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To say that 2005 was perhaps the best year of television in the last decade would not be an understatement. Unlike in years past, where the networks seemed to be relying on overused reality concepts (like how many times can there be a riff on the “Who Wants to Marry a …” concept?) this year comedies and dramas were back in top form. It seemed as if the networks finally “got” that they had to put as much emphasis on writing than on the just overall concept.

But it already seems as if the networks are starting to forget what they learned in 2005. Rather than taking chances with shows like Lost or Scrubs, networks seem to be trying to clone hits wherever they can. And when was the last time a cloned hit was anything worth watching?

Still, if the 2004 television season was like a fine meal, then the 2005 season was like an even finer meal with desert, a movie, dancing and a nightcap…

The best show of 2005 – Battlestar Galactica: On one level, Battlestar Galactica works as a traditional sci-fi yarn of “large space-ships” blasting other “large space-ships.” But where Battlestar Galactica excels is that it works on a whole other level. Correction, other levels. Like it or not, Battlestar Galactica is a mirror of our times. Good (like the best bits of humanity shining through in times of crisis) or bad (paranoia existing at an almost cellular level) we are them and they are us.

The rest, in alphabetical order:

Arrested Development: Twenty minutes of Arrested Development is sheer bliss. At times watching the show, I would literally laugh to the point of almost choking. But choking in a good way. Now, it looks as if the current season of Arrested Development will be the last. Depressing? Yes. Then again, the best way to cure this type of depression is watching more Arrested Development! (A conundrum – I know.)

Deadwood: Deadwood is the perfect pragmatic drama on television these days. Characters act and behave as they seemingly would and do in real life. I think that’s the real strength of Deadwood – it breaks all the rules of the “traditional” Western genera by having the characters behave in a realistic manner rather than a wishful one.

Doctor Who: (Doctor Who has not yet aired in the U.S.) Every bit a reinvention of the Doctor Who franchise as the remake of Battlestar Galactica was to that one, the new Doctor Who took a series that had low production values and decent story and gave it great production values and excellent story. It’s the “perfect storm” of a show with writer/creator Russell T. Davies overseeing an excellent writing staff and he himself delivering excellent script after script and new Doctor Christopher Eccleston redefining the character.

Extras: Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant had a hard road to travel with Extras, their follow-up one of the best comedies ever, The Office. Somehow, Gervais and Merchant hit yet another homerun with Extras. Never relying on simple sight gags or jokes, the comedy of Extras comes from the life of the characters. In typical Gervais/Merchant style, one season of Extras consists of just six shows, three hours of television. But what fun spending those three hours with Extras is.

Lost: Has Lost redefined the face of modern television? At least in the short term it has. This season there were no less than four new dramas to “borrow” the technique used in Lost where the story unfolds over the course of the entire season. And one of those shows, Prison Break, is a certified hit. (No comment on the other three.)

Thick of It: (Thick of It has not yet aired in the U.S.) A child to The Office, Thick of It roams the halls of the British government and all that happens there. Sometimes I think we feel that politicians and people with power in general are flawless. But Thick of It reveals that politicians are people too with all the flaws that go along with being human.

Veronica Mars: Blending the typical teen drama (boyfriends and cars) with a hint of reality (being burned alive in a gasoline soaked refrigerator) Veronica Mars bends our expectations of what the teen is and transforms it into what it should be. Somehow, Veronica Mars survived cancellation and is currently airing in its second season on UPN.

Honorable mentions:

Scrubs – Still one of the funniest comedy series even after five seasons.

Justice League Unlimited: Adult themes in a kids cartoon. Paranoia so thick it puts The X-Files to shame.

Mythbusters: Any show where the hosts blow up automobiles for fun is a show for me!

Survivorman: Living off the land can be hard work. Very hard work!

Here’s my annual list of the top movies of 2004. Look for an in depth column on this subject appearing over at The Fort Wayne Reader in a few weeks. This year was one of the better years in recent memory for movies. It makes going to the cinema on a weekly basis worth while again!

