TV series

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Swizzleplix wrote:

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

It's funny but I believe that Game of Thrones owes its existence to two other HBO shows, neither of them as successful as GoT itself.

Firstly, Rome -- massive budget per episode, quite a few of the same crew later went on to work on GoT, ridiculously adult content, very strong female characters

And of course True Blood -- you start with vampires, okay, we can handle that. And then the net widens, bringing in other supernatural creatures. Before HBO viewers knew it, they were watching a sexier, crasser version of Charmed.

By the time GoT rolled around, HBO viewers (and the execs, of course) had been shown that fantasy/period pieces can be extremely engaging and complex and yet 'hip' and very much contemporary.

I would agree with that, but I think that a big influence also came from Deadwood.

The writing in Deadwood was telling the story of a very select few people by telling the story of the entire town. It didn't focus completely on 1 or 2 characters, but instead focused on the affect that those 1 or 2 characters had on life as a whole in Deadwood through the eyes of the people that were affected by it.

Oh, Deadwood was a MASSIVE influence on the show itself, for sure -- moral ambiguity abounds; Swearengen and Tyrion have a lot in common. Two simple examples.

I meant more in terms of getting the HBO audience ready for what is essentially a fantasy series. Speaking of Al Swearengen, check out Starz' mini-series 'The Pillars of the Earth' to see the same actor play a truly evil man of the cloth. Before Game of Thrones, Pillars of the Earth was my favorite nitty-gritty fantasy/medieval drama. Given Starz' shaky track record (what the HECK did they do to Torchwood?!) ...this surprised me.

the walking dead is one of the best shows out there

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burgundy wrote:

Game of Thrones a no brainer in my opinion. :)

Game of Thrones - really good but read the books first.

So i just saw the entire firefly series & the movie again, now it feels kind of sad it's over :( The original plan was for the series to run 7 years, they got around 3-4 months instead. I guess Science fiction doesn't attract a lot of fans. Personally i quite liked the cowboyish-frontier style of Firefly; though i understand other people would criticize it for being two completely different things.

-Spartacus
-Prison Break
-O.C. California

Nobody else following The Legend of Korra?

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RabidRabbit wrote:

Nobody else following The Legend of Korra?

The girlfriend and I watched A:TLA in one hit and loved every moment. We're waiting for Korra's 'first' season to end to do the same.

I guess nobody likes Bones. It's the only series on TV I enjoy, nothing else came close to it until now, to me.

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XiphiqiX wrote:

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burgundy wrote:

Game of Thrones a no brainer in my opinion. :)

Game of Thrones - really good but read the books first.

I own the first two books. I had A Game of Thrones since...almost since its release, actually. I just couldn't get past that awful prologue. Naturally lots of people told me to stick with it but I've always had something else to read or do.

So when the show was announced, I was cautious. Sure, it was HBO. Okay, that's a huge plus right there. And it had some actors I really liked. Okay. And....perhaps most importantly, I can accept a heck of a lot more cheese in a tv show or movie than I can in a book.

So to be honest, I think the Game of Thrones TV show is a better TV show than it is a book. Not saying the books are bad at all, but the TV show is probably the best thing on TV right now. It is literally at the top of the game. The books could never fully claim that, no matter how successful they were or are.

HBO is just really, really good at selling genres to non-genre watchers. The tits and swearing probably don't hurt.

I can actually flip open A Game of Thrones to a random page and know exactly what's going on. I love that. So I think this is one of those cases where 'read the books first' is not all that important.

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xxnoob wrote:

I guess nobody likes Bones. It's the only series on TV that I enjoy for years now.

Emily Deschanel is like the square, boring flipside to quirky, fun Zooey.

And I still can't see David Boreanaz as anything but Angelus. Sorry. :(