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Show Recommendations Topic: Ask Or Give


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(edited)
On 6/2/2016 at 7:06 PM, nosleepforme said:

The Knick - Heard critics rave about this one. So, I'm curious. I'm generally not into hospital dramas all that much.

The Knick is so much more than a hospital drama. It's about gender, sex, race, religion, income inequality and coincidentally tells the story behind the beginnings of modern surgical methods. The acting is top notch and Steven Soderbergh directed all of the episodes himself so there is a high consistency in tone and look. (There's a scene with a (fake) blood transfusion seen from the point of view of the donor. Soderbergh was so dedicated to getting the angle exactly how he wanted it that it's his arm in the shot.)

Highly recommended. 

ETA one caveat. The show has very graphic depictions of surgery. 

Edited by xaxat
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(edited)

nosleepforme

I would recommend watching the second season of the Swedish original Äkta Människor before Humans. I thought the remake was good enough, but somehow lacking. I couldn't put my finger on what it was, but I guess the original just beat it. Sort of forgot about Humans two episodes before the finale. 

 

Casual is also "good", and I watched it all, mostly for Michaela Watkins, but it kind of dragged at the same time? Didn't like the daughter at all which I think has something to do with it. Might watch season two but not must-see for me. 

 

Penny Dreadful - YES. Yes yes yes! Eva Green is my favourite thing on television. It's quite the performance. The first episode actually didn't hook me at all when it premiered and I kind of gave the show a pass, but then I binged the first season when it was over and I'm glad I did. There's a seance scene in episode two that hooked me and then episode five was certainly the point of no return. Season 2 was top 3 television for me last year (and I watch A LOT of television) and much better than the very, very good season 1 and it continues being great with season 3. 

Edited by joelene
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(edited)

My recommendation would be the brilliant Happy Valley starring the even more brilliant Sarah Lancashire.  It's an hour-long drama (with two seasons/6 episodes each, that are both available on Netflix), about a female police sergeant in a small English village who is also dealing with a lot of family drama.  I guess Netflix would probably put it in the category of crime drama/family drama with a heaping helping of "Show With A Strong Female Lead."  And I do mean strong.

The writing is fantastic, the cases are interesting and weave together beautifully with the personal scenes, there's humor to get you through the dark stuff, and the cast includes James Norton (Sidney from Grantchester) and Siobhan Finneran (O'Brien from Downton Abbey) in verrrry different roles from those two shows.  S2 also has Mosley from Downton Abbey and Neville Longbottom from Harry Potter.

ETA:  I had to watch with the subtitles on because the accents are strong and I felt like I was missing some things, but it didn't detract from how much I loved the show.  And the theme song?  The theme song is awesome and it will be stuck in your head forever.

Edited by TaraS1
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(edited)
3 hours ago, TaraS1 said:

My recommendation would be the brilliant Happy Valley starring the even more brilliant Sarah Lancashire.

I'll second that.  Sarah Lancashire is fantastic.  

Because of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, there have been quite a few programs about him.  I like one called Upstart Crow, a comedy with David Mitchell, of Mitchell and Webb and many other things, as Shakespeare. 

Edited by atomationage
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Oh my! I'm so happy to have discovered this thread. I just today sent a message to two of the moderators suggesting that they start a thread that looks very much like this. I began my message by asking them to point me to any existing thread or forum that implements the suggestion. Perhaps I can repost my suggestion here and so you can all see what I'm after. Here it is:

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Hello. I would like to make a suggestion to you. There may already be a forum to handle this kind of suggestion and if so, I would appreciate if you could let me know where it is currently handled.

I am a fairly new member to Previously.TV and was very pleased when I saw the huge list of TV programs on your home page. I was pleased because I thought this forum would surely be a big help to me in finding TV programs that I had not yet seen but would enjoy.

I would like to suggest a thread or a forum where people can post recommendations of shows they think other people would enjoy. I would suggest a format where people could list a few of their favorite TV shows first and then list the shows they would like to recommend to others. The purpose of listing their favorite shows is to give readers an idea of the kinds of show this person enjoys and thereby give the reader an idea as to the kinds of shows they might recommend.

