Television

Party Down.

Aside from the fact that it's consistently well written and funny, it's also very accurate in my experience. I used to work in hospitality/event catering when I was younger and we all had some kind of reason why we were temporarily working in the industry. No one gave a fuck except the manager/supervisor, who would always be extremely stressed and wishing everyone else would put in the same amount of effort as them.

I'd say probably The Adventures of Tintin just because it has the nostalgia value of not just being a show from my childhood but also memories of watching it every Sunday morning at my dad's house (he had HBO so it was rare to see it).

For me personally it's gotta be Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Such a fantastic story, and one of the few shows I've gone back and re-watched several times. Even got my gf, who is not into anime, to love the show too, though her favourite remains Avatar The Last Airbender.

Honorable mention to Pantheon too, that one kinda broke me for a couple days. Just wish we got a bit more of the show so season 2 didn't have to be as rushed.

If I am allowed to pretend it went off the air after season 8, I’ll go with the Simpsons.

I was at first leaning toward Bojack Horseman, but after thinking it over, I have to say Babylon 5, too. That has a lot to do with how I experienced it.

I first heard of it before it even aired, because they used Lightwave on the Amiga for the CGI sequences. I think I still have the VHS tape from the first airing of The Gathering. It turned out to be an interesting show. I quickly forgot about watching for the CGI, and found myself watching for the story.

Not only that, but the shows creator engaged fans directly during production on CompuServe, and later, Usenet. (That was totally new at the time.) Since it was back in the ancient times, episodes aired once a week. We fans had plenty of time to discuss each episode, and speculate about where it was going.

Then, And the Sky Full of Stars hit like a ton of bricks. ("Wham! Wham! Wham!" as JMS liked to say online.) The story, the imagery, and the music just created the perfect storm of grief and dispair, and we got the full treatment of what it meant to have a 5-year story arc. (Oddly enough, I just realized that it was also the 8th episode of Bojack in which that show demonstrated real depth, and started to get really good.)

As the show continued, my personal life fell apart, as major depression took hold. I don't quite recall when I stopped being able to catch it when it aired, or why. (I think it moved to cable after PTEN folded?) But it wasn't until years later that I watched the 5th season, when I was scrabbling out of the deep hole of depression.

Holy hell. Getting to the series finale was emotional enough, but That Scene hit like 20 tons of bricks. It was played well, yes, but I had known these characters for literal years by then, learned what they'd gone through, felt the weight of all that they had done and felt, and I cried for a long time. And it was amazing to feel anything so deeply, which is why the show will always be special to me.

In many ways, I think that the streaming format robs us viewers of something vital. Binge-watching doesn't allow time for the characters and stories to really settle in your soul. And then there's no social group to share the experience with. I didn't watch Game of Thrones when it was new, and I know that the experience wouldn't be at all the same now. I did binge The Good Place last year, and the effect was like a summer thunderstorm—intense, but brief. It's a great show, but didn't affect me so deeply. As such, I'm glad I watched Bojack when it was new, to be able to share the experience online with other people. It was made for streaming, and the season-at-a-time release, so it couldn't be any other way, but nothing will quite match the experience of a dedicated fan base and weekly episodes.

Star Trek: TNG

Still stands, the Picard monologues are famous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincenzo_(TV_series)

Took me a little while to get used to the wild humor related tone swings, but the characters, plot, action, drama, and revenge are amazing.

James Burke's Connections

Go team venture!

Chris Carter's Millennium, from the late 1990s. The first season was not great, the third season was lousy, but the second season was spectacular!

I'm french so the answer is extremely easy. It's kaamelott

That's difficult, and the answer would change over time because picking a "favorite" is as much a product of what the mind is like at the time of asking as it is from an objective internal perception of favorite.

That being said, narrowing it down some helps.

First, ima wipe out anything generated by a streaming service. That narrows the field a lot, and it's no more arbitrary than any other criteria to do so.

Then, ima wipe out any serial shows that didn't get a finish of a reasonable kind as part of the original run. That's because I can't genuinely highly rate a show that isn't over. The story is "pending" for me, and that always makes a show a disappointment. It does, unfortunately, eliminate firefly since its "ending" wasn't aired. By aired, I mean shown on a network of some kind, be it cable or actual broadcast over the air. I also exclude anything not yet finished because how a show ends matters.

This eliminates thousands of shows, so I can maybe process things.

As contenders, there's wide range. Winnowing those, I have to factor in repeatability. If the show suffers over repeated viewings for me, that's a major loss. Something like Bones as an example, that I liked well enough when it was being aired, but has killed almost all enjoyment of it when watched one episode after another over a few weeks.

So, I have to decide if I want to include or exclude shows that aren't serial. Now, I can automatically eliminate sitcoms because even the ones that are properly serial can't hold up for me. But there's sketch comedy ala snl and madtv. There's stuff like the Twilight zone as well. Because of the quality of sketch shows and anthologies, I gotta leave them in. But they're usually prone to more full on bad episodes than other types, so it leaves gaps.

All of which, nobody but me really cares about, but I'm bored and wanting to think this through in writing.

It does lead me to a few finalists though. Buffy has to be in there, though its ending was barely an ending, but counts enough. Monty Python has to be as well; even the weakest episodes still make me laugh. Trek has to be a possibility, but which iteration? Then there's quantum leap that manages to be nostalgic without feeling super dated (unlike a show like knight rider that's still fun, but really feels less enjoyable than it did in its era).

Since narrowing Trek down is nigh impossible for me, I think that disqualifies any individual series from making the grade. Tos and tng are just too closely tied to pick one.

Quantum leap though, damn. I've seen it front to back a dozen plus times and still enjoy it, even with the era's proclivity towards cheese.

However, Buffy manages to be cheesy and it not (for me) trigger the rueful chuckle, so I guess that bumps leap down a notch.

That essentially leaves me picking between Buffy and Python.

Which one I'd cue up first isn't certain on any given day. That being said, I think the fact that I could always just shrug and default to Python if I didn't know what I was in the mood for bumps it into favorite status for me.

Yeah, that's as good an answer as any other.

I will say that some shows, like the walking dead as a perfect example, could push those down if the overall series hadn't been mismanaged.

Then there's shows like Dr Who that I've spent more years and hours watching, but suffer from a ton of bad sections that make it hard to weed out; I'd have to pick a favorite doctor to be honest with myself about the show's overall enjoyment factor. Like, Tom Baker era, or the Tennant/Smith era, they top Buffy for sure, but those are small segments of the show as a whole. Plus, the show technically hasn't ended only individual eras have.

Loooota caveats in there though lol

Probably DS9 with Babylon 5 as close 2nd, or the Simpsons

From. I just love that show and cannot wait for new seasons!

The Andy Griffith Show. Genuinely funny show, with a great heart. Barney Fife, played by Don Knotts, is literally the funniest character ever on TV.