What shows were you wrong about?

[November]

Which TV did you see advertised and think was gona be a one season wonder, or just plain crap? Then turned out that you were wrong about that?

For me it was MasterChef Australia. I saw it advertising for contestants before the first season and thought it was going to fail.
Here I am over 10 years later, still watching it.

 

[Plasma]

Usually for me it goes the other way. I think something is gonna be great and it ends up being bad. The Mandalorian is a good example, where I thought that first season was fantastic and a great shot in the arm, and then the show just became absolute garbage, and now all the D+ Star Wars shows have followed suit, except Andor. Somehow that one is the good one.

Another is Wandavision. I was interested and thought it would be great, only to get about 3-4 episodes before realizing the show was just asking questions to generate online discussion/clicks instead of having anything remotely interesting going on. Didn’t even bother finishing. Pretty much indicative of the post-Endgame Marvel status quo. Excited at first, but now don’t care to even google it.

I think one that applies to your qualifiers would be Stranger Things. I love the first season. One of the best seasons of television from the 2010s. Then S2 and 3 came and completely fell from the lofty heights the show had reached in that first season. I thought 4 was gonna be poor but was pleasantly surprised when it ended up being an extremely enjoyable season.

I also thought Nancy Drew was just gonna be CW garbage, especially given @Cohen enjoys it, and he only enjoys terrible, awful, no-good television shows. 😉 Instead it was actually really enjoyable and well done.

 

[Cohen]

I also thought Nancy Drew was just gonna be CW garbage, especially given @Cohen enjoys it, and he only enjoys terrible, awful, no-good television shows. 😉 Instead it was actually really enjoyable and well done.

I still need to finish season 4! Did you watch Kung Fu? That was a good one too! I love that it focused on Chinese culture and featured a predominantly Asian cast! 🥰

 

[Stake fodder]

I watched a few episodes of Once Upon a Time, and didn't care for it, for reasons I no longer remember. I thought it would get cancelled quickly, but it ran for seven seasons, and seems popular among the crowd here. So sometime I'll have to give it another try.

 

[NotASlayer]

By the time I start watching something there is a very good chance it will have already finished, or have been running for years, so I know exactly how well it is doing (shows I have started watching recently are Veronica Mars, Supernatural, Nikita and Beauty & the Beast).

Whether or not I like it is another matter.

 

[TheXandyman]

I was pleasantly surprised by Battlestar Galactica.

 

[Ethan Reigns]

I hoped "The Librarians" and "Warehouse 13" were going to do better than they did in the marketplace.

 

[thetopher]

Grey's Anatomy. I watched this and thought 'meh, this won't last' and now it might outlast me. Still think it's awful though.


The Blacklist: Stuck with it too long, thought it was actually going somewhere and I thought it had a morality tale regarding Spader's character. Totally wrong.

 

[Dogs of Winter]

Buffy. I put off watching it for way too long just because the name was so silly 🙂
Friday Night Lights. I don’t know much about American Football but this show was about so much more than that.
Andor. Given some of the other Star Wars shows I watched it more out of duty, but this was prime TV
Burn Notice. I don’t watch many procedural shows but this was really fresh and fun in the early seasons and ironically grew worse the more serialised it became.
Traitors. Again don’t watch many reality shows but this was addictive TV. Love Claudia Winkleman

But for me it is more the other way around where I expect too much from a hyped show and it doesn’t live upto expectations

 

[November]

I did not think Deal or No Deal Island would be any more than its name. Season 2 has been excellent, so I was wrong about it being a bore.

 

[Cohen]

I thought Nikita (2010) was a terrible reboot of a great 90s tv series (La Femme Nikita) for well over a decade before I took a chance on it last year. It has been a wonderful surprise! Maggie Q does a fantastic job as lead, and Lyndsy Fonseca’s character, Alex, allowed us to be reintroduced into this reboot version. Melinda Clarke, is a fierce gem as the main big bad, and is so fun when she plays evil!