For example, I would list the following "current shows" (currently in production) that I consider my favorites: Game of Thrones, The Americans, Fargo, Better Call Saul.

Then, I would list some shows that are fairly new to me but that I would like to recommend to others. In my case, these would include: Jessica Jones, OJ - Made in America and Schitts Creek.

I am making this suggestion because I would really love to be able to review a few posts from people who feel like they have recently discovered a new TV show that I might enjoy. It would be a big help for me to be able to check out these new shows if these people listed their current favorites because that would help me decide if I would be likely to enjoy the shows they recommend.

Maybe these posts could also include a brief text summary of the new shows I'm recommending. For example, I might include the following text:


OJ - Made in America - This is a five part mini-series about OJ. Each part runs for approx 1 hour 30 minutes. The first episode was very interesting to me because it contained a summary of his life leading up to his professional football career. I had never seen that part of OJ's life before. The remainder of this mini-series contains a description of his life after football. Specifically, it includes all his marital and legal troubles. I found this show to be very well done.

Jessica Jones - I just recently discovered this show. It has broadcast one season (13 episodes) and each episode runs for about 45 minutes (originally ran for one hour with commercials). I was really knocked out by this show. Lately, I had been feeling very depressed because it has seemed to me like there is just nothing good to watch on TV at this time. This show was really exciting. It's based on some Marvel comic book. I had never seen that comic book. The idea is that the title character (played by Krysten Ritter) is a former super hero who is now working as a private investigator. For those of you who watched Breaking Bad, Krysten Ritter played the character Jane on that show. I loved her in that role and I like her very much in this role as well.

Jessica Jones is a very dark and very adult show. It shows some very heavy sexual encounters between adults. I don't want to spoil any more of the plot. I just want to say that based on my favorite TV shows listed above, I hope you will give this show a try. I think you will like it.

Schitts Creek is an offbeat Canadian comedy produced by the CBC. It stars Eugene Levy and his son and daughter. You may remember Eugene Levy from SCTV or a large number of comedy movies such as: Splash, Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman and A Mighty Wind. This show is an acquired taste. It is fairly low budget (it only has a single camera), but it has become a favorite of mine because the humor is kind of sweet. I got a few real big LOLs from watching this show and that hasn't happened in a very long time. They have produced two seasons so far. Each season consists of 13 episodes and each episode runs for about 45 minutes (originally ran for one hour with commercials). I recommend you give this show a try. You will be able to tell fairly quickly whether or not it appeals to your sense of humor.

Glad you found your way here on your own.

FYI, you don't need moderators to start threads.  They start show forums (once requested), and may start episode threads within the forums for current shows, but anyone can start a thread.  So if this thread didn't already exist, you could have just come to Everything Else TV and started one.

Anyway, seconding the recommendation of O.J.: Made in America.  It's the latest installment of the 30 for 30 documentary series on ESPN, but it was initially screened at a couple of film festivals and put into limited release in theatres (so it's eligible for Oscar consideration).  Even for those with O.J. fatigue, I recommend it.  It puts his career and the trial in context of race relations in this country, and specifically in Los Angeles. 

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(edited)

If you like Sleepy Hollow (when it was good), or man-out-of-time stories in general, you might like New Amsterdam - a short-lived show on several years ago starring Nikolaj-Koster-Waldeau from Game of Thrones.

Edit - I recall watching it on either Amazon or Hulu, but I can't seem to find it. Might want to Google and see where it turns up.

Edited by ChromaKelly
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19 hours ago, Rick Kitchen said:

I second New Amsterdam.

Me three.  I think it's well worth watching.  The characters working with the main character are his descendants.  He dates from the 1600s and keeps changing his name. 

Another older recommendation is Blood Ties, with Kyle Schmid as a 500 year old vampire.  He later played another vampire on the US version of Being Human. 

