Best Non-Sopranos/Deadwood/The Wire HBO One Hour Dramatic Series

before this season, Oz. now GoT without any question.

6FU

i think this is a two horse race but am curious

also which of these 3 unseen do i most 'need' to see, am most likely to enjoy: in treatment, boardwalk empire, treme

xp (tho i would never in a billion yrs watch game of thrones)

Rome.

treme

lol j/k

don't knock treme, it is still building, in 3/4 seasons something is expected to happen

personal rankings of ones i've seen more than two eps of:

6fu
oz
got
rome
A GAP
big love
true blood
carnivale
john from cincy
tell me you love me

steve zahn will be ripped apart by vampires

this is tough!

also which of these 3 unseen do i most 'need' to see, am most likely to enjoy: in treatment, boardwalk empire, treme

― balls, Saturday, June 18, 2011 2:00 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

in treatment is the best/most fully realized of these

motherFUCK Six Feet Under is all I want to say

an old thread to cross reference (although obviously it's a pretty different question): best hbo series premiering post-2005

got is kinda rome meets oz

bah tried to see if this had been done, didn't see that. there have been a shitload of hbo threads on ilx.

think i'm the only person who really liked unscripted

i've only had HBO at home for the last few years so i mostly have only watched the more recent shows. of those, i've probably enjoyed True Blood the most although it's pretty funny to call it the 'best' anything.

lol these all kinda suck in their own way, didnt really realize how much of the hbo brand excellence in my mind was built on the big three, of course theres still like mr show band of bros ali g etc

i quit watching 6FU after the episode where david was kidnapped, raped and forced to smoke crack, so i feel like i have an incomplete understanding of the show

kinda comes down to oz and rome for me, might go with rome because of the production design and the fact that it never got a chance to go off the rails like oz did, though it was never as dramatically satisfying as oz was at its peak

ive always intended to get into big love cuz im a big fan of bill paxton and sisterwives but i still havent seen an ep, i'll get to it someday

for me:

1. got
2. jfc

true blood's a lot of fun, not sure if i can vote for the sexey vampire werepanther show though

i liked big love for a while but it got really redundant and the central conceit fo the show is kinda lame and over played imho - most of these have something to recommend them if not enough to watch like every last ep

3. boardwalk
4. carnivale
5. oz

a lot I haven't seen but 6 feet under all the way

i can admit 6fu got weaker in later seasons but it never totally stopped working for me, while the ends of deadwood and big love felt like mercy killings

I still need to see Oz and I miiiiight watch Boardwalk Empire on DVD (saw first 2 episodes, liked 'em all right but didn't feel like investing). Rest I'm not that curious about beyond the bits I've seen.

Rome/John from Cincinnati/GoT all vying for my vote here.

i would crack up whenever i'd see a promo for a new episode of big love and it was all people yelling and waving guns with the stock hbo pounding drums soundtrack... maybe thats the show that the creators wanted to make, but it always made me think hbo was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole

big love would be awesome if it were abt the crazy fundamentalist mormon compound instead of the boring ass family drama shit

the dealbreaker for me was when they lost amanda seyfried and were given a short final season, and instead of tying up loose ends of the characters we were invested in they added a whole bunch to plot threads to leave open, most gratingly nicky's daughter and her teacher boyfriend (was he a perv? a dope? none of our business apparently)

though the first real downturn was the first time someone said "weber gaming"

to me their tendency to be all SEE SEE JUST LIKE A NORMAL FAMILY EXCEPT W/THREE WIFES just seemed way heavy handed and was the biggest problem

yeah that felt like the focus at first until they distracted by crazy mormon shit, which was fun for a while but hell, i missed the "normal family" stuff once we got into the wheelings and dealings and boyfriends for all

yah it def got a lil diffuse, tho i didnt see the last season and a half

you missed nothing

6fu plots got wackier over time (it's tv, it happens) but they never forgot the show was about watching the leads cry

kind of loved how they beat everything remotely likeable out of those characters over the course of 5 years

by the end of big love, all that could be enjoyed was the occasional line reading by a wife, and alvy sniffing dudes

lol alvys sniffing is p amazingly executed

I really loved No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency when it was on... haven't rewatched it though

oz/carnivale/john from cincinatti

I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO

i mean theyre all amazing in like totally different ways, the truth of it all is that oz wins on merit but the other two are both so brave and batshit that i just dont know.

JfC has so many flaws it's hard to really rate it but dammit if it wasn't crazy ambitious.

Carnivale's second season should have been the first season finale.

