Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Movies and Television Shows, Part 2

Happy Top Ten Tuesday! As promised, this week is the much-anticipated Part 2 of last week's Top Ten list of favorite movies and tv. This week's topic is top television shows! Enjoy!

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme started on the Broke and the Bookish blog.

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TELEVISION

1. At first glance, Gilmore Girls could easily be written off as cheesy family drama. Airing from 2000-2007 on the WB and CW, it is actually one of the sharpest written shows of that decade. The distinct voice of Gilmore Girls can be attributed to creator Amy Sherman-Palladino who imbued it with her whip-smart, mile-a-minute, pop-culture laced dialog. It’s a testament to everyone who worked on the show that they’ve managed to create such a vibrant world that feels lived in. The fictional setting of Stars Hollow is a place I often wished I could go – to drink Founders’ Day punch and gossip with Babette, to listen to one of Miss Patty’s off-color stories of her time dancing on Broadway, or to eat burgers and pie at Luke’s Diner. 

2. Orphan Black in a nutshell:

If that picture doesn’t impress you, then you don’t realize that all three of those characters are played by one extraordinary actress: twenty eight-year-old Tatiana Maslany. Orphan Black kicks off when small-time con woman, Sarah Manning sees a girl who looks just like her committing suicide on a train platform. Sensing an opportunity, Sarah steals her purse with a plan to drain her bank account. Almost immediately, Sarah finds herself wrapped up in a clone conspiracy that pits science vs. religion in a battle for her autonomy. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Maslany is tasked with playing up to nine different clones, often portraying multiple characters in one scene (and don’t even get me started on the clones impersonating each other). What’s really incredible is that Maslany has developed each character so completely, giving each a unique set of mannerisms and accents, that most of the time you forget you’re watching the work of just one person.

3. On the first day of her crappy temp job, eighteen-year-old Georgia (who prefers to be called George) Lass is killed by a toilet seat falling from the deorbiting Mir space station. 

George at Happy Time Temp Agency.

Fortunately, George was uninterested in living life, so death comes as a welcome relief. Unfortunately, George is recruited as a grim reaper and must now spend her time ushering souls to the great beyond. Also, grim reapers aren’t paid, so she is forced back into the crappy temp job she was working before she died. That’s par for the course when it comes to creator Bryan Fuller’s Dead Like Me, a show that manages to combine the heartbreaking, the grotesque, and the hilarious into one can’t-miss show.

4. The ultimate example of brilliant but cancelled has to go to Paul Feig and Judd Apatow’s Freaks and Geeks. The show makes you remember just how awkward growing up felt, while also being endlessly entertaining. A lot of that has to do with the impressive cast Feig and Apatow put together - including Linda Cardellini, John Francis Daley, James Franco, Seth Rogen, and Jason Segel.

5. I wish I had never seen Friday Night Lights just so I could experience it again for the first time. Most people see it as “just that football show,” but I assure you, it is much more. The town of Dillon, Texas is a living, breathing place. It’s populated with hard working people who, on Friday nights, go see their beloved Panthers play football. Kyle Chandler stars as head coach, Eric Taylor, who has the challenging job of guiding his boys on the path to becoming good men,  while also dealing with the pressure of the town expecting him to bring home a state championship. Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.

That's my top five, what's yours?

~Meredith T.