Interesting Television

The Best Shows on TV,
in some sort of order...
Current TV Shows:

• Farscape; much better than muppets in space, although there are a few of those, too. Much better than Voyager, sadly...
  
• Star Trek: Enterprise: curiously refreshing after the last two Star Trek bombs.
  
• Iron Chef; Imagine cooking as combat...
  
• Junkyard Wars; Tinkerer's Nirvana! Are you a metal hacker? You don't want to miss this one. Following are a few links to get you interested:
  
• Battlebots
  
• CBS Sunday Morning; think of it: a TV news show that emphasizes beautiful things. Not always, but once the sordid day-to-day news is taken care of, they take you to see museums, artists, authors, etc. The only show I watch on "Network" television.
  
• Lexx; currently in reruns and probably no new shows on the horizon.
  
• Nova (PBS)
  
• Scientific American Frontiers
  (PBS)
  

Old TV Shows:

• Win Ben Stein's Money
  The best game show around. Unlike any other game show since the long-gone and much missed GE College Bowl, this one actually requires contestants to have a brain. To prove his worthiness, the host, Ben Stein puts his own encyclopedic knowledge to the test by becoming a contestant for the last two rounds of the show. Quite refreshing!
  
• Chef! (BBC America)
  --If you've never seen Lenny Henry in action, this is the place to do so. If you like to cook and/or laugh, *this* is the sitcom for you.
  
• Alive From Off-Center (PBS)
  
• Alive TV (PBS)
  
• Babylon 5 (TNT)
  Bar none, the best sci-fi show ever. Now that the 5-year story is finished, re-runs are all we have. There appears to have been a feud concerning content and whom should control it. The producer/writer/director was not the owner of the show and the result is reruns are now aired in a 2-hour block early Saturday mornings.
  There was a sequel in the works called Crusade, but the plot was suborned by the owners and re-edited from the creator's intent, i.e. TNT had a bad case of "We Know What's Best" and decided to take a perfect show and add some guns, some tits, you know the routine. The creator, in righteous indignation, quit after only 13 episodes of the new show had been shot and all the actors have gone their separate ways.
  Here are some links:
  -The Lurker's Guide
  -Voltayre's Encyclopaedia Xenobiologica
  -The Babylon 5 Encyclopaedia
  -The "Official" Warner Brothers Babylon 5 Homepage (WARNING: you can't back out of this link! To get back to this page you'll have to go "home" and then re-link to my page!!)
  -The "Official" Warner Brothers Babylon 5 Homepage (go figure...)
• Beakman's World (CBS)
  Much better than that other kid's science show by whats-his-name (Bill Nye). Beakman's World started out on the Discovery Channel where it enjoyed a loyal following and it was always shown at exactly the same time each week. CBS acquired the show and suddenly Beakman was routinely pre-empted by various sports events and its alternate time slot was filled with infomercials at many local stations. The show is now gone and it's not even being repeated any more. It is my hope that DSC can re-acquire the rights so kids can at least enjoy the reruns.
  I spent some time thinking about this show and here's the truth of it: Beakman had a format where kids could mail in questions; ANY question ...and it would be answered (in one show a kid wrote in: "what is snot?" and Beakman made a monstrous "nose" and demonstrated where boogers come from!). What was (is) wrong with Bill Nye is he answers questions adults think children should be asking, rather than what they actually want to know. This is a flawed premise, to my way of thinking and steers kids away from what fascinates them, towards what only "educates" them, so to speak, in the bad sense of the word.
  
• Connections 1, 2 and 3, with James Burke (PBS)
  The exposition in 1 is the best; following Mr. Burke's trains of thought in 2 and 3 reminded me of listening to Buckminster Fuller speak: eventually he got to the point, but the listener's patience was tested.
  
• Max Headroom (shown occasionally on Tech TV)
  As close a vision of tomorrow as I have ever seen on TV and well worth the time to find. If possible check out videos of the show. You want to avoid the abominable "talk show" version of the thing that came out after a flurry of recriminations and lawsuits ended the first run of this cerebral and thought-provoking sleuthing-adventure series.
  
• New TV (PBS)
  
• Penn and Teller's Sin City Spectacular
  This one offers something that has been unseen on TV for many years: entertainment!! The kicker is, if you don't have cable you can't get the show.
  
• Zatoichi (available on videocassette at all the better rental outfits)
  --Ever wonder where all those great classic western plots came from? Japan, of course! God forbid the moguls of Hollywood should ever plan anything original... This was a weekly Japanese TV show and it was a series of feature films as well. I have only ever seen the films, but I'm told the weekly was also quite extraordinary.