veronica Mars. Plus, Rob Thomas got David Anders to be the villainous Blaine DeBeers. So, the show was a worth a look. And I fell in love wth perky Rose McIver playing zombie/coroner Liv Moore. I would have liked McIver a bit punkier in look, hiding her dire secret that she treated the job as her restaurant. But the Allred visuals continued apace. Thomas' take on the coroner with special powers talent saw McIver simply replace chowing down on skull contents for the mumbo jumbo Eliza Dusku did from a similar situation in the late lamented Tru Calling. Liv became a crime-solving dynamo, despite her limited diet. If you have to make an exception to the Zombie's Stink (Literally) rule, this is the show to hold out for. Funny, sometimes thrilling, a bit of occasional whodunnit mystery makes for a marvelous melange. One question though, who names their kid Major Lilywhite?

19: Cristela

I get that the great looking Latina show this year was a couple of networks over where Jane the Virgin made a lot of fun of telenovelos and had cute as a button Gina Rodriguez in as many scenes as possible. It's the show that's coming back, after all. But honestly, and out here in public, I'd rather spend a half-hour with Cristela Alonzo than with Rodriguez's loopy hour long silly-fest any day. Alonzo's character, based on herself, has immense heart, being Latina in a law office in Texas, where her minority status and the fact she's a woman working her way through law school at nights, makes for a gritty mash-up. Stock characters, stock situation, made different on TV only by Alonzo's being Hispanic, this could have been a horrible vanity project. Not mentioning any guys named George, but belittling Mexican Americans on TV seems too easy. And has for years. It was the fact that this show played true to the Mexican-American nature that I've met that won me over. Big hearts abound and even the stock Caucasian characters have a tad bit more depth than expected. I liked that Andrew Leeds' Josh figured out the jewel that was Cristela and came on puppy-dog strong barely a few episodes in. Loved that the Boss's spoiled oblivious kid had some brains. Cristela's family argued like all families I know, but pulled together when needed. Roxana Ortega's Daniela was the family's answer to the aforementioned Justine Lupe's Maddie back at the office. Hubby Carlos Ponce (Felix) was just the right amount of acerbic and the backbone to the family. And hard to love Mama, Terry Hoyos' Natalia, somehow ended up lovable in every episode. I liked the kids too. I just liked everybody and didn't mind spending 30 minutes with them each week. I'm going to miss Cristela on the air in this show. She (the actual actress) will be back, probably in supporting roles in movies. Unless you're George Lopez, you don't get multiple chances to do damage to the image of that group more than once. Well, TV-wise. Can't ignore the abilities of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and The Hair Himself, Donald Trump.  So, until we meet again, adios. It was good knowing you Cristela.

18: Girl Meets World

I've done lots of things in my life that I anxiously waited to do perfectly. Just once. A perfect Bridge game, a perfect radio sports broadcast. A perfect first draft of something I wrote. I've had three perfect Bridge games now, one broadcast and never a first draft that went untouched. I still yearn. You get the idea. We all have that one or two (or more) things that we'd like to pull off a perfect version of. Just once, in most cases. The casting directors for Girl Meets World can scratch casting a TV show off their bucket list. Girl Meets World is perfectly casted and perfectly charming. Oh, the casting directors had an easy start, taking the whole Boy Meets World universe and looking at it through the lens of time. I can't think of too many BMW characters that matter who haven't shown up in Disney's re-do. Ben Savage's Cory Matthews is all grown up and now has the William Daniels role as a teacher. Daniels still shows up as Mr. Feeny and word has it that he has taped scenes specially designed to be end-pieces for the show's season, even if it runs years. Which is just bloody brilliant, because it's going to last seven years minimum. The scene with the evocation of Feeny at the end of the pilot was the clinching touch on me becoming a week in, week out fan ... despite Disney having the usual eclectic first-run schedule. Of course, where there's Cory, there's Danielle Fishel's Topanga, the lawyerly wife and reasoning core of the family. Rider Strong's Shawn Hunter is a semi-regular, as is Danny McNulty, the school janitor and one-time terrorizing bully back on the original. Cory's brothers Eric (Will Friedle) and Josh (Uriah Shelton) have also made multiple re-appearances, as have the parents William Russ and Bettsy Randle. And there's even been a sighting of Lee Norris as Minkus. He's the father of new Minkus, Farkle, played with hilarity by Corey Fogelmanis. He's ... perfectly weird and a good counter-weight to Peyton Meyer. Meyer might, MIGHT I say, be a little too mature for this middle school comedy. But he's the kind of potential boyfriend you can be sure Cory would want for his daughter Riley, played with winning charm by Rowan Blanchard. Blanchard is gawky, goofy, girly and a future star. She might be already. Playing her best friend Maya, the tough as nails best friend role, is Sabrina Carpenter who I was familiar with from The Goodwin Games. Her step up in quality is breathtaking. SHE's going to be a star too. Plus Disney has the two girls sing the infernally infectious theme song. Don't binge watch this show. The song will NEVER leave your head. Better get in a plug for the new youngest kid, Augie Maturo playing ... Augie! Time and space is rounding down. Can't forget to mention the casting folks who smile today: Brett Greenstein, Collin Daniel, Sally Stiner and Barbie Blalock. Congrats ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for remaking what was a great memory into more great memories. 

