Peaks Fans Top 10 TV shows

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hopesfall
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Re: Peaks Fans Top 10 TV shows

Post by hopesfall »

10. Les Revenants
9. The Thick Of It
8. The Prisoner
7. Blackadder
6. This Is England ('86, '88 & '90)
5. Carnivale
4. Garth Marenghi's Darkplace
3. I'm Alan Partridge
2. The Virtues
1. Twin Peaks

When I thought about this, I was surprised at the striking juxtaposition of comedy and bleak/mysterious drama. Honourable mentions go to Peaky Blinders, which isn't my usual go-to fare, but the places it's set in are right on my doorstep, so it feels close to home and I get a strange nostalgia watching it; and also, Breaking Bad, which doesn't really need much said about it! It only didn't make the list because I suppose I didn't feel transported into the world itself. I always felt on the outside looking in, to the point of it breaking the fourth wall on occasion, and I don't think that's necessarily a geographical thing, as Twin Peaks had me there from the word go, and I've never been anywhere near the Pacific NW. I think it's perhaps more of an aesthetic issue.

Having two jobs, and a young child, I find it hard to really get time to watch much TV, but it's something that when I do put time in, i get so much back from it, so I need to just put a few hours in the week to get into some new shows. Some great choices in this thread, so I have plenty to get on with when I see my way to managing my time a little better.
Last edited by hopesfall on Fri Feb 21, 2020 3:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Peaks Fans Top 10 TV shows

Post by Mr. Strawberry »

hopesfall wrote:10. Les Revenants
9. The Thick Of It
8. The Prisoner
7. Blackadder
6. This Is England ('86, '88 & '90)
5. Carnivale
4. Garth Marenghi's Darkplace
3. I'm Alan Partridge
2. The Virtues
1. Twin Peaks

When I thought about this, I was surprised at the striking juxtaposition of comedy and bleak/mysterious drama. Honourable mentions go to Peaky Blinders, which isn't my usual go-to fare, but the places it's set in are right on my doorstep, so it feels close to home and I get a strange nostalgia watching it; and also, Breaking Bad, which doesn't really need much said about it! It only didn't make the list because I suppose I didn't feel transported into the world itself. I always felt on the outside looking in, to the point of it breaking the fourth wall on occasion, and I don't think that's necessarily a geographical thing, as Twin Peaks had me there from the word go, and I've never been anywhere near the Pacific NW. I think it's perhaps more of an aesthetic issue.

Having two jobs, and a young child, I find it hard to really get time to watch much TV, but it's something that when I do put time in, i get some much back from it, so I need to just put a few hours in the week to get into some new shows. Some great choices in this thread, so I have plenty to get on with when I see my way to managing my time a little better.
Amen, brother. I have one day job and two young children, plus several extremely demanding life pursuits that keep me up very late, therefore I can't watch TV at all. It just knocks me out. These days I have to remain active. If I'm idle, I'm done for.

Before Twin Peaks, the only TV for me was The Prisoner, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Fawlty Towers. I never enjoyed TV the way I enjoyed film. It was just too TV.

Also, Les Revenants is great. I watched the first season years ago. Life got a little chaotic just one or two episodes into the second season, so I still need to go back to it. I've never heard of half the shows on your list, gonna have to check them out. I did watch a few episodes of Carnivale and thought it was awesome, but fatigue, chaos and demands distracted me from it.
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Re: Peaks Fans Top 10 TV shows

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Responding to discussion a page or so back: Yeah, I like the US Office and all, but the UK one really is something else; it managed even to be genuinely successful in emotional effect.
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Re: Peaks Fans Top 10 TV shows

Post by Agent Earle »

AXX°N N. wrote:Responding to discussion a page or so back: Yeah, I like the US Office and all, but the UK one really is something else; it managed even to be genuinely successful in emotional effect.
Right you are, sucessful even in the romantic-comedy aspect, and I detest romantic comedies with passion!
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Re: Peaks Fans Top 10 TV shows

Post by bowisneski »

Some great answers and discussion in this thread, meant to chime in a while ago but didn't have the time.

