Small screen suggestions?

[mrissa]

I watch a bunch of TV to get me through my workouts, and right now I don’t have a default thing of the right length that I’ve got momentum on, so I thought I would take the opportunity to ask for recommendations. I’ll list a bunch of things I’m in some sense “currently in the middle of,” and you can either suggest other stuff you think I might like or else ask what I like about the things I’ve listed. I am not current on anything: I watch DVDs or Netflix, so “current season” stuff will be spoilers for me.

Oh, and: I am a tough sell for sexual violence. It’s not a hard, fast line for me–for example, I watch Criminal Minds–but it’s pretty easy to hit my “this is no fun any more and I’m taking my marbles and going home” threshold on things like a certain popular soapy historical drama this season.

Shows I’m watching: Arrow, Avatar: The Legend of Korra, The Bletchley Circle, Elementary, The Good Wife, House of Cards, Inspector Lewis, The Killing, The Mentalist, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Ripper Street, Scandal, Sherlock, White Collar.

I am not at all limited to English language stuff, but the pacing of 22-minute episodes has to hit me right–some anime does and some doesn’t. Almost no live-action English-language stuff does. 55-minute shows can work, but they frustrate me because they’re pretty much exactly the wrong length for what I need for workouts. 40-to-44 are great, as are the 80-to-90 blocks.

Thoughts?

Originally published at Novel Gazing Redux

Comments

[laurel]

There are, of course, degrees and varieties of stupid. I know some long time TV viewers who are used to overlooking certain brands of stupid as that's just how TV usually rolls, for instance. And others who maybe aren't as knowledgeable in science who don't have problems with certain shows. Or police procedure, or whatever.

We made it through three episodes of Intelligence or maybe four, but we were openly mocking it as we went. They were also making ridiculous mistakes with plot and character development that drove me nuts. Some shows evolve into better shows, but I'm not hopeful for this one given how many points of failure it has.

And yeah, sometimes it's best to not go into why a show doesn't work for you. It varies. Sometimes it can be a little trivial thing that means a show doesn't work for me when it might work for others.