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(edited)

I mentioned a min-series called "O.J. - Made in America" earlier in this thread and I just watched it all the way through and would like to tell you a little more about it. First off - it's really great.

I was very surprised how excellent this 5 part mini-series was. I especially recommend Part 1 and Part 5.

Part 1 concerns the beginnings of OJ's career - from the time he was a young child until he started playing pro Football.

Part 5 was fantastic. It dealt with everything that happened after he was found Not Guilty of the two murders. It was so powerful. I never knew any of the details of what happened to him. I'm sure anyone who doesn't know these details will really like Part 5. It concerns how he got about 20 men together - one of whom had a handgun - and they burst into a room of someone who was selling some of OJ's memorabilia. Long story short - OJ got a huge prison sentence. There were so many amazing coincidences too. Like the sentence was delivered exactly 7 years to the day from the time he was found not guilty of the murders. Another coincidence was the 33 years to which he was sentenced was exactly one year for each of the $33 million dollars that OJ was ordered to pay in the civil case but he never paid any of that. This was mentioned very near the end of Part 5. One of the commentators referred to these coincidences as "white man's justice" and seemed to imply it was somehow payback for the mistakes made by the prosecution in the criminal case that enabled OJ to walk away. Very powerful mini-series. Very entertaining.

I also want to say this show really changed my opinion of Marcia Clark. After watching American Crime Story, I felt she was treated unfairly and that she had worked hard to do her job but that she got a raw deal. After listening to her in this show, my opinion changed and I now hold the opinion that she is really kind of a jerk and got what she deserved (except for all the millions she was paid for her books and her work on some TV shows). See for yourself.

Anyway, I have to say that the level of drama in this series is very close to that from American Crime Story. It's hard to say which show was better.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5275892/

Edited by AliShibaz

I posted this in the LGBT-thread but thought I'd share it here as well:

Has anyone seen this show called Sex & Violence? It's from Canadian OUTTv station which I'd never heard of before. I just stumbled upon it and it's pretty goddamn great. It is very, very liberal with nudity and sex scenes, liberal to the point where I'm wondering if half of it is unsimulated. Straight, gay, lesbian, all kinds of sex, everyone gets to have sex, Olympia Dukakis gets to have a lot of sex. I've never seen so many dicks on display in a TV drama and there is much more male nudity than female. It's about domestic abuse and the cops, social workers, foster parents, doctors and all the people involved in all of this. Men's abuse towards women is of course front and centre and the subject is treated very seriously, but there is some humour sprinkled around as well. 

I can't believe I've never heard of this show before. I did search for it and it doesn't appear to have been given a lot of coverage, but maybe I've just been blind to this show. There's been two six-episode seasons and another three episodes are coming out later this year. I'm up to episode 2 season 2 and I'm gonna finish it tomorrow. If you can find it, check it out. 

(edited)

Winners and Losers, the Australian show, has just started it's 5th season.  I think it's one of the most enjoyable shows on TV.  I couldn't find a trailer for this season, but this is for the 1st season:

Two Canadian shows I've started watching and recommend are 19-2, now in it's 3rd season.  It's familiar but very different set in Montreal:

Quote

Character-driven drama, 19-2 revolves around the day-to-day life of two unwilling partners of the Montreal Police Department, Officers Nick Barron and Ben Chartier. These two beat cops patrol the urban sprawl of downtown's 19th district, in cruiser No. 2. 19-2 is about the tensions and bonds that develop between two incompatible men of very different temperaments and life experiences. Over time, Nick and Ben's mistrust and antagonism for each other give way to moments of mutual respect and a wavering chance at a true partnership. As Season 1 progresses, we also get to know the tight-knit squad of 19. We see friendship and enmity, loyalty and betrayal. The series delivers in portraying the unpredictability and fragility of the world of a beat cop through moments of life-threatening intensity to its characters, both on and off duty, cementing 19-2 as a powerful character study and a gripping police drama.

and Letterkenny, a very offbeat comedy, also starring Jared Keeso.  It's sort of an edgier sexier Corner Gas type show:

Quote

Letterkenny consists of hicks, skids, hockey players and Christians. These are their problems.

