WATCH: Awesome review of TV and Movies in 2016

Hat/tip to Gizmodo

WATCH: 2015 Movie Trailers Supercut

You know the end of the year is approaching as these video compilations start being released. This one is takes all the trailers for movies in 2015 and mashes them up into one stunning year-in-review compilation.

My Favorite Books Read In 2014 (Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery and Thriller)

In 2014 I read 70 books; they were all novels, in the genres of mystery/thriller and fantasy/science fiction. By far, the biggest fraction of books that I read are mystery/thrillers. I have recently made it through all 18 of Peter Robinson's DCI Alan banks mysteries and am currently making my way through Michael Connelly's Detective Harry Bosch series (which I think is quite good) and Leighton Gage's Chief Inspector Mario Silva's series, which is also good and tragically cut short by the author's untimely death.

I had previously read all of Henning Mankell's Inspector Kurt Wallander books and the Steig Larsson trilogy and now definitely consider myself a full-fledged fam of Scandinavian noir. I was unprepared for how good the Inspector Harry Hole thrillers by Jo Nesbø are and surprised by the level of suspense in the first Department Q novel by Jussi Adler-Olsen!

Overall, however, my favorite reads of the year were from authors familiar to me (James S.A. Corey, Peter F. Hamilton, Daniel Abrahams, Brent Weeks, Tana French) continuing to bring me joy with their work.

I'm always looking for good books and authors to start reading! Feel free to make suggestions of books or authors you think I would like in the comments.

Favorite Science Fiction Novel Read In 2014: Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey

Cibola Burn is the fourth book in the best-selling space opera series known as The Expanse. I have been a huge fan of these books from day one, and am very excited that the television adaptation of the books is slated to come to SyFy as a 10-episode miniseries later this year. Cibola Burn follows events in a planet which has opened up outside of our solar system as a result of the events that occurred in Abaddon's Gate. Cibola Burn is space opera at its best, with interesting ideas about conflicts between corporations and colonists, all in the context of a visionary future for humanity combined with non-stop action and peril for the familiar characters of Holden, Nagata, Amos and Avarasala. Corey also introduces some new characters and resolves some plot points which have been developing since the very first book in the series (Leviathan Wakes). This was my favorite novel (of any genre) that I read in 2014. At this point, I fully expect that Book 5 in The Expanse, Nemesis Games, to be my favorite science fiction and overall read in 2015. And from what I can tell about the television series so far, I expect that to be one of my favorites as well.
Yes, these are really that good.



Runner-Up Favorite Science Fiction: The Abyss Beyond Dreams by Peter F. Hamilton.


The Abyss Beyond Dreams is a return to the Commonwealth Universe for British sci-fi maestro Peter F. Hamilton, whose earlier books like The Reality Dysfunction and The Neutronium Alchemist turned me on to space opera in the first place. This book is intended to be the first book in another Hamilton duopoly called The Chronicle of the Fallers. His first duopoly in this universe was the brilliant Pandora's Star / Judas Unchained books which he returned to, somewhat obliquely, with his Void Trilogy (which are set a few thousand years in the future from the events in the first two books and inside a space anomaly called The Void in which advanced technology is stifled but mental powers like telekinesis and telepathy are possible). Despite the intriguing setting, The Void Trilogy were not as successful as the original Commonwealth Saga books (in my humble opinion). However, in The Abyss Beyond Dreams Hamilton has been able to combine the best parts of both of these prior works to produce a work which, while not as groundbreaking as the classic sci-fi of his Night's Dawn trilogy, is still as enthralling and engaging as anything the genre has to offer. And it's fun and funny as well. That being said, I am pretty surprised (and somewhat pleased) that I have found an author in James S.A. Corey who I think produces space opera as good as anything Hamilton has produced, but on a much more frequent timetable. It was still nice to see that the old master was able to show that "he's still got it" with his latest book, and I look forward to the concluding book in the series an I hope that he does NOT follow his promise (threat?) of never writing in the Commonwealth Universe again after he finishes the Fallers duopoly. (Unless he does so because he goes into Confederation Space, because that would be awesome!)