NOTE: Last night's episode of Girl Meets World was TV's single best HALF-hour of the year for me. It featured the written works of Frank Miller and Harper Lee and yet more Boy Meets World cross-over in a story that emphasizes the need for education to stave off evil in the world. I commend the creators for putting that message in a way even old fogies like me can comprehend. It was the best birthday present I got this year.

17: Bosch

Bosch is not a kid's show. What it is, is a really credible video version of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch, a beaten down and weary LA cop with a million-dollar view ... supplied by a movie made of one of his earlier adventures. Bosch=gritty. Bosch=bad guy catcher. Bosch=bad politics. None of the tropes are new, but one thing is definitely new. Titus Welliver, traditionally a thoroughly good baddie or second banana, tackles the titular hero's role here. It would be real easy to say I like the show because I love Michael Connelly's books. Or, it might be easy to say I hated the show because it isn't exactly like (one of) the books. But this series stands up on it's own. Bosch's crusty and cranky at the best of times, and a tad too willing to break the rules and bed down a policewoman who shouldn't be a cop in the first place. Annie Wersching plays Julia with just a tad of Glenn Close lite menace. She's a manipulative little so-and-so who doesn't understand just how flawed she is. And she has a gun. Of course, there are REAL bad guys around, chiefly Deputy Chief Irvin Irving (love that name). He's played with menacing presence by Lance Reddick, who's steely demeanor, soft voice and willingness to get dirty in the politics game, means Bosch has to watch his back. Reddick is always welcome on the screen, a sort of anti-Morgan Freeman. Bosch has to look over his shoulder for Irving while tracking down and trying to cage the crazier-than-a-loon Raynard Waits, played by Jason Gedrick. The whole ten-episode Amazon series feels just like one of Connelly's books, right down to the self-aware mentions of The Black Echo, which was itself turned into a movie, in real life and for the background in this show. If you like Connelly, you WILL like this book on TV. If not, learn to like it. Twenty books and a second season of this show await you. 

16: Arrow

It IS the year of the DC universe, with more to come. More than one more to come. It's DC all the time on my TV, it seems this year. Still abhor the flashbacks (and wouldn't the flashbacks be something better confined to, oh, I don't know, The Flash?!?! No actually, I like that show better). Still it was good to see Sarah out of the way and Dinah on the way to Black Canary-hood. What, too soon for Sarah dying jokes? Or not dying. Oops SPOILER!!! The show seemed to fall into a decent criminal of the week as it built up to the season-ending climax, a second showdown with Ra's Al Ghul. The twists and turns could still be seen a mile away. But it all worked in ways that left gloomy ol' Starling City still without a Star to call it's own (name) and a star with some little, tiny, teensy displays of emoting. While he was doing the dance that will eventually lead back to Dinah, despite the last scene (ooops SPOILER), Stephen Amell's Oliver did briefly consider the TV-better dalliance with Emily Bett Rickard's Felicity Smoak. Would not have argued with that one at all, and this coming from a DC Comics purist. Still, the eternal romantic triangle spread to include Brandon Routh's Ray Palmer, the Atom. Routh has a little Super in his background too, and an annoying, interfering story arc on Chuck. Here, not so much of an issue. And he's headed elsewhere in the DC TV universe come the fall anyways. Still, any show without Ray was better than with. Fall's departure for a new show can't come soon enough. Hey, it's all in good fun. From two years running listing on Most Disappointing to a top 15 performance. Who says Green Arrow is strictly a minor-leaguer. I THINK the show has finally run out of flashbacks. No island, just Hong Kong and that's played out. All the bits and pieces of a DC comic book come to life have finally emerged on TV. Happy to see it. Welcome to respectability Arrow!

15: Forever

Another show with no future. Forever used to mean never having to say you're sorry. But I really am sorry we won't find out if NYC Medical examiner Henry Morgan will ever get the girl, NYPD detective Jo Martinez. Morgan a two hundred and some odd year old Englishman, played with stiff upper lip by Ioan Gruffudd, needs to put his considerable history aside and realize that Alana De La Garza's strikingly beautiful Jo is just the person to put Henry's long suffering love life back in play. Problem is, she doesn't know he's cursed with eternal life, and a frequent skinny dipper when he DOES sort of die (It happens more often than you'd think), and he's oblivious to the signals she's putting out like a raging Harlem fire. Can the two lovebirds get it all together? We'll never know. But I WAS interested in finding out, being an incurable romantic. Cough, cough. I liked the crowd around those two. Judd Hirsch played Henry's adopted boy Abe, who appears old enough to be his father. The medical examiner office includes an able and quirky in his own right number two, Lucas Wan (played by Joel David Moore, a perpetually good second banana as an actor). The other cops, Donnie Kersawarz (Detective Hanson) and Lorraine Toussaint (Lt. Joanna Reece), were smart if occasionally able to ignore what was going on in their midst. I LIKED all of them. I DISLIKED duplicitous baddie Adam/Dr. Farber, a deranged fellow immortal played by Burn Gorman. His actions were pretty heinous for a TV show. And for added spice, Hilarie Burton, who can do no wrong, was a re-occurring sex therapist. Forever never completely fit the police procedural, paranormal or romance niches and that's why it never caught an audience or a renewal. Too bad. In MY imagined future, Henry and Jo get past the immortal thing and start a new generation of little Abe's. At last, a legitimate heir.

