One of the beauties of working from home is whilst typing up articles and responding to emails I usually have something playing in the background to keep me distracted. For a lot of people it's music, for some it's films, but for me it's TV shows - especially serialised ones. With the advent of DVD season box sets and Tivo in recent years, shows working with stand alone episodes simply aren't as compelling as they once were.
Plus in this job, its very easy to have a 'marathon session' of playing a half dozen episodes or more of a series in one sitting whilst working for hours on end. Sound dull? Well it's more fun than listening to your co-worker babel on about some hot date they only got to second base with last night I have to say.
Thus I probably watch more TV than most even if almost none of it requires me actually sitting down and concentrating on it completely these days - the benefits of being a multi-tasker. For me TV is about being entertained and hopefully a little educated, and in recent years the small screen has proven a far more satisfying source than the rather bleak and disappointing efforts in the cinematic realm.
To give you an idea of my tastes, this past 2005/2006 television season I made sure to watch every episode of "24", "Battlestar Galactica", "Boston Legal", "Deadwood", "Doctor Who", "Family Guy", "Life on Mars", "Lost", "Prison Break", "Veronica Mars" and where possible current affairs/satires like "The Colbert Report", "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "Real Time with Bill Maher".
Despite dropping in quality I still made sure to catch "Alias", "Desperate Housewives", "The Simpsons" and "South Park", plus I enjoyed the dumb 'guilty pleasure' fun of genre stuff like "The 4400", "Invasion", "Smallville", "Stargate: SG-1" and "Supernatural".
Other shows I really love but prefer waiting for complete DVD sets for include "Arrested Development", "The Dead Zone", "Entourage", "Grey's Anatomy", "House", "Little Britain", "My Name is Earl", "Nip/Tuck", "The OC", "Queer as Folk", "Rome", "The Shield", "The Sopranos", "Will & Grace" and "Wire in the Blood".
Now we come to a new Fall TV season and already with a rather full palette of great TV, I've done a lot of scouring to pick out the shows I'm definitely considering giving a go. I've already managed to see most of the 25 or so pilots of the new shows with some I immediately clicked with, others I had hope for and was severely disappointed.
Overall whilst the quality of these shows is up in general, the lack of interesting subject matter and good writing is what's going to have audiences tune out. There's a few guilty pleasures and one or two shows taking some interesting dares, but quite a few are requiring investment in characters and ideas that just don't feel well thought out. Sitcoms in general I ignore unless there's an interesting premise (ala. My Name is Earl, Arrested Development, etc.) so you won't see them mentioned much here.
