Good Shows That You Aren’t Watching, or Never Saw – Part 1

So. You’re watching the tube. Kudos. No burning calories for you. Kiss the little gray cells goodbye. And pass the potato chips.

Seriously, though. There’s not much on these days, what with the continuing writers’ strike and an influx of reality television. And you know what? Cry me a river. Somehow I’m not heartbroken. Life goes on.

Not that quality shows were really jamming the airwaves before the strike...

Ah, well… If I’m to be honest, I should admit that while I may not exactly be a TV addict these days (hello, books; hello, outdoors), there was a time when I actually drew up my own TV schedule before the start of every new season, outlining how much T.V. I would watch, and when I would watch it.

Yeesh.

Further honesty. I’m a T.V. snob. Like a reformed smoker trying to stop someone else from lighting up, a T.V. snob can’t stand to see another human being flicking the switch to something icky.

So, the following is the first in a series of pieces in which various and sundry shows are paraded out and yours truly tries, really tries, to muster the energy needed to explain why, if you must watch, some shows are worth watching.

This series of entries may be very short-lived.

Battlestar Galactica
What the -?! You mean that god-awful, tacky piece of seventies hokum starring Lorne Greene in a cape? The one with the casino planet? The men in silver cardboard boxes, pretending to be robots? Acting that makes Jean-Claude Van Damme look like Laurence Olivier?

Fortunately, no. That is not the show I mean.

Same name, yes. Very different show. I’m talking the title’s recent iteration.

Try this on for size: Suicide bombers. Religious zealots. Torture. Prison camps. Political corruption. Unions on strike. Election fraud. Occupation. Insurgents. Religious warfare. Military tribunals. Robot duplicates. Sound familiar? Okay, maybe not that last one…



This show may have robots (fortunately not of the cardboard variety this time around) and much of it may be set in space, but it nevertheless finds ways (sometimes blatantly) to tackle the issues of the present world – chiefly the war in Iraq, though the show’s lens has occasionally tackled other thorny issues. Indeed, the show has much more to say about a number of current, and very pertinent, issues than many other present shows that substitute flash for any form of substance.



This isn’t to say that the show is a tedious civics lesson. Far from it. It manages to be thoroughly engaging most of the time, and has enough in the way of plot turns and twists to satisfy the hardcore narrative junkie.

The show’s acting (especially from leads Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell), visual style, and writing are surprisingly sharp and sophisticated, especially when one considers Galactica’s genre and the channel on which it airs. It is these latter two problems – genre and channel – that are this new show’s major hurdles on the way to success.

The Sci-Fi Channel, which airs Galactica, has rarely, if ever, been synonymous with excellence in broadcasting. Titles like Lake Placid 2, Species III, Alien Apocalypse, and Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys are not, I suspect, what anyone would really consider quality television.

And science fiction as a visual medium in general is oft dismissed as the domain of aliens with rubberized prosthetic foreheads and cheesy special effects (fortunately, there are none of those here).



And so the show’s genre and channel have, I suspect, prevented it from achieving the wider audience that it deserves. This is unfortunate. It deserves better than to be dismissed soley because of its genre.

This isn’t to suggest, amidst my praise, that the show is perfect. Anyone who caught the third season and helplessly watched the mid section sag (especially disappointing after a very strong start) under the weight of a few half-baked, overly melodramatic plotlines and a heap of bizarre, cockamamie, pseudo-religious symbolism foisted upon the character of Gaius Baltar can attest to this.

Yet the show recovered and ended strongly, and it deserves a watch for its level of ambition (all too rare in this medium) and the overall quality of its writing and acting.