10. The X-Files - While there are a lot of rough spots throughout, I watched through the series between LOST Season 3 and 4(the introduction of 9 months between seasons and shorter seasons) and it kept my attention all the way through, probably a lot of that has to do with David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson and the mood established in Seasons 1 - 5. I did watch the most recent seasons and thought a lot of it was not great, outside of seeing Mulder and Scully again, but Season 11 has the perfect series finale for the show in The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat. To me, that's the end of the show.

9. Gargoyles/Beast Wars(Machines) - I couldn't settle on which one so I went with both(technically 3 but Machines is a direct continuation of Wars). They were favorites at the time and looking back I think it's because neither show was afraid to have darkness and continuity. Rewatching them now and again, I think Gargoyles and Beast Machines hold up better than Beast Wars on the writing and visual ends but watching Machines without watching at least the mytharc of Wars would diminish the experience. Best Machines also introduced religious ideas into an ongoing kids Transformers show that I loved, but looking back it looks like it was treated like FWwM. It had its roots in the original show, but went someplace completely different. Were it not for these, I'm not sure I would have the taste I do today.

8. Hannibal - Didn't get into this while it was airing but my sister got me all three seasons on blu for Christmas the year after it ended and I thought it was stellar across the board - writing, acting(man, Mads is amazing), cinematography. It feels like living inside of a beautiful dream and a terrible nightmare.

7. Carnivale - I love the love this show is getting in this thread. It was so compelling and set during a time period my 18 year old self couldn't see himself being interested in but I got the first disc from Netflix(feeling a little outdated here, haha) and then bought both seasons. Like LOST and Peaks it had me from the word go and I wish HBO would give him a mini-series or something to complete it. While it was set in 34/35 and the first nuke test would be ten years later, I think the time for a movie/mini-series/season set in 1945 is closing but would be awesome.

6. The Leftovers - Like LateReg, I think this is a better show than LOST because of the brevity and quality but it just doesn't match up on the impact LOST had on me and my life. When I first watched the Pilot, it interested me but didn't grip me so I held off and am both glad and bummed I went that route. The advantage was I accidentally started my series watch with the Season 3 premier which is a great way to make you want to know how we got there. Damon Lindelof, to me, is hands down the one of the top three showrunners of the modern generation and I think that's because he embodies the best parts of Twin Peaks Seasons 1 and 2. He always treats a primary director or two as co-showrunners, puts together excellent writers rooms focused on character, lets casting and writing be a journey that allows for detours, and overall understands that television and film are collaborative mediums with give and pull at every level and he seems to choose his battles. And I loved how the show dealt with surreal space and in the end a doppelganger situation.

5. Arrested Development - Occasionally watched this when it was airing, but really got into it when my friends parents got satellite and some channel was running a marathon after which I promptly went our and started buying the seasons. The layers of all the jokes and the pace floored me. I also enjoyed Season 4 a lot and found the re-edit Netflix did to be a disappointment. I would say it's the revival I most closely compare to Peaks because it built off what came before but switched up its style and did something new to the disappointment of many fans. I feel nothing strongly about Season 5 and I'm not even sure I made it to the end.

4. Venture Bros. - A show that begins in the vein of Johnny Quest parody but outgrows that quickly and ends up focusing very much on character and grew into a world of what if super scientists, their arch-enemies, and super heroes are all real but the good guys and the bad guys have to follow bureaucratic rules to engage in arching each other. The first season is mostly standalone and sets up the world which just goes deeper and deeper as each season progresses. With the exception of one episode, the show is written entirely by two people, Jackson Publick(creator) and Doc Hammer. Somehow they manage a great sense of continuity even though they don't write together or the episodes of a season in order. The major upside of this is the show barely ever has quality dips but the downside is there have only been 7 seasons since 2001.

3. Invader ZIM - Maybe my first true television obsession, it's for sure the first show I collected a ton of merch from and engaged with online. The visuals and writing just stood out to me from everything else I was watching on Nick and Disney at the time and I felt like it understood the world I lived in, just taking it to a ridiculous extreme. Plus the crew, despite being double my age, engaged with me like an adult anytime I managed to reach out to someone and they seemed like the type of people that I would want to hang out with. The commentary on the DVD's from the early 2000's is some of my favorite every. And I think the commentary on the state of humanity grows more relevant with each passing year. It's hard to overstate how much this and spots 4 and 5 shaped my sense of humor.

