[Television Thursday] – Five Great TV Shows You’ve Likely Never Heard of (But Should Track Down on DVD!)

If you’re reading my blog as of late and thinking to yourself, “Man, all Sean does is watch TV, play games, and complain about movies,” If you think that, I don’t blame you — I don’t know how I’ve come to acquire so much knowledge about so many trivial topics, but here we are. As a writer and a creative artist, I’ve always been interested in consuming entertainment media, and as a critic and a thinker, I’ve always been interested in thinking through their aesthetics and implications. That’s what I get for being such a “middle-brained” person.

As it happens, I don’t watch a lot of television anymore, because most of it is garbage. But over the last few years, with seasons of shows popping up on DVD, I’ve found myself watching a lot of television shows. Part of the appeal of watching shows is that they’re just about the right length (20-40 minutes) for me to watch while I’m eating or resting, and they don’t require me to sink the time I’d put into, say, a feature film. TV shows are also typically less demanding in terms of my attention; as long as I know the characters and the premise, I don’t have to have much more information, unless I’m watching a serialized show like Lost or Heroes.

One of the things I’ve found out in recent years is that many of the best shows produced for TV are fairly obscure titles that were either cancelled prematurely or aired on networks most people don’t watch regularly. So, I thought I’d put together a list of five really solid shows, all of which are available on DVD, but most of which you’ve probably never heard of. All I ask is that you do the right thing and buy them on DVD if they’re available, and reserve searching bittorent sites for those which are out of print or not yet available on DVD in your country.

With that said, here’s the list!

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