TV is Not a Dirty Word

Like many people, I have a conflicted relationship with television. I have a fond memory of my dad climbing on the roof to adjust the antenna when I, waiting for The Friendly Giant to come into view, spotted a bear in the orchard. And I recall being quite excited for Sunday night's Disney hour-long specials such as the memorable Flight of the Navigator. I loved MASH and Monty Python for periods of my teen years and then I went without TV for many years, pretty much the entire run of Seinfeld and the first six years of Survivor. I was busy living large with few possessions and even less income; TV was the last thing on my mind.

It wasn't until I settled in my current city with my now-husband that we got our first TV off craigslist. My parents gave us their old VHS player and we'd rent video tapes from the library. (And yes, I realize just how very out of date that sounds now, eight years later, but imagine how peculiar it will sound to our kids in another eight!)

With those new-to-us technological advances I watched the entire series of Blackadder. It wasn't the first time I'd seen the show but I fell completely in love with the series and still give it top three ranking today. It was around this time that the current TV comeback was picking up momentum thanks to shows like The Wire and Six Feet Under. These programs were proving that shows could be better than movies, offering more in terms of character development and plot lines.

Here is a list of the shows I've watched in the past decade that I enjoyed, loosely organized chronologically.

• Deadwood
• Carnivale
• Life
• Californication
• Mad Men
• Breaking Bad
• Game of Thrones
• Sherlock
• Boardwalk Empire
• Downton Abbey
• Wallander
• The Hour
• Parade's End
• Black Mirror

You can see I've been on a BBC kick the last while (Thanks Dad).

Oh, and just for the sake of it: my top three TV shows of all time are Wallander, The Wire, and Blackadder.