Television RedCafe's Favourite TV Shows Of All Time Contest (THE RESULTS)

No. 21 - Spartacus
Total Points: 54
Number Of Lists: 11
Highest Position: 1
Voter Of Highest Position: @Moby

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Juuuuust missing out on the top 20.

I fecking love this show. I think most people look down on this because they either haven't seen it or gave up into episode 1 (where the budget was too low for proper VFX work) but once you actually watch the entire show, you will find that it's simply a fantastic series with amazingly memorable dialogue, characters you root for and genuinely a touching story, especially when you take into account the lead actor passed away before the show's end. The final ep made me shed a tear and is one of the only times I have done that watching a film/tv show.

Great taste @Moby

Love it.
 
If we're talking about great sitcoms, Veep is clearly up there.


That show was pretty wonderful with its colorful language. I ran into the actors who play Jonah (Timothy Simons), and Mike (Matt Walsh), and then Zach Woods, who was in VP but also played Jared in Silicon Valley, all within 2 days in elevators at a shopping mall called The Grove. It was kinda wacky. My very young kid saw Jonah and said, "You're very tall", and he said, "Yes I am." He was cool about it.
 
Into the top 20 we go. This, for me, was the show that truly showed the cinematic qualities a TV show can have to mass audiences. It was mind blowing upon its release and despite it falling off a cliff in the later seasons, the first season was absolutely fantastic.
 
It was never the same after they killed off the real John Locke, but still riveting TV from beginning to end.
 
No. 20 - Lost
Total Points: 60
Number Of Lists: 15
Highest Position: 2
Voter Of Highest Position: @Big Andy

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It's never going to be the best show but obviously a lot of people's favourites. For me it was the first big TV show I got into. The days of posting on Lost forums debating theories and stuff was great fun, even if it didn't turn out as people hoped. I still like it from start to finish, especially once I accepted I wasn't going to get answers for everything. It's more about the characters.
 
No. 22 - Futurama
Total Points: 50
Number Of Lists: 12
Highest Position: 3
Voter Of Highest Position: @Wing Attack Plan R @Mercurial

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Futurama had the benefit of the wit and wisdom of The Simpsons without all the teething pains. Admittedly, they were finding their feet in the first season, and Prof. Farnsworth's catch phrase had to change, but they got up to speed pretty quickly. Futurama is in its 12th season*, with 160 episodes, 4 back to back films, and having been canceled and brought back from the dead 4 separate times. It first aired in 1999, and maybe because they've had extended breaks they never had to do any filler episodes. Like The Simpsons, there are jokes within jokes, and things that only are funny in context, but this show made me laugh out loud plenty of times, where Simpsons was "funny" without ever really making one laugh.

(*it's hard to tell what season it actually is, as the movies count as seasons.)

Throughout the show they have call-backs, like Richard Nixon's head being preserved and him becoming a dictator in the future (with robotic help), the Hypnotoad, Kif and Amy's romance, Zapp Brannigan, Calculus, there are mathematical jokes in the backgrounds of shots (like the Banach-Tarski Paradox, Nimbus registration numbers, Happy ln(bΩer), and more), there are alien signs that can be deciphered, and the show just maintained an irreverent attitude. The show is laugh out loud funny, smart, and at times deeply moving.

https://www.slashfilm.com/1331079/futurama-ended-four-times/
https://www.looper.com/1353626/easter-eggs-references-futurama-season-11/

Favorite episodes:

Season 1, episode 12. When Aliens Attack. This introduces the alien race the Omicrons. They are huge fans of an Ally McBeal-like show called Single Female Lawyer, and they've been watching the broadcasts beamed into space 300 years earlier. Fry spills a beer and destroyed the broadcast, so the Omicrons declare they will destroy the earth unless they can see the finale. So the Planet Express crew create a script and act out the final episode. From wiki: "During a commercial break, an aggravated Fry tells Leela that people do not watch TV for clever and unexpected situations because they get scared and confused by the unfamiliar and the unexpected. Lrrr makes a public statement backing up Fry's assertion. Fry quickly writes an ending where the judge (Farnsworth) dies (even though Farnsworth does not know what was going on and tests his pulse), leaving Jenny McNeal as a single female lawyer again. The Omicronians, satisfied with the ending, give the episode a C+, saying the show was good enough for them to spare the planet, though not good enough for them to give humans their secret to immortality (Fry blames it on Zoidberg "overacting"). The episode ends with the aliens departing Earth to watch a 1000-year-old Jay Lenomonologue and Fry stating that the secret to a successful television show is that everything ends up back to normal at the end of each episode. Ironically, the camera pans out to a view of New New York burning in ruins."

Season 4, episode 7. Jurassic Bark. Fry goes to a museum and finds a fossilized version of his dog he left 300 years before. Fry eventually is given the dog, and Farnsworth says he can isolate the DNA and clone the dog (Seymour Asses). Bender gets jealous and throws the dog carcass into a pit of lava. Eventually Fry lets the idea go, thinking that Seymour probably had a great life after he left. The show then has a flashback where we see the dog waited for Fry to return for 12 years, waiting outside the pizza plays in the wind and snow, until he died.

Season 4, episode 15. The Farnsworth ParaBox. Farnsworth creates a box that creates and destroys Universe 1, which intersects with their universe, Universe A. The crew look in the box, and fall into the other universe, and each are changed.