Edited by atomationage
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The other day, while watching one of the last two episodes of The Black List, a moment came on where my husband remarked that it was like something like Mission Impossible.  Then a few days later, we were watching Now You See Me and my son said that it was like Ocean's 11 using magic.  Then it occurred to me that I really like those kinds of movies and tv shows.  The grand plans that take a lot of planning, a lot of cooperation and some luck (and are usually outrageous enough that it would probably never be able to be accomplished in real life).  Are there any tv shows like that that you can recommended (Alias, I guess, is one, but my husband was getting bored with it so we stopped a while ago.)?  We have Dish Network and get Netflix and Amazon Prime.  I'm not crazy about buying shows (but have done so if I've seen a couple of episodes of a show and really enjoyed it) and I don't want to buy any other monthly subscriptions like Hulu.

5 hours ago, AliShibaz said:

 

Winners & Losers looks like a real winner to me. Thanks for the recco!

You're welcome, and that was just the trailer for the first season.  It gets much better.  This show can be difficult to find, and there was some confusion about whether one season was the second part of the previous season, or a new season.   The actresses are all quite good, but Melissa Bergland is my favorite. 

Quote

Have you tried Leverage? It has some of those elements. White Collar could possibly interest you and maybe though it is a bit of a stretch, Chuck. I am sure there are more that I cannot seem to think of off hand.

We haven't tried Leverage, but now that you mention it, I do recall seeing it a lot within these threads.  We loved Chuck and I have heard good things about White Collar, so it's a possibility since we do like other kinds of shows, too.  Thanks!

2 hours ago, Shannon L. said:

I really like those kinds of movies and tv shows: the grand plans that take a lot of planning, a lot of cooperation and some luck (and are usually outrageous enough that it would probably never be able to be accomplished in real life). Are there any tv shows like that that you can recommended?

Hustlehttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustle_(TV_series) http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0379632/

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Oh, that looks good editorgrrl.  We're also looking for one that we can watch as a family and our youngest will be 15 in August.  We aren't as strict as some parents when it comes to sex and violence, but we don't let them watch just anything, either.  Would you consider it the American equivalent of  TV-14 or TV-MA?

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1 minute ago, Shannon L. said:

Oh, that looks good editorgrrl.  We're also looking for one that we can watch as a family and our youngest will be 15 in August.  We aren't as strict as some parents when it comes to sex and violence, but we don't let them watch just anything, either.  Would you consider it the American equivalent of  TV-14 or TV-MA?

Common Sense Media says Hustle is appropriate for ages 15+: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/tv-reviews/hustle

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7 hours ago, Shannon L. said:

Then it occurred to me that I really like those kinds of movies and tv shows. The grand plans that take a lot of planning, a lot of cooperation and some luck (and are usually outrageous enough that it would probably never be able to be accomplished in real life). 

Have you tried The Librarians on TNT? It's family friends and features a team of people with special skills working together to solve problems (although maybe not really "grand" plans.) A little further afield, but The Last Panthers, on Sundance is about tracking a team of jewel thieves.

(edited)

possibilities, we are watching Person of Interest on Netflix (we're on Season 3), but with our other shows, we are caught up and now have to wait for the new seasons to come out in the fall, so we were looking for something to watch throughout the rest of that time.

DittyDotDot, I'll look up MI-5. I think maybe the long running conspiracy stuff is why shows like Alias end up getting old for us after a while (although, my husband gets bored with them a lot faster than I do).  Thanks!

Edited by Shannon L.
6 minutes ago, Shannon L. said:

DittyDotDot, I'll look up MI-5. I think maybe the long running conspiracy stuff is why shows like Alias end up getting old for us after a while (although, my husband gets bored with them a lot faster than I do).  Thanks!

Heh, that's why I stopped watching Alias around S4. Those long conspiracies hardly ever pan out satisfactorily for me. I believe MI-5 is available on Netflix. Not sure where you're at, but I believe it was called Spooks in the UK, though. I've not watched the complete series, but liked the first 3 or 4 quite a bit.

