It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is brilliant, especially from the second season onward. There hasn't been a TV farce this tight since Arrested Development (the resurrection of which features prominently in my new religion). While we're on the subject, the greatest sketch show ever is actually Mr. Show, which I find much more consistent than Monty Python, if less groundbreaking (but after the Pythons there wasn't a lot of unbroken sketch ground anyway).
Now that Breaking Bad has reached it's amazing conclusion, my go-to crime show is Sons of Anarchy. It gets iffy in the middle but the early stuff and the current season has been very good, and frankly I hate everything so I take what I can get.
Kamen Rider Black brought up Kamen Rider, so I feel I have to point out that Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger is the best Super Sentai series ever, and probably the best Tokusatsu show in general.
While I'm in weaboo mode: the TV series of One Piece, while still full of filler and generally inferior to the comic, is still one of the most brilliant things ever put to screen. It's really hard to describe One Piece to someone unfamiliar with it, because in many ways it's a typical Shonen Manga. But I see this as sort of to the credit of the writer. He was able to make something so amazing out of a typical Shonen Manga. It's like a nuclear reactor made of legos; you have to look closely to realize that it's not just a stupid children's toy, but actually all the more impressive for having been made out of one. Anyway One Piece is about pirates and freedom and dreams, and the creator Eichiro Oda is the master of rising action and doing melodrama in such a way that you're still invested.
Personally I'd read the first chapter of the manga before attempting to watch the series. The people who made the show, in general, don't know what they're doing and are at their best when they closely mimic the comics. The first episode skips the events of the main character's childhood which are what make you care about the first stretch of events long enough to get to the point where things get interesting. Actually if you're going to watch the show rather than read the manga you're probably better off starting at episode 30, watching that story arc, and then going back and watching the earlier stuff if your interest has been piqued.
You know what? Just read the manga. Less people between you and Oda.
The Korean movie Old Boy is awesome, but anything else pertaining to it (including the original comic) is garbage.
Farscape was a show about being weird for it's own sake with movie-budget special effects and Jim Henson's creature shop doing the alien effects. It's very much like modern Doctor Who without being so damn smug about it and without the legacy of Russel T. Davies poisoning everything they do (I don't care that he brought back the show, he's a terrible awful writer who ends all of his series finales by having someone literally become a god via technology and Deus Ex Machina everything. He's also the reason why Every. Single. Monster. now does the Dalek's jingoism shtick.) The guy who replaced him was the best writer on the show though, so hopefully one day they'll be able to escape the shadow of bad choices he has cast on the program.
Pushing Daisies was basically the spiritual successor of Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls, or rather it was the apotheosis of those shows. If you only watch one series in the Bryan Fuller magical realism family, it should be Pushing Daisies. It's like a living cartoon. It you want to see a completely new world built out of cinematography, costume and set design this is the show to watch.
Also all the boring answers: The Sopranos, the Wire, blah blah, inarguable masterpieces of character study and theme, respectively.
Now that Breaking Bad has reached it's amazing conclusion, my go-to crime show is Sons of Anarchy. It gets iffy in the middle but the early stuff and the current season has been very good, and frankly I hate everything so I take what I can get.
Kamen Rider Black brought up Kamen Rider, so I feel I have to point out that Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger is the best Super Sentai series ever, and probably the best Tokusatsu show in general.
While I'm in weaboo mode: the TV series of One Piece, while still full of filler and generally inferior to the comic, is still one of the most brilliant things ever put to screen. It's really hard to describe One Piece to someone unfamiliar with it, because in many ways it's a typical Shonen Manga. But I see this as sort of to the credit of the writer. He was able to make something so amazing out of a typical Shonen Manga. It's like a nuclear reactor made of legos; you have to look closely to realize that it's not just a stupid children's toy, but actually all the more impressive for having been made out of one. Anyway One Piece is about pirates and freedom and dreams, and the creator Eichiro Oda is the master of rising action and doing melodrama in such a way that you're still invested.
Personally I'd read the first chapter of the manga before attempting to watch the series. The people who made the show, in general, don't know what they're doing and are at their best when they closely mimic the comics. The first episode skips the events of the main character's childhood which are what make you care about the first stretch of events long enough to get to the point where things get interesting. Actually if you're going to watch the show rather than read the manga you're probably better off starting at episode 30, watching that story arc, and then going back and watching the earlier stuff if your interest has been piqued.
You know what? Just read the manga. Less people between you and Oda.
The Korean movie Old Boy is awesome, but anything else pertaining to it (including the original comic) is garbage.
Farscape was a show about being weird for it's own sake with movie-budget special effects and Jim Henson's creature shop doing the alien effects. It's very much like modern Doctor Who without being so damn smug about it and without the legacy of Russel T. Davies poisoning everything they do (I don't care that he brought back the show, he's a terrible awful writer who ends all of his series finales by having someone literally become a god via technology and Deus Ex Machina everything. He's also the reason why Every. Single. Monster. now does the Dalek's jingoism shtick.) The guy who replaced him was the best writer on the show though, so hopefully one day they'll be able to escape the shadow of bad choices he has cast on the program.
Pushing Daisies was basically the spiritual successor of Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls, or rather it was the apotheosis of those shows. If you only watch one series in the Bryan Fuller magical realism family, it should be Pushing Daisies. It's like a living cartoon. It you want to see a completely new world built out of cinematography, costume and set design this is the show to watch.
Also all the boring answers: The Sopranos, the Wire, blah blah, inarguable masterpieces of character study and theme, respectively.