(In an odd bit of coincidence, one actor appeared in two of the movies in this list in featured supporting roles. If you can figure out who HE is, send me an e-mail and I’ll publish your name in this column.)

Here’s the bare bones list:

The best movie of the year – Collateral. Tom Cruise plays Vincent, an assassin assigned to kill the prosecutor and witnesses of a major case set to go against a crime family in modern day Los Angeles. Jamie Fox plays Max, an unlucky cab driver that just happens to pick up Vincent as a fare but is wrangled into driving him around all night as he goes from hit to hit. Shot on digital video, Collateral gives it’s setting of L.A. an almost nightmarish quality. Eyes glow from ambient light and the night sky burns a putrid orange from the light pollution below.

The rest, in alphabetical order:
The Alamo – I thought The Alamo was a unique look at the Alamo siege while, at the same time, providing an interesting perspective on the defenders such as David (don’t call him Davy) Crocket. I felt that The Alamo did one thing that the multitude of Alamo movies and specials have failed to do; humanize the characters.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – The movie unfolds in a seemingly jumbled manner, with events from the past being intermingled with current and future events. But it somehow all works in the end. And on second viewing all makes perfect sense.

Garden State – It’s hard to say just how much Garden State hit home with me when I first saw it. Many of the details in the movie seemed to mirror my own life; from a death in my immediate family, growing older and even meeting friends from high school after not seeing them for nearly a decade. It is once in a rare while that a movie strikes me in such a way.

Napoleon Dynamite – It’s wild and wacky. The kids and teens of today will be watching Dynamite on TBS twenty years from now reliving old memories. (And I along with them.)

Spartan – Spartan sounds like the generic spy-drama that has been made a million times before but Spartan is wholly different. Like in real life, the characters don’t spell the plot out for the audience or talk in an unnaturalistic manner. And, like in life, the plot of Spartan is a bit messy. People are killed when the audience least expects it. Major characters die.

Read the top movies of 2003 (according to Dangerous Universe) here.

Somewhere, somehow, the 2004-2005 television season became a goldmine of creative and interesting shows. Who would have guessed that one of the most viewed shows of the season would be about a group of people trapped on a desert island while a spin-off of one of the most horrible, and successful, shows of all time (Friends) would be struggling in the ratings? Every year people across the country hope for a good television season, this year the networks (other than the constantly good shows from HBO) delivered.

The best show on television this year would have to be David Milch’s epic tale of life in a real frontieer town – Deadwood. I had been looking forward to Deadwood for some time ever since I saw the first previews on HBO late in 2003. Set in South Dakota in the late 1800’s, Deadwood follows the boomtown of the same name. Here, the town of Deadwood is a haven for all things criminal and illegal being located outside the United States and out of the reach of any sort of real law enforcement. Not only is the story beind Deadwood a good one, it features some of the best characters to grace television screens since The Sopranos, namely Timothy Olyphant in a career defining role of Seth Bullock and Ian McShane as the criminal head of the town Al Swearengen.

I fell in love with the show shortly after the first episode and was watching it religiously week after week. I know a lot of people were turned off to Deadwood by the constant swearing by the characters in the first episode. (Which was toned back for subsiquent episodes.) However, I feel that what Milch was trying to show that the same ills that plague modern day society also plagued societies of the past.

Deadwood has got what a lot of other shows lack – a sort of true realistic grit.

The rest in alphabetical order:
Arrested Development – Arrested Development follows the Bluth family as they cope with the head of the family, George (Jeffrey Tambor), being arrested for shady accounting practices at the family real-estate company. George is thrown in prison and the courts freeze the family’s wealth. Most families would be concerned with the father locked away in jail; the Bluths are mostly concerned about their lost money and the fact that they might have to get jobs and work for a living. Enter Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman), the only responsible member of the family who’s put in charge of the company and forced into the role of surrogate family head. Michael immediately puts himself at odds with the family after he tells them that the easy days of expensing luxury items to the company are over.

The comedy from Arrested Development arises from Michael trying to do the right thing by both his family and the courts and the family trying to stop him every step of the way in order to keep assets hidden and themselves a few dollars richer. It’s the family from The Cosby Show only dysfunctional in a 21st century kind of way.