2. Twin Peaks - Discovered the same year as X-Files but I immediately put X-Files on hiatus because of how much it gripped me. I think I've told this story elsewhere but I didn't watch The Pilot until after I'd seen Episode 14. My art teacher who I talked LOST with highly suggested it to me shortly before the Gold Box came out but warned me not to watch The Pilot until after I knew who killed Laura to avoid any spoilers, he didn't know about the fact the Gold Box would contain both. The show still gripped me and didn't let me go until the end, even the uneven stuff. Sometimes I found myself bored or annoyed but everything else going on kept me engaged. At the time I was more Frost minded(now I'm in about the middle) about the mythology and I really enjoyed(and still do) most of the Windom Earle arc. And then the way The Return gripped my attention all summer long even when it frustrated me and there are still things I dislike but it seems richer and richer with each rewatch.

1. LOST - I would tie this Pilot with that of Twin Peaks in the craft of world building and introducing a huge cast of characters efficiently and effortlessly. The only reason I watched was because a friend and I thought it would be dumb, some of the word of mouth I had seen was Survivor the series, but it started my love of the medium of television. My parents were mostly sitcom watchers with the odd drama thrown in now and again and I was 14 and sort of between Nickelodeon and "adult" TV. Like with Twin Peaks, I missed one of the most buzz worthy entries until I got the first season on DVD, first thing I remember buying with money that I earned outside of chores at home, and I couldn't believe I had missed it because I was grounded because I got a C on a Math test. I truly believe it is the best piece of network television to ever run to completion. There are rough spots but you blow right past those on rewatch and even the worst episodes felt like an average episode of another show. And Through the Looking Glass is up there with Episode 29 as favorite episodes of television ever. I was actually spoiled but thrown off at the same time. I knew it was a flashforward and that the last line from Jack to Kate was going to be "We have to go back!" but I figured that would be in a lift off helicopter or on the freighter. My mind was blown when I saw the actual final scene. And I gained so many acquaintances from message boards that I still check in with to this day and it taught me what the medium could do when basically unhampered, so while there might be shows better I can't imagine any will ever push it off my top spot.

I think Watchmen probably pushes X-Files off the list at this point, not sure where I'd place it yet, but I like to allow some time before I definitely put something in my top 10.

Honorable mentions to Rick and Morty, Community, Battlestar Galactica, Adventure Time, Fringe, Cowboy Bebop, and 30 Rock.

EDITED to complete The Leftovers entry.
Last edited by bowisneski on Fri Mar 13, 2020 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Peaks Fans Top 10 TV shows

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The LOST love in this thread is great. Also I too was a huge fan of Invader Zim and being a world-weary teen at the time it seems you're destined to have that show stamped onto your heart. Also it seems your Leftovers write-up got snipped in the middle, I would have liked to read it! :)
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Re: Peaks Fans Top 10 TV shows

Post by bowisneski »

AXX°N N. wrote:The LOST love in this thread is great. Also I too was a huge fan of Invader Zim and being a world-weary teen at the time it seems you're destined to have that show stamped onto your heart. Also it seems your Leftovers write-up got snipped in the middle, I would have liked to read it! :)
It warms my heart too. There's a lot of vocal negativity but a lot more quiet love. Oh man, it really does seem that way. I feel like I truly now live in a world where an elected official would change their plan on a dime for a box of Chocolate Covered Ninja Star Cookies.

Thanks for pointing that out and your interest! I don't know what happened but I tried to get as close to what I wrote yesterday as possible.
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Re: Peaks Fans Top 10 TV shows

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10. The Prisoner
9. LOST
8. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
7. Fawlty Towers
6. The Twilight Zone
5. Monty Python's Flying Circus
4. Avatar: The Last Airbender
3. Candid Camera
2. The Sopranos
1. Twin Peaks
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Re: Peaks Fans Top 10 TV shows

