Summer is typically a pretty dead time for original programming on television. There have been some mumblings over the last few years about "year round television" but that's really bunk. As long as the list above, is, and as good as some of the shows look, this is nothing like the choices we have available in the fall. (Of course, there will be at least seven but as many as ten fewer hours of scripted programming available to us in the fall, but still, there will be more available then is available this summer.)
Having said that, there are some decent choices. Adequately supplemented with backlog from a
DVR or Netflix, folks who don't give up television for the summer (as the networks give up television for the summer) still can fill their pail of interest if desired. We're about 60% that way: We tend to watch 16 hours of television per week (not including commercials) during the fall, winter and spring, and watch 12 hours of television per week (not including commercials) during the summer.
We were going to be relying more on
DVR backlog this summer, but it didn't work out quite that way. We were storing up episodes of The Cleaner, and Raising the Bar, and Damages. Quite frankly, we didn't like the the first few episode of either The Cleaner, or Raising the Bar, enough to actually bother transferring them to our server when I replaced the hard drive in my
DVR. So they're gone. While we do have the second season of Damages on the server, they're probably going to go unwatched; we didn't really like the first season of Damages that much.
We did record all the episodes of the second season of Breaking Bad, and we'll be watching them next week. We also have about a half dozen episodes of Reaper saved up, and they'll fill in some empty spots as well, this summer. We also have the last six episodes of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but since the show has been canceled, we've lost interest in watching those.
So basically, we hadn't stored up enough, this past year. With the new (1 TB) hard drive in the TiVo, we'll focus on being a bit more conscientious in that regard, next fall, winter and spring. Basically, we'll record everything that fits on the hard drive, and that we could possibly find interesting, even if we don't plan on watching those shows at that time. Even this summer, I'm planning on recording some of the shows listed above, without any intention of watching them. Sitting on the TiVo hard drive (or stored on our server, using TiVo's TTG feature), they become truly "on demand" programming for us.
However, there is another angle to all this, for us. While having a strong backlog of recordings on the TiVo is great, it is a means to an end. Not only does it foster a more "truly 'on demand'" experience, but it also could end up saving us money. About two years ago, we used the purchase of the five-season set of DVDs for a series to basically take the place of HBO and Showtime. Canceling both services saved us about $20 per month. However, there is no denying, AFAIC, that the best television series are on those networks. So we use Netflix primarily to catch up on those series, which we miss because we no longer subscribe to either premium service. Netflix (for us) is $17 per month, for three months, whereas the premium services would cost more than that, and we'd have to pay it for the full year. Over the summer, we effectively catch up with everything we "missed" on HBO and Showtime, including feature films.
So that's a significant portion of our television watching over the summer. This summer we'll be catching up with True Blood, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Dexter, L Word, The Tudors, and John Adams, along with films like Twilight, Hancock, Bolt, Seven Pounds, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Day the Earth Stood Still, etc.
So far, only one premium series (Meadowlands) has not come out on DVD. And the same applies to cable channels. Which gets me thinking: Where do I draw the line with this. Couldn't we use Netflix to catch up with cable series too? And basically get rid of cable? That would save about $50 per month (with our recent cable price reduction). That's some serious money. However, I'm not seeing that as a serious option, at least not yet. We enjoy too many live cable options, CNN, MSNBC, Weather Channel, etc. Beyond that, this summer would be the wrong time to start that, with so little original programming being presented by the broadcast networks. If we could just find a logical point in time to do it, perhaps in the fall, that might work. However, what happened last year was that we were watching Mad Men, and didn't want to even consider dropping it mid-season. Sci Fi (Syfy) also tends to present series that start in August and continue into the fall.
Anyway...
Based on our viewing preferences, and the descriptions of the programs, above, these are the shows we're going to be watching, or recording and storing for later:
Burn Notice - The chemistry between Michael and Fiona is great, and the mystery of who burned Michael and what he's going to do about it is still, even after two seasons, still incredibly compelling.
Closer - At times, this is the best cop show on television. Our favorite character, remarkably, is Fritz!
Dark Blue - We'll be recording this, not watching it. However, we'll probably fit in the first episode, and if it is really good, we'll probably try to fit it in.
Eli Stone - Four episodes remain; we'd like to see how it ends.
Eureka - This is a wonderful, light show, that makes us smile a lot.
Expedition Africa: Stanley & Livingstone - This looks very intense.
History Detectives - We use this as filler, because each episode is really three 20 minute mini-episodes.
Impact - One of two astronomical catastrophe mini-series this summer.
In Plain Sight - We've loved Mary McCormack since The West Wing.
Kings - This is a beautifully filmed series, and we'd like to see how it ends.
Leverage - This was an incredible surprise this past winter.
Listener - I was originally very interested in this show, but it might end up on the shelf for us.
Mad Men - One of the best shows on television -- pretty much single-handedly kept us subscribed to cable last fall.
Medium - For some reason, this winter/spring series extends into summer this year.
Mental - This didn't originally look like something we'd like, but I'm thinking now that we'll watch this and just record The Listener.
Merlin - We're suckers for a great fantasy series.
Meteor - The other astronomical catastrophe mini-series this summer.
Philanthropist - This was an early favorite for us. It looks very interesting.
Psych - This is a great hour-long comedy.
Pushing Daisies - My wife's favorite show this past year. We have to see how it ends.
Saving Grace - TNT's second (after The Closer) great series.
Storm - Another catastrophe mini-series. They say they come in three's eh? This one we'll just record.
Virtuality - Word is that this television movie is just burn-off (that they're not going to pick up the series), but it will only cost us a couple of hours to check it out.
Warehouse 13 - This wasn't on my radar originally, but some previews convinced me to watch at least the first episode.
Wipeout - Great fun.
Impact (ABC)
Linear Mode