People seem to really love GoT so maybe the analogy isn't fair, but it's funny how people compared the cable drama renaissance to the Easy Riders Raging Bulls era, what with all the auteurs and groundbreaking, and now we have those guys busting out serious indulgences (john from c, treme) while the networks get hyped up on Big Deal Fantasy Epics just like the studios did in the late '70s

jfc show def had some moments where you were all something really interesting is happening but it never really came together - why oh why couldnt he have just kept making deadwood - its like it ruined 2 shows

True Blood probably fits better in that analogy xpost

Don't blame JfC for Deadwood's demise! He had no choice.

good point re 1970s cinema xp

Big Deal Fantasy Epics just like the studios did in the late '70s

what are you thinking of here

I was like holy fuck this is amazing and then I realized what happened and it wasn't v good all told

watching tv series out of order to make it more Lynchian - c/d

ugh i've fucked up on netflix a couple times and rented the 2nd disc of a season of a show before the 1st. generally i've been able to catch on to what i did a few minutes into the episode though.

kinda really pulling for boardwalk empire to get a goose egg -- i think there's gonna be a huge wave of 'oh wait this still exists? and we're supposed to watch it again?' when it comes back for a second season.

I think season 2 could be really, really awesome and am very much looking forward to it.

heh why do you hate b'walk empire al

Rome
GoT
True Blood
Carnivale

Whoa, had no idea singer Jill Scott stars in No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency! Is she good?

― Pete Scholtes, Sunday, June 19, 2011 11:29 AM (8 hours ago)

Yes, very. And superb supporting roles for anika noni rose, with a totally amazing guest spot from cch pounder.

Is CCH Pounder never not awesome? That woman. Love her!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Might have said this before, but Boardwalk is building in my esteem upon rewatch and Game of Thrones really came through as probably the best season of television out of any of these series, but they both seem too new to vote for, so Rome it is.

heh why do you hate b'walk empire al

― ☂ (max), Sunday, June 19, 2011 11:23 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

there is really just nothing to like about it imo -- it's not terrible but it felt like a waste of time & considerable talent & resources

also i have nightmares about the face of that girl gr80 keeps posting on 77

^^^^

in my rewatch she stands out as awful. i know she's supposed to be, but still.

I think the problem that stands out about season 1 is it is totally world-building and set-up for season 2. There's a lot of great things in it, and I think Buscemi and MacDonald are amazing in their scenes together. Richard Harrow is a brilliant character. I really dig it, but I'd be lying if its overall success for me doesn't greatly lie with next season.

is the girl you're referring to Paz de la Huerta? if so she is always two things in everything she appears in: a) naked and b) terrible. (see also: The Limits of Control, Enter the Void)

her face is very melted and strange-looking, like a ventriloquist dummy. I get distracted by it, it's annoying.

decided to vote for True Blood because HBO does cheap thrills better than high art these days

Still on a rush from Game of Thrones so I'm voting for that. I honestly think it might be the best here in terms of pure entertainment and audacity.

PS I think La Huerta kind of works in BE as her character is meant to be a vapid bitch. Not seen her in anything else.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

so wrong but I remember what the early 00s were like so no hate

tmulmiud

wish id voted in this poll cuz i coulda thrown 'tell me you love me' a vote. its slow & stilted & silly but it did an amazing job of creating a sense of place and characters that seemed firmly rooted & real.

holy fuck this poll is like the rongest thing ever wtf

wouldve voted game of thrones if id seen it before i voted

FU, 6FU

except for 6FU which i never got into, poll results seem pretty otm to me

did game of thrones suddenly turn into a masterpiece eight episodes in or did they just up the violent sex scenes from every six minutes to every two minutes?

dear got, when did u stop beating your wife? thx.

they just had mayor carcetti start doing monologues during the sex scenes (xpost)

though i guess "lord of the rings with a saucy dwarf and incestuous buttfucking" would say "masterpiece" to a large percentage of ilx no matter what

"a saucy dwarf, incestuous buttfucking, and tommy carcetti"

dinklage & wanklage

^^ haberdashery concern

I don't think they were buttfucking but i guess we'll never really know for sure

i guess i just assumed that if yr gonna bang yr sister you might as well go whole hog

so to speak

maybe max or someone can pop in and tell us if they start fucking pigs in book 3 or book 4

believe they are called "direpigs"

eventually the youngest of sean bean's daughters gets one as a pet, and it befriends a spider, and the spider spells out "that dude's fucking his sister, also he killed your son" in its web

would buy the strongo r.r. hulkington fantasy epic

no there is no pig fucking... yet

i like the series a lot but i feel like its a bit early to be calling it "2nd best hbo show"

then again this is a kind of dire list, so

i think rome was better tho

rome had baboonfucking. or at least the intimation of such.

i'm detecting a pattern here, hbo.

But it's not 2nd best, it's 5th best

I guess I understand why SFU isn't everyone's bag, but it's stuck with me longer than most other good shows. Uneven at times, but it did some amazing stuff.

I can't think of a more jarring scene in any show ever than the culmination of the whole Stiff plotline.

lol @ 3 votes for Treme

eventually the youngest of sean bean's daughters gets one as a pet, and it befriends a spider, and the spider spells out "that dude's fucking his sister, also he killed your son" in its web

JEEZES THE SPOILERS MANG.