Can I Watch Only Quality TV Each Year?
We’ve gotten into the habit of watching an hour (well, a TV hour, meaning 42 to 50 minutes) of commercial-free TV before bed. Not every night, certainly, but probably four to five nights a week.
We don’t have a TV–we watch downloaded shows on a laptop. They’re what I’d judge to be ‘quality’ shows. Television has experienced a renaissance in quality in the last decade, and these shows are the result. They’re mostly critically-acclaimed–”Dexter”, “Veronica Mars” (though the acting on this show is appalling), “30 Rock”, “Battlestar Galactica” and so forth.
I got to wondering. If we, hypothetically, watched four or five episodes of quality television each week, is there enough out there for an entire year?
Let’s make it 230 TV-hours a year. What are the best shows that add up to about that number? I’ll use these critics’ lists as a starting point, and tweak them a bit for my personal preferences. I’ll also assume that the writer’s strike didn’t exist (so that there would be complete seasons). The numbers refer to the total hours for a season:
- “Dexter” – 12
- “Mad Men” – 22
- “30 Rock” – 11
- “House” – 22
- “Big Love” – 12
- “The Wire” – 22
- “Battlestar Galactica” – 22
- “Friday Night Lights” – 22
- “Pushing Daisies” – 22
- “Rome” – 10
- “Damages” – 13
- “Californication” – 22
- “The War” – 7
No Project Runway at My House
I haven’t seen a single episode of many of these shows (this season or past ones), so I’m basing my notion of ‘quality’ on critical response and word of mouth. It’s in the eye of the beholder. If you think “Project Runway” is quality TV, well, all power to you. You just can’t watch it at my house.
Plus, back in Canada, I spend plenty of time watching the Canucks, so that qualifies as my brainless viewing. I was hoping I could come back to some local playoff hockey, but that’s not looking all that likely.
My list gets me to 219 hours of TV. That sounds like a lot when you say it like that, but it’s only about 3.5 hours of TV a week (as each TV hour probably averages 50 minutes or less).
That’s encouraging, in a way. If you’re disciplined in what you watch, you really could spend a reasonable amount of time enjoying just the cream of the television crop.
Plus, there’s plenty of good TV (I’ve never seen more than one episode of “Deadwood”, “Arrested Development”, “House” and so forth) that I’ve missed from the past five years to fill in the gaps
Nathan 
darren 
MikeM 