14: The Good Wife (#1 Last Year)

The descent into the depths of the top fifteen starts. As contracts for the original players expire and keeping them around gets more expensive each year, change is inevitable. This year, that change really started to affect the show. It's dropped from first all the way to an unfathomable 14th this year. Oh, the horror! Done in by politics. A horrible, hateful thing to have happen to a good lawyer show. Nay, a GREAT lawyer show. But politics is ugly. It's dirty. It's demeaning. It's intellectually dishonest because all the rules that prevent lawyers from JUMPING over the line (plenty of skirting the line) don't apply to politics. When it was over, this season diminished The Good Wife. It was a holding blip, only there to let loose some long time characters (and who's going to forgive management for not ponying up for more Kalinda?). What kind of future awaits Julianna Margulies, Matt Czuchry, Christine Baranski et al? I really don't know. Electioneering fever has hit the States hard as candidates campaign to become the World's Most Powerful Person. The Good Wife tried to get out ahead of that surge and paid for it by becoming NOT the best show on Sunday nights, let alone of the whole season. And in a way, that's too bad. David Hyde Pierce really was good as Alicia's opponent all year long. I think he's going to be a thorn in her backside next year ... assuming she ends up defending good guys and bad guys in Chicago. But that's all that went well this season. Well, that and Archie Punjabi's year-long good-bye as Kalinda. The Good Wife has fallen from grace before, only to re-emerge as the best show on TV. It's telling that in an indescribably ordinary season, there's only a baker's dozen of shows I'd prefer to it. Quality will tell. But with more of those rote seven-year commitments coming up, I question how much longer The Good Wife rules the airwaves (cable signals refreshing?).

13: Dog's Best Friend

This is my top animal show from last year. I LOVED this show. It was all about goofy animal friend pairings and MOST of them involved a dog. With a dolphin, with a rhino, with all kinds of cats, an orangutan and even a bird or two. The one with a dog and an elephant was maybe the best. I love dogs and this show points out the soul that makes dogs just about the greatest gift to humanity that there ever was. I loved this show about unusual combinations of animals being best pals.  And ... well, time to stop burbling, you get the idea. Plus, we had Clive the Animal Psychologist, a sort of Australian dog whisperer with some degrees after his name. He was a hoot, what with him being a dead ringer for Patrick Stewart and the fact he was talking through his hat, while wearing a hat. I'm a sucker for zoo shows, and this one was my favourite amongst the animal shows. But now that I don't have any more animal slots, I just remembered I should mention as a sort of honourable honourable mention that I spent a LOT of time also watching Anna's Wild and Zoo Juniors. Baby animals are so adorable, that they even make me melt. Animals that play and horse around together are the only thing better. Burble, burble, laugh gleefully. An animal show that starts with the premise that a smile, a chuckle, a grin or an outright laugh is good for all animals, well that's cause for watching.

12: The Manageress (UK) tied with The Women's World Cup of Soccer (Canada)

What the dickens has gotten into me. I've come before you today admitting I've liked Zombies and paranormal romances and now, at the end, I'm confessing I liked not one show, but TWO shows about soccer. A game I simply have ignore happily and willfully for decades. Back in my sports reporting days, I took on almost every beat, with the promise that none of them was soccer. I did pigeon racing, martial arts (judo and karate, none of that street-brawling thuggery that passes for MMA these days), spelling and bowling, specifically to avoid soccer. Yes, I watched my niece play (at) soccer. Yes, I would have Men's World Cup games playing in the background while I did ANYTHING else. And yes, I have watched the odd 'big' Toronto FC game over the years. But until the rise of the Canadian Women's Junior program last century, I had no rooting interest. I have now. I'm a big Christine Sinclair fan. She's quintessentially Canadian. Shy, humble and a good person, who's on anybody's short list of greatest players of all time. A couple of outstanding local girls from here in Brampton, Kadeisha Buchanon and Ashley Lawrence, have linked me through to the next generation of Team Canada Women. I watched each game I could during the event and up to it, that feature John Herdman's ladies. Never regretted a moment ... until the final whistle of the quarter-final loss to England. After that, lost any interest in what turned out to be a victory by an obnoxious bunch of Americans and nothing Fox had to say would change that reality behind the sleek production values. So, let's say the ending to the mini-series was lacking, but it was still a worthwhile watch. What surprised me in the weeks leading up to the Cup, which was held here in Canada, was that I chanced upon the two seasons of an English TV series, circa 1989-1990, called The Manageress. Woman takes over the managing of a Second Division side in England and leads them, well, almost to something akin a victory, a promotion. But in reality, there are two story-lines crossing in the story. Cherie Lunghi is a very attractive woman. Nuff said. Twenty five years ago, she benefited from that beauty, the bloom of youth and a VERY sexy Italian accent. Whether she pulled up these neanderthals into the upcoming 21st century really didn't matter. The show really didn't paint a positive picture of the state of progressive thinking in soccer. And honestly, nothing's changed that I could detect. But the REAL reason for watching the two series (in Britain, seasons are called series), was the second story-line. Warren Clarke chomped his cigar through 12 episodes, trying to steal every pound note he saw passing him by, as the owner/president of the local side. Clarke looked and acted like a frog newly jumped into a pond swarming with flies. His character was as bent as any really not honest guy could be, and always seemed to find somebody else to enjoy his criminal enterprises with. Including Lunghi's character's husband and father (respectively Paul Geoffrey and Sergio Fantoni). Watching Clarke scheme and connive is why I enjoyed The Manageress. Honest. But Lunghi didn't hurt.

