Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Favorite TV Shows and Why

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

I wish this prompt had happened in January or July! I tend to watch lots of TV when the weather is freezing or unbearably hot. Spring and fall are when I cut back on shows and spend more time socializing with friends and visiting the great outdoors to soak up the mild weather.  With that being said, I will follow the prompt and talk about television instead of going off on a tangent about how much I want to go wander off into the woods for an afternoon.

These are my current favourite shows for reasons I’ll explain underneath the photo of each program.  If I were going to go out to dinner with any of you, I’d light up if you mentioned being fans of them as well.

The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t on this list because it won’t be out until later on this summer. Mindfulness is important to me, so I’m doing my best to wait until the first episode is out before getting excited about it.

Anne with an E

One of the things that always bothered me a little bit about L.M. Montgomery’s  Anne of Green Gables series was how much it brushed over Anne’s difficult childhood. She mentioned some pretty serious moments of child abuse and neglect to her new foster parents, and then the plot pretty much skipped over the trauma of those experiences for her. To be fair, these weren’t things that were discussed in too much depth in children’s books back then, and people living in the 1800s also had a much murkier understanding of how adverse childhood experiences could affect someone years later.

The cool thing about season one of this remake is that it hasn’t been afraid to explore how being abused, neglected, and abandoned by multiple caregivers had a serious emotional impact on Anne. I know some fans have criticized it for being too dark, but I think it’s going to be interesting to see how this more realistic approach to her story affects the person she becomes as she grows up.

I still need to watch season two. I’m so behind on shows!

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

I love the fact that this sitcom has a diverse cast but doesn’t fall back on stereotypes in order to make their jokes or explain who their characters are. All of the main characters and even some of the secondary ones are three-dimensional individuals. They feel like real people, warts and all.  It’s amazing to see how they’ve grown and changed over the years.

The running jokes are great, too. This isn’t the sort of sitcom I’d recommend watching out of order. There were things that happened in season one that are still being brought up by the characters years later.

Stranger Things

This was the show that taught me that people used to smoke everywhere and let their kids wander all over town without any supervision at all in the 1980s! Yes, I’m mostly joking there, but I was shocked by some of the cultural differences between that era and our own.

On a more serious note, I really like fantasy stories that are set in our world and feel as ordinary as possible. If not for the various supernatural stuff going on in this setting, it could have all really happened to my parents or other relatives who were teens or young adults back then. That’s quite appealing to me.

Black Mirror

I’m brand new to this show. It’s like The Twilight Zone in the sense that each episode is its own self-contained sci-fi or fantasy story. Of the few I’ve seen so far, there doesn’t seem to be crossover between any of them as far as characters or plots go.

I love the creativity of the episodes I have seen. The writers seem to take current trends and extrapolate what they might be like at a distant point in the future or in a version of earth where, say, a parent’s desire to electronically monitor her child is taken to the logical extreme.

I know I’m being vague here, but I really don’t want to give away spoilers. Let’s just say that this is a very thought-provoking program that I’m enjoying so much that I’m even willing to come home from the park early in order to watch it.

The same can be said for the rest of these shows, too. Ha!

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question. The image below is the list of upcoming prompts for this blog hop.

22 Comments

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22 Responses to Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Favorite TV Shows and Why

  1. I love Stranger Things and Black Mirror. I tried watching Anne with an E and just could not get into it (I’m one of the ones who find it too dark, and normally, I like dark. Just not with Anne ). I’m not a all familiar with Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but am willing to give it a shot (Netflix or Hulu?) My post is here: https://jhthomas.blogspot.com/2019/05/wednesday-weekly-blogging-challenge_15.html

    • It looks like we have some shows in common. How neat.

      Brooklyn Nine-Nine is available on Canadian Netflix, so I’d bet it’s on American Netflix, too. You guys tend to have most of the (non-Canadian) stuff we do plus more.

  2. I’m a bad kid. I haven’t seen any of these. Then again, I haven’t watched Game of Thrones either. Oh well. Good list. Andy Samberg is a riot.

  3. I just started Black Mirror. It’s dark, but it’s really interesting. I’m slowly getting through episodes.
    Brooklyn Nine-Nine is silly but it’s fun.

  4. I haven’t seen any of these. Shame on me, but I’m going to check them out. My list ishttps://www.tenastetler.com/favorite-tv-shows-and-why-lsr-wednesday-blog-challenge-5-15-19/

  5. My husband and kids love Stranger Things. I haven’t managed to get there yet, but eventually. 🙂 Also Brooklyn 99 is hysterical.

  6. I’ve seen just enough Stranger Things to know that A) it’s completely my era, and B) it’s completely my genre. The newer take on Anne of Green Gables sounds fascinating too, albeit in a completely different way.

    • Heh, I think you’d love Stranger Things if you ever watch the rest of it. I’d sure like to hear your thoughts on how accurate it was for that time period as far as the cultural norms go.

  7. Shockingly, I’m not really a big Anne of Green Gables fan (I know, it’s horrible to say that, but it’s true). I’ve watched some of “Stranger Things”, mostly in passing while my kid had it one. That and Black Mirror just aren’t really up my alley (but my kid has watched both and loved them) … I prefer light hearted entertainment. Keeps me from getting too trapped in my own “down-ness”. LOL… Brooklyn 99 looked a little too slapstick for me. It sounds like you’re saying it isn’t? I hate most sitcoms today (HATE The Big Bang Theory, as an example), so haven’t even been tempted to give it a try. Maybe I will 🙂

    • Brooklyn Nine-Nine definitely has it’s slapstick moments. It has serious/dramatic moments, too. I’m honestly not sure if you’d like it or not?!

  8. Oh, Stranger Things! I love that show. Although they’re in a plagiarism suit now, so not sure when/if it’s coming back. But I hope so!

  9. The only one on the list I’ve seen is Black Mirror. The episodes were hit and miss, but the hits outnumbered the misses. The only episode I showed my wife is the space ship knock off of Star Trek. She’s not into dark like this.

  10. I should try Anne With An E. I loved the books.

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