Entourage– At first, I didn’t care too much for Entourage. After watching the first episode I was a bit turned off by the characters. Sure, Entourage hit true as to what it’s like for a group of guy friends to hang out together. But I didn’t feel that I could like the characters. I was wrong. By the third episode I was hooked.

Entourage follows new hot movie star Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) who is coming off a highly successful movie and is trying to land his next role. In reality, though, the series focus is on a member of Vincent’s “entourage” and friend from back home Eric (Kevin Connolly). Eric is thrust into becoming Vincent’s manager and is tasked with landing his next role all the while Vincent and the rest of the entourage do their best to party and spend Vincent’s money. My guess is that Entourage is the most accurate look into the Hollywood movie industray since Fox’s 1999 failed sitcom Action.

Lost – The series follows a group of airline passengers stranded on a deserted island after a violent crash. The survivors quickly realize that they must band together if they have any hope of surviving. Not only do they have to deal with the lack of food and clean drinking water, the survivors must also face a very large “monster” roaming the island when it makes it’s presence known by consuming the jet’s co-pilot. So far, the audience has yet to see the beast other than as it travels through the jungle knocking down trees.

Lost is so much more than a simple tale of people crashed on a deserted island. I would say that Lost is an interesting character study on the effects of a high stress environment on different types of people who’ve never met before suddenly forced to live together and depend on one and other for survival.

Veronica Mars – The basic plot of Veronica Mars follows teenage Veronica Mars as she deals with high school by day while working at her father’s detective agency by night. However, much like Lost, a simple synopsis of the show’s plot will not suffice. Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars’s basic plotline is a springboard into something more. Much more. There are two levels of story in Veronica Mars.

A few years prior to the events chronicled in the show, Veronica Mars’ best friend Lily was murdered. When Veronica’s dad, then the city’s sheriff, placed the blame of Lily’s father, the town turned their back on him and voted him out of office. And when Veronica didn’t turn her back on her father like everyone wanted her to, she was thrown out of the popular group in school.

One level is the very basic Veronica solving cases. But there’s a whole other level to the series in a second underlying sometimes-disturbing storyline of Veronica looking for the murderer of Lily.

The Office Christmas Special – What can I say that I haven’t said before about the greatness that is The Office? Simply put, The Office series, all fourteen and some odd hours, was the best fourteen and some odd hours of comedy on television. And The Office Christmas Special was the prefect ending to The Office series. It’s a shame that it’s all over for the show.

Read the top television shows of 2003 (according to Dangerous Universe) here.

2003’s been a weird year at the box office. Movies like “The Hulk” and “The Matrix: Revolutions” should have been hits were instead flops. And the number one movie at the box office last Summer was an animated adventure instead of the standard action “blow stuff up” fare.

It’ll be interesting to see just how the movie studios handle this Summer’s mess in the years to come. I wonder if we’ll see less action and more variety in movies for the coming Summer season. (Somehow, I doubt this.)

Best Movie of the Year – 28 Days Later: It’s been nearly half a year since I first saw this movie and I’m still thinking about it. Movies don’t usually effect me in such a way. Most times I forget about the movie until it comes out on DVD then debate whether or not to pick it up. With “28 Days Later” I was thinking about it from the time I left the theater to the time it (finally) came out on DVD.

I think it’s the idea behind 28 Days Later that makes the movie memorable. The idea that over the course of a very short period of time everything that we know can fall apart permiates the film. That it’s possible one day we could be going to the supermarket and the next we’re fighting for our lives outside that same market. 28 Days Later hits home in the post 9/11 world that we live in.

Since the movie was shot on a digital camera it adds to the whole “you are there” creepy feeling. (If you’ve never seen the movie trust me, the world that 28 Days Later exists in isn’t a place you want to visit!)

28 Days Later has probably single handedly reinvented the zombie/horror/holocaust movie. I would guess that this year’s”Dawn of the Dead” remake owes some of it’s being made to the success of 28 Days Later.