11: QI Uncut (UK)

ELEVEN SEASONS went by before I clued in that QI, the leading British faux quiz game was worth my attention. Miraculously, I've managed to accumulate all of them, plus this year's 12th series, and have regularly made attempts to catch up. It's been extremely delightful. Thanks to a positive review by a gasbag of a writer from North Carolina, I just discovered this hour-long gab-bag of trivia and jokes this year. It stars Stephen Fry (Formerly of Gadget Man fame, as well as many other TV shows and lots of books), Alan Davies and an ever-changing cast of British funny men and women. Fry runs the faux game show with a light touch and an preposterous scoring system. Each year's series are alphabetically themed with this season being "L." Having watched all of L, I've gotten through of most A to E. In the the race to get the old episodes, I tried hard to get the uncut version. Didn't get them all, but a good percentage. And you should definitely watch the uncut version. It can be a tad raunchy at times, but it's an hour of educational badinage, as adverse the (occasionally, clumsily) heavily-edited half-hour version.  The questions are almost always obtuse or an obvious trick question. But the answer can inform and the jokes usually entertain. Just once, I'd like the answer to "How many moons does Earth have?" be the same, one year to the next. Since the comedians really don't have much in the way of physical comedy talents to play to, this really is a clever show. My brother Rick doesn't have much time for Fry (says, "He," speaking of Fry, "thinks he's this century's version of Oscar Wilde."), but I enjoy Fry name-dropping royals he's pals (and relatives) with and trying every accent known to man as the years stretch on. He was heavier handed in the earlier years, letting sexual double-entendres drip from every joke. But that phase has passed and now he's merely the ringmaster, letting each of the four comedic talents try their hand in the spotlight. And trust me, when you REALLY do know an answer, it'll give you nothing but confidence for a week. Or roughly the time it takes for another episode with it's impossible questions to come out. One last thing ... QI stands for Quite Interesting).

10: Orphan Black (Canada) (#3 Last Year)

Tatiana Maslany is simply outstanding. Every week during the time Orphan Black runs a new season, Maslany plays multiple characters. Usually five in a given week, sometimes more. All clones, but all distinct. There's super serious, super mom Sarah, batty soccer mom Alison, health-impaired science whiz kid Cosima, evil evil (not a typo) Rachel and wackier than Alison could ever be, Helena. And I think there were three other clones this year at one time or another. All distinct. All filmed beautifully and written so well that there's no problem knowing who's who, even when one's playing one of the others. It's a year tour de force and there's simply no end to the accolades Maslany has deserved over the last three years. But the story started getting old this year and even the multi-character playing Ari Millen (he's the clones, Miller, Rudy and Seth, just to name three) didn't really ratchet up the enjoyment factor. The religious loons continue to be boring characters. But the light really shone when focus was put on the Hendrix family. Hubby Kristian Bruun continued to evolve, if aspire to things beyond him. And while Alison's veering off into both local politics in a race for the school board and into the role as the area's drug dealer seemed a little ... borrowed, anytime the Hendrixes were front and centre, I found myself wondering what WOULD happen next. Through it all, Jordan Gavaris gave weekly depth to Felix Dawkins, Sarah's foster sibling, gay guy and muse to all of the various clones. Orphan Black started as a concept and an acting exercise. It's become something better, but not as good as it could be. Where it goes in season four frankly baffles me. I have to think my prediction of Rachel being the Big Bad this year might have been merely a year too early. And a face-off between Rachel and Sarah promises to be explosive, since merely poking a pencil through her left eye hasn't seemed to stop Rachel. 

