Currently on Season 4 of Star Trek: The Next Generation with my daughter. It has aged shockingly well for something that aired nearly 40 years ago. Granted, Season 1 was a bit rough and some of the filler episodes were.....dodgy at best (the alcoholic bringloidi ("dreamers" in Irish) for example with the fuckin' straw on the floor, leprechaun accents and pigs in the cargo bay was rude AF tbh).
Two series that I tried to watch but couldn't because I felt they were long past their sell by date:
- Babylon 5
- The West Wing
Babylon 5 is a show that's good if you watch a curated list of episodes, not every single one (at last for seasons 1 & 2).
Once it gets out of the episodic stuff and into a more serialized format it holds up shockingly well, and feels painfully relevant today. Honestly, a lot of people owe Straczynski apologies after they accused him of being too heavy handed with his politics. If anything, the dude was being too subtle as it turns out.
It's been a few years since I ran through B5 but I hold it in the same class as TNG. It's got a questionable 1st season and some weird episodes throughout but overall it's good television that, for better or worse, still relates to the world we live in.
Fair enough. Maybe I should stick with it then. Thanks for the alternate viewpoint.
Babylon 5 had big multi-season story arcs in the era of self-contained monster of the week episodes meant for syndication and watching in random order.
It also has some very good character development. The Londo/G’Kar dynamic is pretty epic.
But it does have the random weak early episodes others mentioned, and of course it is a product of its time. It has a high episode count and 90s SD vfx.
It’s still one of my favorite shows and I will do a watch through every several years, but it would have SO much potential as a modern remake with 6-10 episodes per season. Kind of like the expanse but with more fantasy and imaginary physics. The space physics were very good though, especially for the time.
How I met your mother aged extremely poorly. The ending rightfully gets a lot of flak, but the characters are just massive toxic assholes in a way that isn't really funny.
Also I'm like 90 percent some of the ways Barney convinced women to sleep with him could be classified as rape. I get the joke that Neil Patrick Harris was gay, but it's still uncomfortable to watch. Oddly enough I don't get the same feeling when I was Neil in Harold and Kumar.
On the flip side Scrubs aged surprisingly well. It has problematic moments that you'd think would get ridiculed in the modern era, but hits the emotional beats hard enough that it manages to still remain watchable. Also the joke about clowns and whores is still fucking hilarious.
I was never a fan of himym when it was still airing, but everyone around me fucking loved the damn thing. I thought all the characters were insufferable.
I agree on HIMYM. I used to love it, but some really are awful people (particularly Lily IMO). It's not ageing well, and Barney's behaviour really is indefensible. I don't think his character would be allowed nowadays
Honestly it wouldn't have been allowed back then except for the fact that an openly gay man who could pass as straight was still a novel and funny idea.
As a sidenote Neil Patrick Harris is a million times worse in Harold and Kumar, but that somehow aged better on account of everything in those movies being comically offensive.
Futurama has aged suprisingly well, given how many generational cultural references there are.
Pretty much any Politics or Geopolitics show based on the present has aged poorly, because the political situation worldwide has shifted so dramatically in the past decade. (Although this doesn’t count for fantasy and local Politics, Parks and Rec for example has aged fine).
Futurama has aged quite well, until you get to the episode where bender changes gender to win in the women's robot Olympics.
It's such a bizarre experience because you almost can't view it through the lense of that era given how the topic has exploded, and even trying it's still really hard to tell if it's genuinely making fun of women, or making fun of the perception of women being weak.
At least when South Park did it with the special Olympics episode Cartman gets stomped by the actual athletes.
I recently rewatched The Golden Girls and it is top tier.
Shit like Friends and Seinfield don’t hold up imo. But I hate cringe and punching down.
Agreed. Though I actually found Seinfeld somewhat rewatchable until Jerry supported the genocide. (If only because it’s kind of fun to get a glimpse of what life was caricatured as for upper middle class new yorkers 35 years ago).