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

bowisneski wrote:
AXX°N N. wrote:The LOST love in this thread is great. Also I too was a huge fan of Invader Zim and being a world-weary teen at the time it seems you're destined to have that show stamped onto your heart. Also it seems your Leftovers write-up got snipped in the middle, I would have liked to read it! :)
It warms my heart too. There's a lot of vocal negativity but a lot more quiet love. Oh man, it really does seem that way. I feel like I truly now live in a world where an elected official would change their plan on a dime for a box of Chocolate Covered Ninja Star Cookies.
Sadly, Mark Frost doesn’t seem to be a big fan of Lost. In the Bushman book, he accuses the show of ripping off a pilot he produced called Forbidden Island (and also goes out of his way to call Carlton Cuse’s Nash Bridges—the show which also gave Damon Lindelof his start—“really average”...he might well be right, I’ve never seen it, but it kinda feels like a calculated jab). He also comes across as rather disdainful of The X-Files, rather surprisingly.
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Re: Peaks Fans Top 10 TV shows

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Mr. Reindeer wrote:Sadly, Mark Frost doesn’t seem to be a big fan of Lost. In the Bushman book, he accuses the show of ripping off a pilot he produced called Forbidden Island (and also goes out of his way to call Carlton Cuse’s Nash Bridges—the show which also gave Damon Lindelof his start—“really average”...he might well be right, I’ve never seen it, but it kinda feels like a calculated jab). He also comes across as rather disdainful of The X-Files, rather surprisingly.
I didn't really get that from what he said. It seemed like he was just saying how interesting it is, from a coincidence standpoint. He's brought up LOST before in what didn't seem like totally disapproving ways, here @ around 1:44 for instance, the only instance I can source.

As for X-Files, as someone who was never a fan, it's not all surprising, because I distinctly remember when it first premiered, it was rather widely called a TP ripoff.
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Re: Peaks Fans Top 10 TV shows

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Mr. Reindeer wrote:and also goes out of his way to call Carlton Cuse’s Nash Bridges—the show which also gave Damon Lindelof his start—“really average”...he might well be right, I’ve never seen it, but it kinda feels like a calculated jab). He also comes across as rather disdainful of The X-Files, rather surprisingly.
To be fair, one cannot imagine a more cookie cutter excuse for airing advertisements network show than "Nash Bridges". It is a by the numbers episodic cop show and completely without charm or merit. It is also fairly easy to backtrack that ABC, Abrams and Jeffrey Lieber stole Frost's work for what became "Lost", without even a creative consultant credit.
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Re: Peaks Fans Top 10 TV shows

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eyeboogers wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:and also goes out of his way to call Carlton Cuse’s Nash Bridges—the show which also gave Damon Lindelof his start—“really average”...he might well be right, I’ve never seen it, but it kinda feels like a calculated jab). He also comes across as rather disdainful of The X-Files, rather surprisingly.
To be fair, one cannot imagine a more cookie cutter excuse for airing advertisements network show than "Nash Bridges". It is a by the numbers episodic cop show and completely without charm or merit. It is also fairly easy to backtrack that ABC, Abrams and Jeffrey Lieber stole Frost's work for what became "Lost", without even a creative consultant credit.
Again, never saw Nash Bridges, and I’m certainly not doubting that it was cookie cutter (I’ve been generally unimpressed with most of Cuse’s non-Lost work), but it seemed rather pointed that Mark particularly called it out.

As for the origins of Lost, it’s a pretty basic concept and it’s well inside the realm of possibility that multiple people developed similar concepts independently. It’s not exactly Being John Malkovich or anything. What made the show great for me and many others was the execution, the production values, the character relationships, the pacing, the mood etc. There are so many people who were involved in the conceptualization, it’s impossible to know who may or may not have seen the Forbidden Island pilot. But I have no particular reason to doubt the story that’s been told and retold that ABC exec Loyd Braun came up with the concept because both Survivor and Castaway had been huge in the last few years, and it seemed like a concept that would sell well. (As a sidebar, Mark essentially calls Survivor the harbinger of the downfall of Western civilization.) Abrams & company were hired hands who came in to develop the project after the concept had already been decided upon. Also, to be strictly accurate, Frost says he only produced Forbidden Island. He came on board after the script was written, so if a creative consultant credit were due to anyone, it wouldn’t be to him.