9: Tyrant

Evil isn't always black and white. Evil is frequently complex. And no show demonstrates that more than Tyrant, which hadn't finished its first season last year when my Top 25 list went to pixilated print. The surprise ending twisted the show from something slightly less than great into something worthwhile watching, as Ashraf Barhom turned the tables on Adam Rayner when the two Al Fyseed brothers battled to takeover the fictionalized country of Abuddin cough cough Yemen. Any thoughts that Rayner's Bassam would lead the coup to overthrow Barhom's Jamal went topsy turvy on the waves during a peaceful outing on the family boat in last year's season capper. It was pretty good TV. Because it unwound a lot of expectations. This year's story-line started with the apparent death sentence of Bassam, carried out almost personally by Jamaal. But things are not as they seem and Abuddin is soon in turmoil. Outguessing the writers, thinking they are merely wafting American poetic on the constant internecine rivalries in the Arabic peninsula is a waste of time. Every time Bassam seems clear to head back to America, he's drawn back into Abuddin. Rayner's the least interesting guy in the pair, a do-gooder at heart who watches as he's drawn into bad thing after bad thing. (Don't forget who pulled the trigger first, as kids). But Barhom is fantastic as Jamaal, an undeniably evil tyrant in the making, who JUST misses making the wise and just decision every step along the way. He WANTS to be loved and thought of as benign and benevolent. He isn't. He's a rapist and a murderer. Multiple times. His uncle, the very model of evilness, sometimes becomes his sword arm. But in the end, he's at fault for all of his failings. Around him, his loving wife is, to be charitable, hell on wheels. She's traded her body for position, cares deeply that nobody knows that, and when push comes to shove, she'd be first in line to be a mass murderess. Moran Atias seemingly proves that the female is the deadliest of the species. Bassam, of course, has an American family headed up by do-gooding wife Molly, played by Jennifer Finnigan. She's always been a favourite being also Canadian. Not a big fan of the kids Molly's trying to ride herd on, now that Bassam (aka Barry on this side of the Atlantic) is presumed dead. Noah Silver plays Sammy as a whining, obnoxious man-child, anxious to spend his inheritance. Anne Winters does a bit better as Anne, but Anne's eyes get plenty big when she finds out her dad grew up in a palace. this is a richly drawn show with the poor and powerless only now realizing the rich and powerful are actually not omnipotent. Nobody comes across as completely good, not even Bassam and Molly. But does Evil with a capital E have what it takes to come out on top in the upcoming war? That's the question. And the answer is not obvious. At least to me.

8: Gotham

Yep, another DC comics Universe show. One that got out to very good reviews. But one that caused me some reservations. Mostly on my part because of a mistake. I remember watching the horrid pilot of Scorpion on a September Monday night and being transfixed by Katharine McPhee as I watched the show around her drown in dumbness. Then, virtually the first shot in Gotham was of Selina Kyle. And my faith in TV was restored. It looked like Gotham was going to be good and there'd be plenty of pretty women. THEN I heard the Selina character speak. Or rather squeak. The girl, and make no mistake, this is a middle-school aged girl, played by Camren Bicondova, was made to look older, more street smart. And that bothered me. There's something profoundly icky about a middle school kid being played sexy. That first impression coloured my impression of Gotham for several weeks. But then my comic book fanboy roots started showing and I started enjoying this Batman comic book, that never was, turned into a quite good TV show. This is the Batman of the 1940's, re-imagined into an almost current setting. Think toned-down Tim Burton. The villains are mob bosses and big politico's, not super-powered freaks fond of wearing their underwear on the outside of their long-johns, although the early starts of that phenomena became more apparent as the season wore on. The women are sexy, dangerous and given to placing their trust in the wrong men. We see future front-liners, who have their own stories to tell, get them started. Young Selina and Young Bruce Wayne start their pas de deux. The Gotham Police Department that plays a background role in Batman the comic, becomes the star of the show here, in the embodiment of Jim Gordon, as played by Benjamin McKenzie. Gordan starts the process of taking over, of becoming law in Gotham, a law shared with any and all. His padre, his leading light in the house is Donal Logue, the long-time cop Harvey Bullock, a sell-out to get by, who finds new internal strength at the prodding of his partner. He even starts behaving like a good guy. Not all the time. But enough that Gordan keeps him close. We don't just see future Catwoman Kyle. there's Ed Nygma, in the process of becoming the Riddler. And most especially, in the performance of the series, we see Robin L. Taylor turn punchline Oswald Cobblepot into The Penguin, an underling with murderous intent on becoming a Boss. It's a compelling mess of a place in a time that never was, but it's got a lot of promise. Even after the bad start. One of the season's best new shows. And you had to love future Batman David Mazouz finding the stairs to the Batcave in the last shot.