 

[thrasherpix]

The one I recall offhand is Netflix Lost in Space. At first, I refused to watch it as I figured it was the standard drivel that had become too common in lazy, hollow remakes. It took multiple people who know me well to convince me to give it a try. (And all 3 seasons were out by the time I tried it.)

I was pleasantly surprised that in this rare time they actually focused on story over checkboxes, and the race and gender swaps were done really well (both for the story, and without disrespecting what came before). All the main characters were done well. No one was too perfect with characters I was sure going to be made perfect actually flawed and able to make a mistake (it was actually the very first time I got invested in Judy as a character, whereas in the previous incarnations I just kind of shrugged Judy off).

Before seeing it, I was also against how they turned West from a military officer into a smuggler, but some of my favorite scenes were with him. It was another thing they did right and pulled me further into the story.

All in all, I thought I was going to hate it, but now I'll probably end up getting my own copy of it. I watched it all the way through twice and probably would again if I still had access to it.

 

[Bop]

Grey's Anatomy- I thought it would be shallow but it's amazing and a lot of it is very deep and upsetting. It's my favourite show behind Buffy and Angel now and I watched it for the first time last year.

 

[Anyanka Bunny Slayer]

Melinda Clarke, is a fierce gem as the main big bad, and is so fun when she plays evil!

You should see her in the original Spawn film!

 

[ILLYRIAN]

I must admit I am somewhat omiss about the November / Plasma series of questions.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

TERMINATOR
The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

When it first came out I was looking forward to seeing it but it became quickly apparent it was written by an F-ing idiot. And it still appears that way.

What led me to think that?
In an effort to escape the bank they used a time machine but Sarah Connor waited until the Terminator's head went into the future with them. Why did she wait so long?
It was said that the Connors killed the guy who first started skynet from the Terminators arm, did the Connors kill the guy?
He was shot when the SWAT team attacked them yet the Connors were blamed for killing him. It seems as though no police bullet hit him, as if.
You'd have thought the police might have hit him, something the unintelligent FBI agents completely ignored.

Then at the school, when the 20 odd classmates reported seeing a robot type leg the plainly stupid FBI agent ignored them.
That FBI nut job kept thinking he was right for some unknown reason,

how to spoil a TV show.

 

[DeepBlueJoy]

I watched a few episodes of Once Upon a Time, and didn't care for it, for reasons I no longer remember. I thought it would get cancelled quickly, but it ran for seven seasons, and seems popular among the crowd here. So sometime I'll have to give it another try.

I liked the Once upon a time in Wonderland series that had lots of imagination - AIR my fav character was the villain Jafar. i found it way better than the original vanilla version (mentioned above) and which i simply could not watch. Unfortunately it was only given 13 episodes. I found it accidentally and unexpecedly loved it.

Once Upon a Time in Wonderland - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

-----

I too ignored Buffy - in my case because the ads for the 1992 movie were so terrible i could not believe there was a show of that.

Fortunately, i started watching Angel and loved it and had to know the back story for the Sunnydale characters.... So i asked hubby for season 1 for xmas... And loved it even more than Angel the series (and still do).

Interestingly; i later watched the Buffy movie and decided the ads had done it a disservice. It isn't fabulous but it is nowhere as bad as the farcical & creepy ads that also sexualized the poor lead actress in a way i found quite dismaying.

 

[Nix]

TVD (The Vampire Diaries verse), I was told to watch it by a few friends... Really was not sure about it in the first episode after 3 episodes I was hooked and have been ever since. I was worried it would be too child like but I was wrong!

 

[Anyanka Bunny Slayer]

I was also wrong about Buffy. Mainly because my brother liked it, and said Angel was a stupid show. But I DID end up loving Buffy (except for S7). I have the entire series on DVD...Angel as well, of course! 🖤

 

[Cohen]

Plasma This is literally a year late but no I have not watched Kung Fu

I need to finish the last 2 seasons. I’ve been on a housewives journey this last year lol