Finally, it’s worth noting that Spelling Productions produced Forbidden Island, and Spelling was also supposed to produce Lost, during the period when Jeffrey Lieber was writing the initial draft (which bears little resemblance to the finished product besides generalities arising from the basic concept). Spelling exited the project once Abrams and Lindelof came aboard. So, I guess there’s a circumstantial argument there that Spelling could have pirated its own product.
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Re: Peaks Fans Top 10 TV shows

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Mr. Reindeer wrote:
eyeboogers wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:and also goes out of his way to call Carlton Cuse’s Nash Bridges—the show which also gave Damon Lindelof his start—“really average”...he might well be right, I’ve never seen it, but it kinda feels like a calculated jab). He also comes across as rather disdainful of The X-Files, rather surprisingly.
To be fair, one cannot imagine a more cookie cutter excuse for airing advertisements network show than "Nash Bridges". It is a by the numbers episodic cop show and completely without charm or merit. It is also fairly easy to backtrack that ABC, Abrams and Jeffrey Lieber stole Frost's work for what became "Lost", without even a creative consultant credit.
Again, never saw Nash Bridges, and I’m certainly not doubting that it was cookie cutter (I’ve been generally unimpressed with most of Cuse’s non-Lost work), but it seemed rather pointed that Mark particularly called it out.

As for the origins of Lost, it’s a pretty basic concept and it’s well inside the realm of possibility that multiple people developed similar concepts independently. It’s not exactly Being John Malkovich or anything. What made the show great for me and many others was the execution, the production values, the character relationships, the pacing, the mood etc. There are so many people who were involved in the conceptualization, it’s impossible to know who may or may not have seen the Forbidden Island pilot. But I have no particular reason to doubt the story that’s been told and retold that ABC exec Loyd Braun came up with the concept because both Survivor and Castaway had been huge in the last few years, and it seemed like a concept that would sell well. (As a sidebar, Mark essentially calls Survivor the harbinger of the downfall of Western civilization.) Abrams & company were hired hands who came in to develop the project after the concept had already been decided upon. Also, to be strictly accurate, Frost says he only produced Forbidden Island. He came on board after the script was written, so if a creative consultant credit were due to anyone, it wouldn’t be to him.

Finally, it’s worth noting that Spelling Productions produced Forbidden Island, and Spelling was also supposed to produce Lost, during the period when Jeffrey Lieber was writing the initial draft (which bears little resemblance to the finished product besides generalities arising from the basic concept). Spelling exited the project once Abrams and Lindelof came aboard. So, I guess there’s a circumstantial argument there that Spelling could have pirated its own product.
I liked Lost the first two or three seasons; completely 'lost' (ha, ha) any interest after that. But that might just be me; I have a hard time finishing anything nowadays.

As for the X-Files, let's face it, it was basically a ripoff of Kolchak: The Night Stalker from many years before, with a little bit of Twin Peaks. I was very into it at the time, but I don't think it's aged particularly well.
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Re: Peaks Fans Top 10 TV shows

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eyeboogers wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:and also goes out of his way to call Carlton Cuse’s Nash Bridges—the show which also gave Damon Lindelof his start—“really average”...he might well be right, I’ve never seen it, but it kinda feels like a calculated jab). He also comes across as rather disdainful of The X-Files, rather surprisingly.
It is also fairly easy to backtrack that ABC, Abrams and Jeffrey Lieber stole Frost's work for what became "Lost", without even a creative consultant credit.
There's actually a ton on the genesis of LOST and it doesn't seem like Forbidden Island had anything to do with it, especially since the original Nowhere pilot script, the Spelling connection, features an intended lack of the supernatural. There's a great profile on Lieber that gets in to his job early on
Lloyd Braun, then the chairman of ABC Entertainment, suggested coming up with something along the lines of his favorite movie of that year, Cast Away, the stranded-on-a-deserted-island tale starring Tom Hanks. “A lot of people sort of laughed at the idea,” recalls Thom Sherman, a former senior vice president at ABC, now with the CW network. Some skeptics compared the idea to Gilligan’s Island, the goofy sixties sitcom.

