2018 in TV shows

Another year has gone by and I figured I’d post a little summary of the things my wife and I have watched this year.

2018 was a busy year, with 533 hours logged in front of movies and TV shows, and 662 plays (movies or TV episodes). Whether this was wasted time or not, I’ll let you judge :)

Now that we have 2 kids, my wife and I don’t actually go to cinema very much, so most of that activity is really watching TV shows late in the evening once the kids are asleep. We’ve in fact watched 454 hours worth of TV this year. Not bad since we don’t actually own a TV!

Most watched TV shows

Here are our most watched TV shows this year:

Interestingly our most watched TV show, Quantico, is not one I’ve enjoyed that much, but it had a lot of episodes that we watched back in August, when there was not much else in our regular schedule.

Here is a break-down of the different genres we watched:

Drama

This Is Us is always great, and I strongly recommend it. Outlander was introduced by my wife as she had read the books, and it’s pretty good too; Season 4 started in 2018 and is much better than season 3 in my opinion.

The Good Fight is now definitely as good as its predecessor The Good Wife. I am definitely looking forward the next season!

Ozark was introduced to us by my sister-in-law, and we’ve really enjoyed it! It can be pretty dark at times, pretty much like Breaking Bad was back in the day. And it has so many of those jaw-dropping moments that I love each time! I really recommend it.

The Affair was interesting. I personally enjoyed seeing each episode through the perspectives of 2 different characters, with their own biases and views of themselves and others.

Counterpart was very interesting in its first season: it was new into its genre in so many ways, and I liked that the show was taking risks: it is taking place in Germany, a lot of the dialogue is in German, subtitled. The premises of the show is great: the basement of a seemingly boring office in Berlin is in fact the doorway to a parallel dimension where our “others”, our doubles, live lives just like ours, with some sometimes not so small differences. I really liked that first season. The second season, however, seems to be a bit slower. Most of the novelty has now worn off and we are back to a more traditional spy show. It just started a few weeks ago though, so it may still get better.

Honorary mentions:

• Homeland
• Designated Survivor
• The Americans, a must-watch that has now ended.

Science-fiction

Nothing too great this year if I am being honest, and I’m a science-fiction fan. I would recommend The Expanse. In my opinion it is as good as Battlestar Galactica was, 10 years ago already! It has been picked up by Amazon so you can start watching it now if you haven’t looked at it yet. It’s worth it!

Another good show is Travelers, but I would not be surprised if it wasn’t renewed by Netflix this year.

I had blogged about Humans a while back and it’s still good; it makes you think.

I should also mention Colony as the one dystopian future show I would want to see renewed in 2019. I’m bored with The 100 and other similar shows…

Honorary mentions, not because they are not good shows, but because I’m sure you’ve already read about it and know those are excellent shows:

• Altered Carbon
• Westworld

There won’t be any of the Marvel or Fox shows on this list. I’ve been mostly disappointed with all the seasons of each Marvel show this year, so much that we did not manage to finish any of the second seasons, except for Jessica Jones. Legion is good, but too crazy for its own good at times. The Gifted is just bad. ¯_(ツ)_/¯  Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. would be my only recommendation in that list; it has managed to remain something I look forward to watch every year.

Comedy is important too!

Superstore and Modern Family have always been regulars for us; some weekly short comedy is always nice. :) This year we’ve added The Good Place to that roster, and we love it. After a bit of a hiatus, and even though we cut all the other Arrowverse shows (goodbye The Flash and The Arrow!), we are watching DC’s Legends of Tomorrow again. I like that they clearly don’t take themselves seriously anymore.

We’ve added a number of newer shows to that comedy roster this year, but nothing that was really ground-breaking. Here is a quick list, if you are looking for some ideas:

• I Feel Bad
• The Kids Are Alright
• Single Parents

You’ll notice that all those shows revolve around parenthood, which may not be for everyone, but fits us well :)

Netflix is the winner this year!

It helps that they keep picking up shows that we were watching and that were supposed to be cancelled. :)

What’s for 2019?

January won’t be too busy, but I’m sure we should see a lot of good things this year. Game of Thrones and Homeland, at least, will both have their final seasons this year!

If you have any recommendations for 2019, or things I missed in 2018, let me know in the comments!