Sherlock was indeed awesome, and they are doing 3 more:

http://cultfix.co.uk/sherlock-series-2-sneak-peek-13871.htm

Last I heard was "early Spring 2012" for a release date.

I would love to see Tony Danza on a show like CSI. I think that's the only way I'd watch.

But Ted Danson, on the other hand, was incredible on Damages.

Whoops!

Fixed

What can I say- a procedural can be a nice way to spend a few minutes when you don't want to get too involved. I also admit I'm a sucker for Law and Order and have been rewatching them from the beginning on Netflix. I just try not to go overboard and watch all of the copycats/spinoffs.

For what it's worth, I think that L&O:Criminal Intent is significantly different from and better than the others.

Oh, I'm all for procedurals, and watch several myself (House, Criminal Minds, and Bones come to mind), but I've just never been interested in the CSI franchise (or NCIS, or the Law & Orders). I guess I either gravitate to a different spin on a procedural (House is medical, Bones is forensic anthropology), or I have to really like the actor(s) involved. I started watching Criminal Minds mostly because I really like Mandy Patinkin.

For the most part, I prefer serial storytelling, though, and most procedurals treat overall plots as afterthoughts. It took House something like 5-6 seasons to get a good plot going.


So far my favorite new show this season is definitely American Horror Story. It's very unsettling, creative, and the acting is great.

Fringe is definitely still going well. I was concerned that it would have trouble keeping the momentum going after the show's entire plot seemed to culminate in last season's finale.

By the way, I just thought of something the other day about Fringe and Alias, for people who watched that show:

That's a perfect example, because it's the only one I've been tempted to watch. The reason: Vincent D'Onofrio.

I like L&O because I thought the half police/ half law stuff was a different approach and it worked well.

I originalyl liked CSI because of Grissom's character, and I kept watching out of habit.

As for CI- we watched a lot of it, and I like D'Onofrio, but when we were watching it it was a time when we were watching a lot of trash procedurals so it kind of faded into the background. I may go back and revisit it some day.

Jeff, your post didn't really include spoilers. JJ didn't have anything to do with the ending of Lost though. He didn't have much to do with the series beyond its inception as far as I know.

Alias was a total write off starting from some time in Season 2. I don't know how much involvement JJ had with it at that point but it went down-hill very fast and the ending was no worse nor better than the rest of that season, let alone the few before it. That might be because I was already expecting the worst possible outcome.

How much is JJ involved with Fringe day to day? At all? That guy is attached to a ton of projects, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a machine of some sort running Fringe.

I know- I was just trying to be over-sensitive, since i was responding to a spoiler tag

The bottom line is- I'm not super trusting that JJ projects are going to end well. At least the quality of Fringe has held up despite some drastic changes in the show (unlike Alias which was clearly off the rails by the end, so much so that I think we didn't even finish the last season, despite buying it on DVD).

But as I said- I don't expect Fringe to have some awesome ending- just as long as it has something I'll be good. It's been fun along the way.

BTW, apparently The Walking Dead season 2 premire had the best numbers ever for a basic cable drama- pretty impressive, and well deserved.

I don't really care for horror in general or zombies in particular, but I really like TWD a lot. I think the human drama is both interesting and realistic, and that really makes me care about the characters.

Haha! That's hilarious, because my wife and I did the exact same thing! Season 5 of Alias is sitting in our DVD bookshelf, and we only watched about 4 episodes of it, despite the addition of Amy Acker to the show. We just thought,"why is this show still going? They wrapped everything up last season!"

I liked the show a great deal right up until the end of the the fourth season. I loved that they plotted out a course that slowly added more of the "mystical" stuff, eventually going all out with it. I felt that they did a good job of building everything to a head, but then it ended up VERY anti-climactically.

And yes, I don't know why it took me so long to figure out the similarities I guess it's because I haven't really thought about Alias since I last watched it about five years ago!

Anyone know why some programs are already into repeats? Fox seems to be doing it along with NBC...

Fringe, House, The Office, Parks & Rec, etc.

The most likely reason for Fox is the World Series. They usually make room for it in their schedule every year. I don't know about NBC.

NBC probably just didn't want to lose all those viewers to the baseball game. I would have been one of them if my team had shown up in the divisional series. *sniff*

Is baseball on both Friday AND Monday? I thought I'd checked the schedule for Friday and simply saw a Fringe rerun.

I think they clear the schedule for the entire run just in case. They don't want to mess with rain delays, and you never know how many games the series will go to.

Old show that I just discovered and am enjoying: Bored to Death. Starring Jason Schwartzman, Ted Danson and Zach Galifianakis. Debuted in 2009 and it's in its third season (8 eps per season).

I keep meaning to check that out, I like Ted Danson and I LOVE Zach, but for some reason, I'm just not a Jason Schwartzman. I can't stand Rushmore, for example. He wasn't too bad in Scott Pilgrim, but he wouldn't have been my choice for the role.

What kind of show is it? What would you compare it to?

I can't immediately compare it to anything else, but I will say that Schwartzman is very good in the role and if it's not simply the sight of him that puts you off, you shouldn't have a problem with him in this. Very subdued and not particularly annoying like he character in Rushmore (which I did like).

The premise is that he's a writer for Ted Danson's magazine, working on his second book which is coming close to being due, but not yet close to being started. His girlfriend breaks up with him and he decides to start offering his services as a private investigator on Craigslist, with no experience or realized talent. Galifianakis is his best friend, though Danson as his boss is also very much his close friend. All three are pot smokers and that plays a bit in a few episodes.

The performances are all really good and there are guest appearances by quite a few other actors you'll immediately recognize (and may like).

Neat, I'll check that one out. Sounds like I'd like Schwartzman more in that. And no, it's not just the sight of him. I just don't like the types of characters he seems to always play.

I'll watch anything that Galifianakis is in, though. I've been a huge fan since his utterly failed late night talk show on VH1, and my wife and I have seen him live about three times, though he seems to tour less since the Hangover made him big.

Has anyone else watched American Horror Story? I'm curious to hear what others think of it.

Some friends and my wife are loving American Horror Story. They all say it's scary as hell. I haven't started it yet myself.