Honorable Mention (Science Fiction): Neptune's Brood by Charles Stross.
I have had difficulty finishing Charlie Stross books before despite the fact that he regularly gets recognized as producing some of the best speculative fiction around (multiple consecutive Hugo and Nebula nominations in the last decade). I picked up Neptune's Brood because it was nominated even though this is the sequel to Saturn's Children which I had not read (and still have not). This book was a whole bunch of fun, brimming with exciting ideas and lots of action set in well-imagined universe. Exactly what I love to get out of reading science fiction. One of my favorite sci-fi genre reads of 2014.

Favorite Fantasy Novel Read In 2014: The Broken Eye by Brent Weeks

I actually read the all three of the currently available books in Brent Weeks Lightbringer series in 2014: The Black Prism (2010), The Blinding Knife (2012) and The Broken Eye (2014) and it's hard to say which of the three is the best. I think the third book has had the biggest impact on me of the three since now I have lived with these characters for well over 2,000 pages I am very invested as to what happens to them in the future. I believe that Weeks is improving as a writer; this series is already better than his Night's Angel series and there's (at least!) one more Lightbringer book to come. The main character is Kip, who is an out-of-shape, socially awkward 16-year-old who also happens to be the illegitimate son of the most powerful man in the world (Gavin Guile, known as The Prism for his powerful abilities to convert all spectra of light into solid objects and other forms of energy). Weeks has developed a fantasy series with a very interesting magic system  based on the seven colors of the rainbow and incorporated this into a complicated but intriguing political system and culture with many nuanced characters and exciting plot developments. The action is often breathless and the humor sometimes off-putting but once you start one of Brent Weeks novels they are often very hard to put down, and you are very glad that you didn't put it down until the end.

Runner-Up Favorite Fantasy: The Widow's House by Daniel Abrahams

I think of myself as someone who likes fantasy novels, but a review of my reading list in 2014 reveals I'm much pickier about titles in the fantasy genre than in the others that I consume. If I don't get caught up by a fantasy book early I am far more likely to give up on it than I would be if it were a mystery or science fiction book. One fantasy book I greatly enjoyed in 2014 was The Widow's House by Daniel Abraham. It is the penultimate book in the Dagger and the Coin series which is scheduled to be five books long. Amazingly, Abrahams has managed to keep to a schedule of releasing one book per year in the series for the last four years. Even more amazingly, he has been doing this while he has been adhering to the same schedule as one half of the writing team that produces The Expanse novels under the name of James S.A. Corey (see above). I don't know how they do it, but I am very happy that they do! The last book in the series will almost certainly come out this summer, and I expect The Spider's War to be awesome. Somehow Abrahams manages to have multiple strong female characters in a sword and sorcery tale that has monetary policy as one of its central organizing principles. If you are (or were) an economics major then this series is the one for you!

Favorite Mystery Novel Read In 2014: The Black Echo (and others) by Michael Connelly


Well over half the books I read last year were mysteries and 2014 was finally the year I discovered Michael Connelly. I'm not sure why it took so long; I like police procedurals and mysteries, and have read books of this genre set in Dublin (Tana French), Edinburgh (Ian Rankin), northern England (Peter Robinson) and London (Robert Barnard and Richard Galbraith) for years. I live in Los Angeles and love my adopted hometown. I knew intellectually that Connelly and Robert Crais set their books in this area but it wasn't until this past year that I discovered the joy of recognizing the setting in a book as a place I know in real life all too well (i.e. traffic on the 101 freeway, Griffith Park, Echo Park, et cetera). I still haven't read anything by Crais, but I expect that will happen eventually. I read twelve Harry Bosch books in 2014 and its hard to decide which is the "best" but I'm pretty confident the first one, The Black Echo, would be on the shortlist. I would also say that The Concrete Blonde, Trunk Music, The Last Coyote, A Darkness More Than Night and The Narrows are all excellent. I am only reading the Bosch series, not the other Connelly books featuring what I consider "side" characters (Mickey Haller, Terry McCaleb). I would say that The Overlook was not very good and so I hope that Connelly returns to form with the more recent books in the series. I'm not sure what I am going to do when I finish the last one, The Burning Room, published in 2014. I don't think I am interested in watching the Amazon series based on the books (called Bosch) but I am hopeful that regardless of its success as television fodder, Connelly will continue to produce more books featuring Harry Bosch.