FRIENDS, is just meh. Like I think it would have been far more fun watching it when everyone was into it and it was the cultural thing.
But now it’s just an outdated sitcom that drags on for wayyy too long and has lowkey bigoted undertones.
Best- The Wire
Worst- Diffrent Strokes
Some parts of MASH hold up pretty well. Some parts do not, but I think they’re the minority.
Battlestar Galactica (new) - just watched this the first time through with my partner, second time for me. It’s doing really well.
Sitcoms generally age poorly, but they weren’t too good in the first place.
Honestly, I'd agree that sitcoms on the whole tend to age poorly, but there are some that have stood the test of time. Like another commenter said, Golden Girls still slaps, but the one that I think has shockingly aged the best is The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Despite being over 50 years old, I was laughing so hard at basically every episode, and it only gets better as it goes on.
It's relatively progressive politics for its time have also ensured that it stays relevant, like the episode where Phyllis finds out her brother is gay and she's just relieved that he's not dating Rhoda. That aired in like... 1972 or 1973. That kind of casual acceptance could almost be considered radical for the time, and the women's rights issues it occasionally brings up are still relevant.
But I think the biggest reason it's aged so well is that it's so character focused. It never gets overtly political like Maude, pop culture references are relatively uncommon, and the character writing is so strong to the point that even the supporting characters get good development.
For a sitcom that has aged well, watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
I usually watch more older movies than TV shows, but a couple that stand out to me are
Star Trek TNG is great sci-fi but skip season 1 or at least the first few episodes, Deep Space Nine is a close second for me for top trek but also a slow start establishing the characters and setting. The original series definitely looks dated but the dialogue and music are still really enjoyable.
There's not many shows with a laugh track I can handle but I've always had a soft spot for Night Court & the reboot
Twin peaks is fantastic if you enjoy some dreamlike melodrama with commentary on contemporary media
And if you've watched some low budget '80s era TV you might enjoy Garth Marenghi's Darkplace which satirized a lot of the tropes and bigotry of the time.
Twin Peaks has aged really well. I was disappointed in Garth Marenghi’s recent follow up novel though.
I find FRIENDS to be unwatchable nowdays. I do understand that it was made for a different time and a different audience, but seen from todays perspective it's absolutely horrible.
I would say that Seinfield fits the same category as FREINDS, but not everyone will share my opinion.
Knowing that Jerry was dating a minor puts me off the show.
Best: Twilight Zone 1959
Seinfeld is holding up okay. Still funny, if you can put yourself in the context of the 90s. Most comedies from them still hold up if you can do that. Forgiving them for being ignorant and knowing it would never fly today.
If you can't, we'll, then don't watch i guess
For me, Blake's 7 sits in both camps.
The warnings about authoritarian reigimes feel more relevant than ever. And the depictions of troubled heroes with deep flaws that get worse, rather than better, was so ahead of its time.
I have a nostalgic fondness for the original effects, but yeah, the abysmal budget does show its seams so much of the time. I'm pleased with the CG of the blu-ray remaster for the most part. I'm not a snob who gets uppity about the digital realm after all.
The writing is fantastic. With film production being more of an investment back then I feel they really put in more effort to the quality of what was produced.
Im amazed Blake’s 7 still hasn’t been rebooted by some streaming channel (or the BBC).
If you’re into British shows about authoritarian regime warnings, I also recommend “The Guardians” from 1971.
Firefly
Buffy
MASH
NCIS ( I know it is still going but the old seasons are over 25 years now)
Worst:
Most early 80s action/sifi series...
Battlestar Galactica Air Wolf A-team Duke's of Hazard
I don’t know what you’re talking about. The original Battlestar Galactica is TV gold.
Best: Person of Interest
The way big companies hoard our private data was one of the main themes. They even had a Snowden before the real Snowden.
Worst: Person of Interest
Several actors went off the deep end after filming the show, especially Jim Caviezel.
Good: the first few seasons of Roseanne.
Bad: he-man cartoons.