Season 4, episode 18, the first series "finale". The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings. Fry trades his human hands for a Devil Robot's hands, so that he can play a musical instrument to woo Leela.

"With his new, nimble hands, Fry becomes a skilled holophonor virtuoso. He is commissioned by Hedonismbot to write an opera. Fry, in an attempt to win Leela's heart, bases the opera on her life.

Upset at getting the raw end of the deal, the Robot Devil decides he has to get his own hands back. He begs Fry, but Fry refuses, reminding him they made a deal. The Robot Devil tries to make a deal with Bender for his hands. When Bender refuses, the Robot Devil then makes another deal, in which he trades Bender a stadium air horn for his "crotch-plate" so that he can annoy people. When Bender uses the air horn on Leela, it causes her to go deaf. Leela refuses to tell Fry, afraid that Fry will stop writing the opera, so she attends the premiere pretending she can still hear the performance. During the intermission, the Robot Devil offers Leela robotic ears in exchange for one of her hands at a time of his choosing. Desperate to hear the opera, Leela accepts the offer."

Season 6, episode 15, Möbius Dick. Amy says, "I spent a summer in Africa hunting giraffes, and giraffes are basically nothing but land whales." Leela gets obsessed with hunting a space whale that jumps through time in basically the Bermuda Triangle in space.

Season 7, episode 26. Meanwhile. One of the finales. Farnsworth invents a device that sends the user backwards in time 10 seconds. Fry gets it, and jumps off the Vampire State building because he has proposed to Leela, but she doesn't arrive (like An Affair To Remember). So he keeps resetting time as he falls to his death, in an endless loop. Eventually Bender helps Fry survive, but at the cost of freezing the universe. So Fry and Leela wander the earth together, growing old, seeing everything they wanted. It's a very touching finale. Then Farnsworth shows up, they realize they can un-freeze the universe, and decide to go back and do it all again.

Season 10, episode 6. Bendy Boo and the Mystery Crew. This makes fun of the whole Scooby Doo type of show, where here in the US, they would take one good cartoon (Scooby Doo), and intersperse a bunch of unrelated shit cartoons, and drown the whole thing in ads, and call it "Scooby Doo and Friends". IN this episode, it is "Bendy Boo and Friends Saturday Morning Fun Pit." There are spoofs of Smurfs, Strawberry Shortcake, and GI Joe, that are particularly hilarious. "Ready! Aim! Negotiate!"
 
No. 20 - Lost
Total Points: 60
Number Of Lists: 15
Highest Position: 2
Voter Of Highest Position: @Big Andy

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Don’t think it needs explaining really, one of the best TV shows of the naughties and the first real viral TV show that everyone watched and discussed online. Arguably the best episode of TV ever as well with “The Constant” and the reveal of Desmond in the first episode of Season 2 was so good. Mind bendingly annoying at times, and a few filler episodes, and the ending was debatably shite and great in equal measure, but for me one of my favourite ever TV shows.
 
Don’t think it needs explaining really, one of the best TV shows of the naughties and the first real viral TV show that everyone watched and discussed online. Arguably the best episode of TV ever as well with “The Constant” and the reveal of Desmond in the first episode of Season 2 was so good. Mind bendingly annoying at times, and a few filler episodes, and the ending was debatably shite and great in equal measure, but for me one of my favourite ever TV shows.
It was hugely popular for years until ultimately at the end it did a @Big Andy. Sorry
 
Lost was awesome, and agree with others it was more an experience than anything else. Yet to be as captivated by a TV show, but then again it probably caught me at a good age. Watched it back again a few years back with the other half. Still holds up, and the ending nowhere near as bad as it is made out to be. First 2/3 seasons are top tier telly. Some of the best character development too.
 
Lost was awesome, and agree with others it was more an experience than anything else. Yet to be as captivated by a TV show, but then again it probably caught me at a good age. Watched it back again a few years back with the other half. Still holds up, and the ending nowhere near as bad as it is made out to be. First 2/3 seasons are top tier telly. Some of the best character development too.
You ain't got time for this shit. Get your ass back in the WW thread :lol:
 
It's great, just so few episodes (12 episodes plus 2 Christmas specials) that it shouldn't get judged equal to something like Seinfeld (8 years and 180 episodes) that had to sustain a high level for far longer.
I guess I prefer things bite-sized as there's less chance to descend into shit. Some of my fav shows are only 1-2 seasons long:

Marianne
The Office UK
Death Note
The Night Of
Chernobyl
 
I guess I prefer things bite-sized as there's less chance to descend into shit. Some of my fav shows are only 1-2 seasons long:

Marianne
The Office UK
Death Note
The Night Of
Chernobyl
Sure. But is that a fair way to judge something? This whole exercise has been which show is better than other shows. A small, self-contained story, like The Office, or After Life, or Derek, is great, but in terms of achievement, of ranking one show against the other, I think a show that performed at a high level for 166 more episodes (Seinfeld) deserves the trophy.

Death Note had 37 episodes, even if over only 2 seasons. That would be 7 seasons worth of The Office.
Chernobyl is basically a long movie split into 5 sections, not really a classic TV show.
The Night Of - don't know it.
Marianne - don't know it.