But Sherman liked the idea (after all, Braun was his boss), and he called his good friend Ted Gold, then at Spelling Productions, the hit-making production company founded by TV legend Aaron Spelling. As it happened, says Gold, Spelling had toyed with a similar idea-a scripted series inspired by the reality TV show Survivor-but found no takers. So, when Sherman called with Braun’s idea for the series, it seemed like the perfect marriage. And Gold had the perfect writer for the project: Jeffrey Lieber.
In September 2003, Lieber pitched his premise for the show, then titled Nowhere, to Sherman and his lieutenants. “I won’t be so presumptuous as to say it was one of the best pitches ever,” recalls Gold, who was there. “I will say it was one of the more well-thought-out pitches I’ve been in.” Afterward, continues Gold, “Thom called me and he told me, quote-unquote, ‘The best project of the year.’ He greenlights it enthusiastically.”

Lieber then spent weeks writing an elaborate outline, fleshing out the characters and story lines. Spelling brought in National Geographic experts as consultants to help Lieber ground his fictional island in reality. Soon enough, Lieber made another presentation to Sherman and the ABC development team. Lieber recalls that they had only one major complaint: they told him to cut a scene in which a shark killed one of the castaways. Too unrealistic, Lieber recalls them saying.
Still, Lieber felt he had a good shot; so did Gold. “I thought it was a done deal,” Gold says. The last step was to get Lloyd Braun to sign off. Over the Christmas holidays, Braun took Lieber’s script with him to the La Quinta resort near Palm Springs.

“It was not received well,” Jonathan Levin, then the president of Spelling, told Lieber a few days after Christmas. So the writer went back to work, but he had little time to revise the script and little to go on. Lieber was “rewriting like hell,” he says, but he “didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t being told really what the problem was-all I was being told was that Lloyd didn’t like it.” He handed in a new draft a week later, just after the new year, and then waited nervously.

A few days later, Sherman called. “He says, ‘Great job on the rewrite,’” Lieber recalls. “‘I really like it.’” Sherman told him that he had some more notes and would call again in an hour. Lieber was hugely relieved. But hours passed with no word from Sherman or anyone else at ABC. Finally, in the late afternoon, Levin called. “Are you sitting down?” he asked. “It’s over; you’re done.”
Lieber went into a funk for weeks. “I was angry and depressed and confused,” he says. The hardest part was that he never saw it coming. “It’s the flip between ‘We love it’ to ‘There’s a problem’ that I’ve never really gotten over. Had somebody said, ‘Lloyd thinks it’s too real-maybe we need a monster or an otherworldly element’-I would’ve said, ‘OK, no problem.’ But I just never got the chance.”
ABC didn't want a heavily serialized/genre show so Damon and the other writers basically lied to the suits via the original pitch document about how deep the supernatural would go because. It is possible that somehow the Forbidden Island script passed through JJ's hands but I can't find any evidence for that. If you want to know more, you can read a lot more about the early goings of the show from "The LOST Will and Testament of Javier Grillo Marxuach"(which I'd actually suggest to anyone interested about the innerworkings of TV) and the history of the LOST Pilot as told by Damon. There's so much more good reading about origins of the show but those are three of the best from viewpoints of the original fired writer, creator, and writer.
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Re: Peaks Fans Top 10 TV shows

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hopesfall wrote:10. Les Revenants
9. The Thick Of It
8. The Prisoner
7. Blackadder
6. This Is England ('86, '88 & '90)
5. Carnivale
4. Garth Marenghi's Darkplace
3. I'm Alan Partridge
2. The Virtues
1. Twin Peaks

When I thought about this, I was surprised at the striking juxtaposition of comedy and bleak/mysterious drama. Honourable mentions go to Peaky Blinders, which isn't my usual go-to fare, but the places it's set in are right on my doorstep, so it feels close to home and I get a strange nostalgia watching it; and also, Breaking Bad, which doesn't really need much said about it! It only didn't make the list because I suppose I didn't feel transported into the world itself. I always felt on the outside looking in, to the point of it breaking the fourth wall on occasion, and I don't think that's necessarily a geographical thing, as Twin Peaks had me there from the word go, and I've never been anywhere near the Pacific NW. I think it's perhaps more of an aesthetic issue.

Having two jobs, and a young child, I find it hard to really get time to watch much TV, but it's something that when I do put time in, i get so much back from it, so I need to just put a few hours in the week to get into some new shows. Some great choices in this thread, so I have plenty to get on with when I see my way to managing my time a little better.
Your list made me give The Virtues a try. Pretty intense. I felt it was really well done. Definitely not a feel good sorta thing. But great acting and worth the watch.
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