The Best All Time US Show
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You can have your favourite and runner up shows. For me the best show is a no brainer. Buffy hit the ground running from the first seconds of the first episode. Very well written throughout. The Scoobies (Buffy, Willow, Xanda, Giles, Anya & Oz) were really likeable characters. The Big Bads (Glory, First, Dark Willow, Mayor, Adam. The list is endless) was always good and always seemed more perilous than the previous ones. You had the history of characters like Angel, Darla, Spike & previous Slayers. I could go on for ages. That brings me to my Runner up Angel. OMG. When Angel left Buffy to go to LA you had the crossover with Sunnydale & LA characters going between the two. Storys intertwining. And they were on one after the other on a Thursday night. No series British or American has made such an impact as this. It lead the way for so many other Vampire stories like True Blood, Twilight, Moonlight & Vampire Diaries. Joss is a legend. Must dust off the boxsets again.
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Angel
Frasier
Seinfeld
Lost
True Blood
Dexter
DS9
Star Trek
Buffy
TNG
Game of Thrones (US?)
The Sopranos
Arrested Development
Curb your Enthusiasm
King of the Hill
Futurama
B5
Firefly
Of course it is American. It is an American production -- commissioned and financed by a US company. It doesn't matter where the actors are from or where filming takes place.
Traditionally films take the nationality of the director as well as the financier. So presumably TV shows would also take the nationality of the creator. (Though that's just an aside, since D.B. Wiess, David Benioff & George R.R. Martin are all American)
Also, Game of Thrones tends to shoot everywhere but America (primarily in Northern Ireland and Malta though), and most of the cast are British, so I could see why they would be confused.
Also, one of the production companies is British...
No they don't. It's all to do with where the budget comes from, where it is spent and sometimes where the production vehicle is registered for taxation purposes.
Aliens and Terminator aren't Canadian films because James Cameron was born in Ontario, theyr'e US films because that's where the money came from, whereas Terminator II: Judgement Day is US-French because a whole chunk of money came from Canal+ (still not Canadian though!).
The Three Musketeers (1973) and sequel The Four Musketeers (1974) both directed by the English director Richard Lester are technically Panamanian or Panamanian-Spanish productions because the vehicle under which they were made was registered in Panama for tax purposes.
It's about the money/production company and where that is based, it has nothing (bar jingoism and nationalist fervour) to do with the director. Some Like it Hot (Billy Wilder) is not an Austrian movie, and Die Another Day* (Lee Tamahori) is not a New Zealand production. Similarly, Batman Begins and Man of Steel are not really British films, Christopher Nolan notwithstanding.
* - The Bond movies are really US/British because Eon Productons Limited which makes them is registered in the UK but its parent holding company, Danjaq, LLC (which actually owns the Bond trademarks and copyright) is registered in the US state of Delaware.
Surely out of a list of 18 programmes you must have ones you prefer to others. I havent watched all of them but I know that some were better than others.
I heard it was good but never watched West Wing
It's often cheaper to film outside of the US for a variety of reasons. Kevin Costner's Hatfields and the McCoys was filmed a lot in Romania. Many US television shows are filmed on set in Canada, such as vancouver or Toronto, many are of course in the US. Many US cities have film commissions to lure production companies to film in their cities and offer all sort of tax incentives and perks. Hawaii has one to lure TV and films (LOST, and a lot of the Pirates/Caribbean films were filmed here .. I still remeber how eery that Pirate ship looked docked here a few years back). San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles etc all have them. and I bet Canada as well has them to lure production companies to set up shop.
50/60s
I love Lucy
That Girl!