7: Star Wars: Rebels

I have an admission. I liked, but didn't love, Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Certainly had my thumbs up in year one and watched the second year hoping for better writing and animation and new characters. I got two out of three. But the animation never improved and I got worn out on the series by the third of the five seasons. Haven't watched the last two, although the sets are within easy reach. So, it was with cautious skepticism that I watched the pilot show for Star Wars: Rebels. And for that hour, I remembered back to the excitement of watching the original movie back in 1977.  I was already aware that Star Wars was coming via articles in one of Jim Steranko's magazines. Thus, I managed to get in and see it on opening day, before word hit that this was going to be the movie of the summer, if not the year. A month earlier, I had been sitting in the stands, freezing, at the first ever Toronto Blue Jays home game. It was quite a big four weeks. Both remain vivid memories. So, Rebels had a high bar to try and meet. And it succeeded. The animation is softer, more life-like, especially with life forms not anywhere close to our own. There's still the stylized quirks in designs for the bad guys. Top voice talents like Jason Isaacs (The Inquisitor) and David Oyelowo (Agent Kallus) play villains, with British accents being the norm for the bad guys. It's been almost a truism, that bad guys all have British accents in Star Wars. Going back to the original, which was largely made with British crews. Speaking of which, this series is placed in time just before the events of that first movie. On the other hand, the Rebels aboard the Ghost are a well-thought out crew that includes Freddie Prinze Jr. voicing one of the last of his generation of Jedi knights, Kanan. He's got a young protege in Ezra (Taylor Gray) and a relationship with hotshot pilot and captain of the Ghost, Hera (Vanessa Marshall), a totally hot green Twi'lek. The other female member of the crew, Sabine (Tiya Sircar) is a tad bit older than Ezra and quite the hot shot, emphasis on shot. She's eventually going to end up with Ezra, if I was a betting man. And I am. And finally, the gruff muscle on the crew is Zeb (Steven Jay Blum), a Lasat who grumbles all the time until an opportunity arises to knock Imperial Storm Trooper helmets together. The show has already had the big Imperial Empire stars show up, led by the big black breathing tube himself, Darth Vader. And Lando Calrissian has also make a couple of appearances. Look, I'm a Star Wars fanboy (I once passed up a chance to play Omar Sharif's team at the Canadian National Bridge Championships to go off and see an afternoon matinee of the re-release of the original film. Mind you, I'd already had the pleasure of playing Omar before, but still, you get SOME idea of how seriously I take Star Wars). I'm genetically predisposed to like this show. But if YOU give the show a chance, I'd bet you'd find it enjoyable too.

6: The Flash

I loved the original Flash show that came out back in the 90's. I had occasion to go back and watch a few episodes of it recently and I wonder just what possessed me to watch it, beyond the fact that I'm a comics lover, especially of DC properties. The look and the feel of the show was strictly 60's Batman TV without the name villains. The special effects were state of the art back then for TV, meaning they weren't all that good. If I could love that show, what was there not to like about the newest DC property on TV? The answer? NOTHING! THIS is the show that should define DC comics in the TV universe. This had all the charm of the comics without the heavy-handed "we must produce art" man-handling that plagued the first two years of Arrow. The Flash was vintage Lois and Clark with mid-run greatness from Smallville mixed in. Outstanding. Not perfect, because more than a few things from the comic book universe got mangled in the translation, but very good indeed. The delight in this show for the comics fans are the names... street names, character names and the subtle touches that connect back to paper version. The non-comics fans without hundreds of Flash issues behind them like the show for it's action and completely relatable characters. Grant Gustin is just filled with youthful enthusiasm and a real need to find out who actually killed his parents. He becomes The Flash in an origin that doesn't stray too far from the comics version, although that same 'accident' turns out to be the root cause behind several villains who eventually form his infamous Rogues Gallery. Because his dad is in jail for the murder he did not commit (The dad is played by John Wesley Shipp, who was the 1990 Barry Allen), the senior Allen's partner, Joe West (Jesse l. Martin) takes in Barry. So, Barry grows up with Iris West, who in the comics was not a foster sister, but his future wife. The show takes some time getting around to the whole Iris West Allen thing, but it's there. Barry's non-cop pals at the institute where the super-power making accident occurred are Caitlan Snow, the future Killer Frost from the comics, played by Danielle Panabaker and Cisco Ramon, the future Vibe from the comics, played by Carlos Valdes. Panabaker's good as an uptight giant intellect who's socially awkward and Ramon's absolutely hilarious as the gadget and name maker of the team.  They all work for Harrison Wells (Thomas Cavanagh). Wells turns out not to be what everybody thinks he is. Chiefly being the Reverse Flash, aka Professor Zoom. He's also a future descendant of Joe's partner Eddie Thrawne. Eddie and (reporter, yay!) Iris (Candice Patton) are an item until that moment of heroism at the end that ends things as they are. But with future-hopping being a fact in this book, don't count Eddie out for good just yet. There isn't a weak spot in this cast. Good actors, smart writing and just enough differences between the comics and the screen to keep we old fogies guessing. I really am looking forward to the future of The Flash!

5: Madame Secretary

This was one of my "Buffy" picks last summer. Cute for a few episodes and then canceled. That famously wrong prediction last century (at least in my circles) has haunted me, ever since Buffy the Vampire Slayer went on to run for years and spawn spin-offs. Getting back to Madame Secretary ... early in January, I realized that when grabbing both shows to watch later, I was watching Madame Secretary BEFORE The Good Wife. Ooops! I suddenly also realized, I really, really liked the whole cast in this show and I was happy to spend an hour in their fictional universe rather than in The Good Wife's. Ergo, a rating ahead of my favourite show of this decade (well, a close second to The Newsroom, hint, hint). All the signs of limited world view were there. I mean, who hires Zeljko Ivanek NOT to be the bad guy, whether as a loyal dogged soldier or the master manipulator behind the scenes? And what family looks like a group headed by Téa Leioni, Tim Daly and finishes with a kid trio of Wallis Currie-Wood, Kathrine Herzer and Evan Roe. Don't even START to say the K-Clan!! Normal looking but all at the top end of normal. Leoni is actually getting sexier as she gets older ... and at 49, she REALLY is old enough to have a college-aged daughter in the show ... and to pass for much younger. Which made me question her gravitas for the role as one of the five highest ranking officials in the American government. I mean who would NOT have disbelief that this works. As it turns out, by season's end, I was already looking to see when the show is coming back (In October). Thanks, in large part, I think, to an intrepid office staff of wonderful Bebe Neuwirth, Erich Bergen, Geoffrey Arend and Patina Miller. It's odd but comforting that the old Frasier couple of Neuwirth and Hyde-Pierce had such strong TV seasons in them this year. Getting back to Leoni and Daly. The chemistry between the two was easy and fit like a glove, the characters both playing academicians with spying backgrounds. Madame Secretary McCord was forever depending on hubby for support and advice, while standing strong and making decisions any American should have proud of. So, were all those decisions solely Democratic or Republican leaning? No. The producers definitely keep the party identity of President Dalton (Keith Carradine) vague, but the signs are there that they are Democrats. Doesn't matter. Madame Secretary is a smart political drama with more than a few buried bones still to dig up. I STILL can't see a Buffy-long run for the show, but this impressive first season makes me hope I'm wrong again.