The rest, in alphabetical order:
Finding Nemo: I’ve liked every Pixar movie that’s come out since “Toy Story” back in 1995. Every single feature they’ve made since their first has been pure gold. Not one has been a “miss” and “Finding Nemo” was no exception. From the story that hits your heart to the animation that makes Pixar’s ocean look more inviting than the real one, Finding Nemo’s a winner.

Kill Bill: Kinetic action mixed with Tarintino’s sense of dialogue is a pleasure to watch. And what is “Kill Bill” other than “kinetic action” and “Tarintino’s sense of dialogue?” Best of all the fight scenes are about as far away from the “Matrix” style fight scenes as a movie can get. (And we’re living in a world permiated with Matrix style fight scenes.) Kill Bill really harkened back to those old style 1960’s and 1970’s early asian kung-fu action movies. “Keeeeeeey-Ah!”

X-Men 2: X-Men United: I didn’t like the first X-Men movie. I found the storyline dull and the characters uninteresting. So I wasn’t too excited when the second movie was released but still went to see it anyway. About a half hour into the movie I realized that X2 was great! The characters/plot elements were more inline with the stories that came from the comic books and the action was over the top in a good way. There were elements in the story that I felt that only a true fan would understand. (How lame is that?)

I find myself counting the days until the next X-Men is released.

Top Television Shows of 2003
It’s been a long year for television shows this season. Nothing new seems to be working. The big hit this season is a show that didn’t premiere in the traditional Fall time slot rather starting last Summer;”The O.C.” Failures seem to be more common than hits. (The US version of “Coupling”, I’m looking in your general direction.)

Still, some great television shows were out in 2003. You just had to know where to look for them.

Top Television Shows:
Best Show of the Year – The Office: To say that “The Office” is a “mockumentary” on the workings of the modern corporation would be a disservice to the show. The Office is so much more. One one level it’s one of the best written comedies to ever grace television screens. On another level it’s a study between the relationships between the management and worker class in today’s society. (Seriously.)

I discovered The Office last Summer on BBC America and then had to wait a few months for season 2. The weird nature of British sitcoms means that a full season of The Office is something like just six episodes long. (Six episodes of an American series is just a quarter or so of one season.)

Worst of all, season 3 of The Office is only two episodes long. (This season has already aired over in Great Britain.) The creators of the show, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, want to take it off the air while it’s still on top. And believe me, this show is ON TOP!

Now I just have to wait until Season 3 pops up on BBC America. It’s going to be a long wait!

The rest, in alphabetical order:
Arrested Development: Who’d have thought that a sitcom from Ron Howard’s company would turn out to be the funniest new show on network television? I can’t say enough good things about this show. From David Cross (“Mr. Show”) having a supporting role in the show to breaking the standard three camera sitcom format. Best of all is the use of a Segway in comedic situations. I never thought an overpriced personal transport could be funny!

Coupling (UK): No, I’m not talking about the US version of this show. Whereas the US version was simply bad, the UK version was genuinely funny. Several times during each episode I find myself laughing out loud. It’s too bad that the best character of the series, Jeff, won’t be returning for the season 4.

Scrubs: The third year of “Scrubs” should have been the one where the show jumped the shark. That’s when series usually turn the corner from the original vision of the creators and become something different. Instead, the third season of Scrubs was the best yet. “Scurbs” follows the dev elopement of three doctors and their friends/co-workers in a Los Angeles hospital. In reality, Scrubs is really about is growing up. The characters introduced in the first season have grown into doctors of their own in season 3. That is what’s so different about this show. The characters grow, and change, as the situations they’re in change.

The Wire: After watching “Homicide: Life on the Street” this year on DVD, I can see how a show like “The Wire” really evolved from it. It’s the thinking man’s cop show. There aren’t too many shoot-outs or car chases. Instead we see the drudgery that often follows police work on long term cases and views from the “other” side of the law. The Wire focuses on the nuances rather than the big picture. It’s almost as if we’re watching some great chess match; the police make their moves which are followed by the criminals. Like chess, the show can run slow but it’s one heck of a ride.