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5 hours ago, Shannon L. said:

We started Mr. Robot a couple of weeks ago and I'm not enjoying it at all. My husband and son love it, but I just can't get into it. 

I just finished the first season. Even though it's a well-made show--acting, writing and directing were all good--I wasn't over the moon about it. In some ways, I think it took itself too seriously and could've probably used some black humor to balance it out a bit. It does have some decent twists and turns, though.

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1 hour ago, DittyDotDot said:

I just finished the first season. Even though it's a well-made show--acting, writing and directing were all good--I wasn't over the moon about it. In some ways, I think it took itself too seriously and could've probably used some black humor to balance it out a bit. It does have some decent twists and turns, though.

This is what I wrote in the "Bye, Bye, Bye..." thread:

"I'm about to give up on Mr. Robot only a few episode into it.  It's way too maudlin and confusing for me.  I would say that there's no one to root for, but that's not always an issue with me since I liked Breaking Bad and there was no one to really root for in that show either (they were just more dynamic characters).  This just dull.  And the corporate bad guy (see, I can't even be bothered with remembering names)?  Let's see, so far, he's either a closet homosexual or bisexual with a pregnant girlfriend (wife?) who enjoys S&M (not that there's anything wrong with that), he's sneaky and calculating, speaks Russian, and was able to make a woman offer herself to him after he walked in on her in the bathroom and stood over her, just staring at her, until she sat back and opened her legs (ew).  I mean, what's next?  What more are they going to add to the character?  Personally, I don't care.  Even he's not that interesting to me. "

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I gave up on Mr. Robot after the second episode.  I found it very serious but not in a way that that I was entertained. But what really made me decide it just wasn't worth it was when

Spoiler

the neighbor was assaulted/raped which prompted the lead to take action. I hate how a woman's assault serves as the catalyst for a male character to take action.  Maybe it turned out to be something else but meh.

But a lot of critics and viewers love it.  I think it's a show people love or hate. 

11 hours ago, Irlandesa said:

I gave up on Mr. Robot after the second episode.  I found it very serious but not in a way that that I was entertained. But what really made me decide it just wasn't worth it was when

  Hide contents

the neighbor was assaulted/raped which prompted the lead to take action. I hate how a woman's assault serves as the catalyst for a male character to take action.  Maybe it turned out to be something else but meh.

But a lot of critics and viewers love it.  I think it's a show people love or hate. 

Actually that wasn't the point of it at all.  And I think the show is the best written and acted and most surprising show in a long time.  I love to live it.   The neighbor was the closest thing the male character had to a girlfriend.  She was his drug dealer and they had a few moments of real connection which was unusual for him.  Then her drug connection gets involved.  There is some irony and sad degrees of Kevin bacon involved but the storyline is twisted sad and very well told.

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I really thought Goliath with Billy Bob Thornton was going to be a huge hit in the vein of Stranger Things, but it doesn't seem to have caught on with the public. The 13K who have watched gave it 4.5 stars on Amazon. IMDB users rate it 8.5. I liked it as much as anything I've seen this year. I highly recommend it if you have Prime membership. It's a legal drama with Billy Bob as a former hotshot attorney who's doing storefront work when a Big Case comes to him. So yeah. It's not breaking new ground or anything, but Billy Bob is excellent, the supporting characters are great and the plot moves quickly. It was exec. produced by David E. Kelley, back to top form for episodic TV.

I also loved Glitch, a series from Australia showing on Netflix. The plot sounds like a horror film, but it's really a character study about 6 people who come back to life in a small town. They're normal again, not zombies or anything. They've been dead for various periods of time from 100 years to 2. It's very very good and a second season has been ordered. It won two Australian awards for best drama.

Edited by lordonia
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(edited)

I posted a request for recommendations in another thread, and was pointed to this one, which I guess was dormant.