4: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (#9 Last Year)

If you take an almost perfectly cast comedy and let the stew that was the first year blend together over a second season, you could only hope to end up with Andre Braugher's group of misfits and cut-ups at the Broolyn Nine-Nine. I have no problem saying I'd rather spend time with four amorous gorillas then be in the same room with Andy Samberg's Jake Peralta for a half-hour. But getting to watch from the outside? Pure comedic gold. Samberg toned things down this year, combining seamlessly with Braugher's gay Captain Ray Holt. Holt also lost some rigidity, turning out to be less a caricature and more of a well-rounded character. Peralta's partner Detective Charlie Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio) made the same move to the centre, leaving me wondering just how I thought the character would be a forever fumbling fool and a bad send-up of oblivious British characters. And don't forget the ladies, who's backbones also un-stiffened just the right amount. Peralta's in extremely good like with Detective Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero) and how could he NOT be? Fumero stopped brown-nosing, well to at least a lesser degree, and became more likable as a result by becoming more self-aware. And as for 'tougher than steel' Detective Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz), she fell in love, which was good, very good. There's no issue with continuing to recommend Terry Crews for his portrayal of Sgt. Terry Jeffords, but the last welcome surprise in this smooth sophomore season is the fact that I didn't hate every minute with Chelsea Peretti's Gina Linetti in it. The Linetti character had been the one totally strident note in the first season. I wanted to punch her in the mouth and I'm not actually a violent man. Now, come a little closer. I need to tell you something that nobody else can know. I will whisper this once and only once. "I liked Gina this year." WHEW! Now, move on to the top three. We will never speak of this again.

3: The Three Musketeers (#2 Last Year)

When the first episode opens with the funeral of beloved baddie Cardinal Richelieu (Peter Capaldi having more pressing duties, being the Doctor in Doctor Who), I groaned inwardly. But the good news is that the once Danny Blue of Hustle, Marc Warren, entered stage right to play the OTHER famous bad guy from Alexandre Dumas' famous book, Comte De Rochfort. Rochfort, who gains his signature eye-patch late in the season, is not quite at the scheming level of the legendary Richeliu, but he is a seriously effective heel. Of course, there's still Milady de Winter (Maimie McCoy) around to bedevil Athos (Tom Burke) and the rest of the Musketeers (Howard Charles as Porthos, Santiago Cabrera as Aramis and the indefatigable D'Artagnan, played by Luke Pasqualino). In fact, the two-faced de Winter turns and twirls and presents SOOOO many faces that the relationship between her and Athos drives the show. Ryan Gage continues to impress as the foppish fool of a king, Louis, while his Queen Anne is always radiant, as played by Alexandra Dowling. But if anybody can steal the spotlight from Athos and de Winter, it's Tamla Kari playing the plucky Constance, l'amour D'Artagnan. We've all been in a room at a social event where there are beauties to catch the eye quickly. But somebody else, maybe not as outwardly beautiful, turns out to be the woman every man dreams about that night. Constance is such a woman. And yes, count me amongst Constance's would-be paramours. Knowing there's a third series coming, I'm not all that misty eyed on what would otherwise have been an emotional finish to the year. The old gang appears on the verge of a breakup after saving France from the worst of Spanish machinations. Fortunately, although Dumas did eventually quit writing Three Muskateers novels, it might be a while before the French and English makers of this quality work stop producing new material. My overall love affair with the Three Musketeers continues on, unabated. EVEN if you aren't a fan of the classic or any of the dozens of movie remakes, try out the series. It is supremely worthy of your attention. I plan on keeping asking you until you do, so you might as well treat yourselves.