Bewiched
Gillans Island
Outer Limits
Twilight Zone
Dragnet
Adam 12
70s (I was a child, and was at home a lot)
Love American Style
Brady Bunch
Rhoda
Mary Tyler Moore Show
Streets of San Francisco
Maude
Dallas
Charles Angels
the Love Boat
American Bandstand
Fantasy Island
Deny Terio's Dance Fever
CHiPS
Cagney & Lacey
Emergency
80s (was in University, then lived abroad, then began working.. so didn't watch a lot of TV)
Roseanne
CosbyShow
Dynasty
Falcon Crest
Murphy Brown
LA Law
90s
Gimme a Break
China Beach
Living Single
Martin
FRIENDS
ER
A Different World
The Nanny
Ally McBeal
Will & Grace
Seinfeld
Twin Peaks
Beverly Hills 90210
Melrose Place
Suddenly Susan
Felicity
I have listed them in preference order. Top one (Angel) being my favourite. It's not fixed though, apart from maybe the top 3, the others can move up or down depending on factors such as what mood I'm in, etc
I'd question why Batman Begins is registered as United States/Great Britain on the BFI database, when it was financed by Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures (both American), and the copyright is held by Warner Bros.
It was partially filmed in Iceland, so it isn't where filming took place.
It isn't Syncopy's involvement, because Man of Steel (also produced by Syncopy, but directed by Zack Snyder) is listed as USA only...
http://explore.bfi.org.uk/5184366ec37bf
Having said that Avatar is listed as British American...
http://explore.bfi.org.uk/4ce2b8c544d22
The big difference between that and Batman Begins is that Man of Steel was substantially shot at studios in Vancouver whereas Batman Begins used several locations in the UK and was based at Pinewood-Shepperton.
If a big enough chunk of tne budget is spent in ther UK on UK crew and services the production qualifies for tax breaks and the BFI will then I assume classify it as a joint UK-wherever production.Whether Man of Steel qualifies as a Canadian production is a question for the Canadian tax authorities.
There is no hard and fast rule as to what makes a film British (or whatever), the one thing I'm pretty sure of is that it has little to do with the director's nationality.
Possibly because a substantial chunk of the funding was arranged through Ingenious Film Partners which is a UK-based investment fund? I'm struggling to think of another reason.
My guess is officially it's the country of the financier, but the general media will just chose it's nationality, based on who's involved...
A league. I like your style.
Admittedly, it can be a complicated matter. I am not sure why Mad Men has never once been considered a Canadian show (or even a US/Canada co-production) when it is both made and owned by Lionsgate, a Canadian company formed in Vancouver. There is probably some complicated business/legal rationale by which Lionsgate qualifies as American because it is now "headquartered" in L.A. I don't know.
Actually the Artist, I believe, was the only Best Picture nominated film that WAS entirely shot in the US. In Los Angeles. Not that filming location denotes the nationality. There are always a host of reasons why a film is shot where. There was some Indian film recently that was shot in pretty much entirely in the US (no not slumdog), but that was an Indian film. It really has to do with financing and the studios. If it's a Warner Bros, United Artits, Miramax, Columbia, Paramount, Disney, just to name a few, chances are its a Hollywood film.
this was part of a thread on why The Artist did not get placed in the Best Foreign Language film category
But I have always considered Mad Men was a product of AMC. Doesn't AMC fund and green light the existence of Mad Men?
AMC commissioned Mad Men and licences it from Lionsgate. They don't own Mad Men.
This is another area of complication. I believe in most cases US channels do not own their shows, even if they "finance" them.
Don't bother. Waste of time. Aaron Sorkin's supposed genius is utterly lost on me. He relies far too much on music, instead of good writing, to convey any sort of emotion.
A few of my faves: The Sopranos. The Wire. Mad Men. Breaking Bad. Deadwood. Boardwalk Empire.
Less heavier stuff: Alias. Lost. Fringe. Justified. 24. The Shield. Seinfeld.
Loads more. It's very hard to choose a favourite, it all depends on my mood.
They say that there's no accounting for taste but that's one of the strangest assessments of The West Wing that I've ever read. I can understand some people not liking TWW if they have no interest in politics but to dismiss it on the quality of the writing is baffling.
Then again, some say The Wire is the greatest ever but I could never get into it. It is clearly a thing of great quality but I could never work out who was who and what the hell was going on.
Runners-up : original Dallas, St Elsewhere, Hill St Blues, Star Trek, Chuck, 24, DS9, Cheers, Taxi, Soap, Newhart, Magnum, The Fugitive, Falcon Crest, Columbo,Twilight Zone, Big Bang Theory, Road Runner etc