I haven’t been watching much in terms of actual shows for a good while, then while listening to a podcast a host casually mentioned they had rewatched Chernobyl, how it still holds up, that there’s a reason it got as much acclaim as it did, etc. So I thought I’d give it a go and wow, loved it (still one episode left to watch).
Had me thinking, what else have I missed out on? What are some “absolute cinema” TV shows that still hold up and and are considered must watch?
If you’re into sci-fi, I hope you’ve seen Babylon 5. The political storylines have never felt more relevant.
Babylon 5 is excellent. The special effects are still pretty decent decades later, but apparently you need to find the right version, because they tried to upscale some of it for HD at one point and completely messed up the effects scenes.
The actors do an amazing job though, and the fact that it’s a cohesive story that was slowly played out over multiple seasons is so rare.
If you know of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, it was a Babylon 5 ripoff. The creator of Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski went to Paramount with his idea and they rejected it. He went to PTEN / Warner Brothers and they made it. DS9 launched just a month before Babylon 5 came out. But, “coincidentally” it took place on a space station next to a wormhole, involved a leader who became a religious figure against their will / knowledge, there’s a fiesty female second officer, an idealistic doctor, a hard-boiled security chief… basically too many things to be coincidental.