2: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

A show that actually effected change and is entertaining to boot. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver not only presented itself as a "same, but different" spin-off of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, but as a show intent on actually expanding beyond the limits of a little studio and effecting change in the world. Not everything John Oliver did was comedic gold in the second half of his first season. His delight at not having to watch his potty-mouth was low-brow and beneath his otherwise exemplary work. His obsessive need to repeat punch lines twice could be grating. That aside, it was sharp. It was funny with a really, really low number of unfunny bits. And Oliver got quoted and got some change from what he said. Did he bring down FIFA and the imperious rule by Sepp Blatter? Of course not. But he hammered away it and suddenly, the darkness that had enveloped that organization for TWENTY-FIVE years was brought out into the light. Might have been the proverbial last straw on that camel's back? Ya, I think he might have been. Oliver didn't stop there. He went on TV to tell Trinidadians and Tobagans what kind of man they sheltered in their midst. He go into twitter wars with other countries PRESIDENTS, for gawd's sake. He bought advertising billboards abroad to inform and entertain a little bit. Bluntly, Oliver became a crusading comic activist, not willing to sit on the sidelines and hurl pot shots at obvious targets. Where his mentor failed, was that Jon Stewart appealed to the intellect of those listening and watching him. Oliver is cagier. He understands change is accomplished in the mud, down where the devious do all their work. Oliver embarrassed a LOT of high falutin' butt ends of donkeys this past year. Blatter's scalp (now there's an image) isn't the first Oliver seems to have snagged and it won't be the last. The fun is over, it's time to get serious about funny. And until Noah lands on his feet over at The Daily Show, Oliver is officially in charge of doing right by laughter. And I'm okay with it being in his hands. He's ready. He's been prepped by the best. Oliver vs the world of idiocy and evil. Bureaucrats everywhere used to tremble at the mere sight of Mike Wallace and a 60 Minutes film crew. Now, I'm pretty sure, Last Week cameramen will inspire the same fear. (Are there Last Week cameramen, at least that go outside the set? Maybe no. In the future, then). While I do sing the hosannas over Oliver's incredible year this year, I do have to note that Oliver's absence was incredibly important to Jon Stewart's Daily Show suffering a dip in quality and Stewart's decision to retire. Oliver will have to live with that burden. I think he might just be up for it. Incredibly impressive. Last note, the Easter weekend Snowden show was worth having eyeballs for. Oddly enough, I waited until AFTER I'd seen that show before contacting my doctor for a health problem that almost killed me. I was on anti-biotics for two weeks and enforced bed rest for three. And I STILL watched Oliver turn what looked like a comically failed attempt to interview the famed whistle-blower into the most gripping 40 minutes of TV I saw this year first. I hope that frames my recommendation in perspective.

1: The NewsRoom

On the night of the debut episode of this last season of The NewsRoom, I wrote the following email to a friend, a fellow former journalist: "Just saw the first hour of this third and last season of The Newsroom. An unexpected gift. The first episode does two things. It reminds why I love(d) journalism and secondly, that I am madly in love with Emily Mortimer AND her character Mac. Maybe more Mac than Emily, but my adoration is absolute. And here's further news. There isn't a single character that grates on my nerve as (Aaron) Sorkin pulls out ALL the stops ... and even stops to make me not hate Olivia Munn or the characters Don Keefer and  Reese Lansing played by Tom Sadoski and Chris Messina respectively. REALLY! No undisguised disgust that Olivia Munn speaks on TV or that the douchebag characters play bad guys on 'our' side. I would have thought this impossible two hours ago ... two years ago ... or ever ago. And yet this is the gem that Sorkin has wrought." I went on to add, "This season lasts only six episodes, ending two weeks shy of Christmas. IF the rest of these episodes are only one SIXTH as good as the first episode is for this season, than THIS show, The Newsroom, will finish atop My Top 25 TV Shows next July 18th. The race will have been over before the calendar turned. It will be OVER! And I will be impossibly sad because this show represents WHY I immerse myself in fictional universes and care about characters created whole clothe. That it will be no more after December 14th, 2014 will be cause for sadness once the celebrations are complete." And then I finished, "Oh, and if you watch the show and somehow form an opinion that does not match mine? Never speak of such heresy. Our friendship will be at stake." Yes, I kind of liked The NewsRoom. You know Emily Mortimer is good and paired incredibly well with Jeff Daniels' weary and worn out newsman William McAvoy. Sam Waterston was there in body and in spirit as Charlie Skinner, who was missed even before the final credits. Jane Fonda, Messina's TV mom was great. I still kept cheering for Sadoski's Keefer to the end. Incredible, that. Oh, I came back around to my point of view on Munn, my yearly pet hate in these reviews. Again, I repeat. The lady has a reputation as a good person. It's her work that I hate. Just to be clear. Alison Pill, now half Canuck, John Gallagher Jr., Dev Patel, et al. Kudos to you all. To Aaron Sorkin, I say, "GET OVER YOURSELF!" The world will still keep spinning and Sorkin will eventually come back to TV. In the mean time, I thank him for his stellar work. 

And that ends this year's take on my top 25 TV experiences this year. It actually tops out at about 30 and copious honourable mentions means it's really somewhere between 35 and 50. Which is why I've just spent the last 12,000 words extolling the virtues of these shows while putting up markers around the bad stuff. We are now into a world of binge-watching. You CAN find (almost all of) these shows if you look. All are in English. If you speak English and enjoy solid entertainment, then I've given you the gift of laughter and tears and information and thrills. Or rather re-gifted you.

After all, it IS my birthday. Thanks for reading this far.