In the meantime I discovered Killing Eve (BBC America), which I’d originally avoided because of Sandra Oh (anything that reminds me of Shondaland just grates at this point), but then I found out that Phoebe Waller Bridge (Fleabag, Crashing; hilarious, obscenely talented and gorgeous UK entertainer) was involved behind the scenes. Darkly funny assassin stuff, 8 episodes so far. Good stuff.

Edited by kieyra
(edited)

Good Behavior! A modern Bonnie and Clyde of sorts starring Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary!) as a former addict and petty thief fresh out of prison who ends up entangled with a hitman. If there's any show that lives or dies on its leads, it's this one. And man it does -- I've seen a lot of shows promising dark and sexy and this is one the few shows that actually delivers. Making a hitman lovable is a feat, but this show manages it. He's more likable than her at times. You have to suspend disbelief for some of the crimes, but the leads are so engrossing it's fairly easy to do (at least for me). 

Edited by JustaPerson
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I'm quite enjoying Upstart Crow, a BBC 2 sitcom about the life of William Shakespeare. I caught series 2 on my local PBS station and enjoyed it so much I sought out series 1 on Google Play. Even though I've watched some of the episodes numerous times already, it still makes me laugh out loud, especially when Will is telling his family (he goes between Stratford-on-Avon and London) about how terrible his trips are. There are a bunch of YouTube clips of previews of episodes, but they don't seem to embed properly here. 

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10 hours ago, SmithW6079 said:

I'm quite enjoying Upstart Crow, a BBC 2 sitcom about the life of William Shakespeare. I caught series 2 on my local PBS station and enjoyed it so much I sought out series 1 on Google Play. Even though I've watched some of the episodes numerous times already, it still makes me laugh out loud, especially when Will is telling his family (he goes between Stratford-on-Avon and London) about how terrible his trips are. There are a bunch of YouTube clips of previews of episodes, but they don't seem to embed properly here. 

My local area just started airing series 2 this week. I think it's hilarious and it definitely has a Blackadder feel about it (minimum sets, but a bigger cast, and the same writer).

What was strange is that my local PBS station kept hyping they were bringing in new British shows in May, then they only showed the first two episodes of Upsart Crow. If it hadn't been for the fact I gave it a season pass on my DVR, I would have missed the rest of the first series they aired 4 weeks later. PBS is weird sometimes.

I'm going to look up Upstart Crow. I loved Blackadder.

I liked Imposters, when I watched the first season on Netflix. I need to catch up with the second season. I'm enjoying Castle Rock, so far, and wish they had put all of the episodes up at once. I'm in the mood to binge one season of something, or two seasons. although I need to get back to things I started last year, like The Sopranos. 

(edited)
4 hours ago, Anela said:

I'm going to look up Upstart Crow. I loved Blackadder.

I liked Imposters, when I watched the first season on Netflix. I need to catch up with the second season. I'm enjoying Castle Rock, so far, and wish they had put all of the episodes up at once. I'm in the mood to binge one season of something, or two seasons. although I need to get back to things I started last year, like The Sopranos. 

Have there been any explicit sex scenes in Castle Rock yet?  My 19 year old son wants me to watch it with him.  I don't mind sex scenes myself, nor do I mind if he sees sex in tv and movies, but I do get a little uncomfortable watching it with him.

Edited by Shannon L.

I'm not sure if SyFy will stream the entire show, or if you can get via Netflix or other, but I recommend 12 Monkeys.  There are 4 seasons, but its a show with a real ending, and a satisfying one at that.  It starts off based on the movie, but definitely goes beyond that plot.  Great characters, both heroes and villains, and pretty much all plotlines resolved.

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4 minutes ago, Hanahope said:

I'm not sure if SyFy will stream the entire show, or if you can get via Netflix or other, but I recommend 12 Monkeys.  There are 4 seasons, but its a show with a real ending, and a satisfying one at that.  It starts off based on the movie, but definitely goes beyond that plot.  Great characters, both heroes and villains, and pretty much all plotlines resolved.

I haven't gotten around to it yet, but it was available on Hulu when I added it to my queue a couple months back.

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