Runner-Up Favorite Mystery: The Secret Place by Tana French


Tana French has long been my favorite mystery writer, (in)famous for her literate, genre-defying novels based around various detectives in the Murder Squad of the Dublin Police Department that began with stunning debut In The Woods (2007). Sadly, she has only written five books so far and some observers think that her first work was her best and things have gone downhill from there (I disagree). French's books are collectively known as the Dublin Murder Squad series and I think it is an interesting choice the author has made to not stick to a single main detective whom readers get to know more about and become comfortable with in book after book. (I think this may have been a problem with Peter Robinson's books--towards the end of that series the books were definitely declining in quality. However, my counterexample would be Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus series, which I think got better as it went on, but that may have happened because Siobhan Clarke's role grew larger and so the cast of characters to care about was expanded.) Anyway, each of French's books is very different, and about very different mysteries. The Secret Place is about the death of a teenage boy on the grounds of a private girls school where one of the quartet of prime suspects is the teenage daughter of one of the few characters who has appeared in more than one of French's books: Francis Mackey. This ensures tha longtime fans of French's work are heavily invested in the outcome of the mystery in The Secret Place (could Mackey's daughter really be a killer?) The story involves digging into the tangled webs of deception and desire and envy and emotion that connect nearly a dozen hormonal teenagers and resulted in one of them on the ground with his head bashed in. The reader gets to see the investigation both from the perspective of the police investigators and from the student suspects; it is an interesting tightrope that French pulls off well. There are some aspects of the book which will not wear so well on some readers: much of the dialogue is in the argot of contemporary teenage girls and texts are central communication mechanisms to the story. In my opinion, the most glaring of these weaknesses is French's ill-advised decision to include actual supernatural elements as part of the narrative. Overall, The Secret Place is another unusual but memorable novel (with some flaws) from a superior mystery writer.

Favorite Thriller Novel Read In 2014: The Snowman by Jo Nesbø.

In addition to Harry Bosch, 2014 was the year that I discovered Harry Hole, the Norwegian alcoholic serial killer hunter. Hole springs from the creative mind of Jo Nesbø, who along with fellow Scandinavian authors Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson is one of the creators of a subgenre of mystery/thrillers known as Nordic noir. I think it is true that if you liked Mankell's Kurt Wallander books you will enjoy Nesbø's Harry Hole books. However, I would say that Nesbø's series on a whole is superior to Mankell's. They are for more suspenseful and action-filled, for the most part. Hole is an even more self-destructive anti-hero of the books than Wallander, but somehow the reader becomes attached to Hole and the supporting cast of characters in the Oslo Police Department. I read the first eight of Nesbø's Harry Hole books in 2014: The Bat, Cockroaches, The Redbreast, Nemesis, The Devil's Star, The Redeemer, The Snowman and The Leopard. In general I would say that each book is better than the last with The Snowman perhaps edging out The Leopard for the most thrilling read I had in 2014. I would strongly recommend the Harry Hole books for anyone who likes detective mysteries with pulse-pounding action and suspense. Nesbø will give you that and have you gasping for more even while you despair for Harry's future.

Runner-Up Favorite Thriller: The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen.

This book was a complete surprise to me. The Department Q novels, of which this is the first one, were recommended to me because of my interest in Jo Nesbø books by amazon.com's algorithm. (I guess my attraction to Nordic noir was easy to suss out from my wishlist and browsing history.) Jussi Adler-Olsen sets his books in Copenhagen, and his main detective is Carl Mørck, a detective who has been relegated to his own department of cold cases, in the basement of the police station primarily because no one else wants to work with him and because his bosses feel sorry for what he went through when two of his colleagues were shot right in front of him. This was a tougher slog to get through than any of the Michael Connelly books because Carl is not a compelling character but his sidekick, a Syrian emigre named Assad is great and kept me coming back to the story through the initial slow bits. And the ticking time bomb plot device (which I don't want to spoil here except to say it involves an abduction and kidnapping) makes the book literally impossible to put down from about halfway through the book. I had previously grouped mysteries and thrillers together as one genre but now I see that books like The Snowman and The Keeper of Lost Causes are more than just about solving the mystery of who did the crime, but also about drawing in the reader so that they are honestly worried about the well-being of the characters and curious and concerned about their ultimate fates. The Keeper of Lost Causes had me almost skimming the pages in order to advance the story to find out what happens, and isn't that what one wants in a thriller?

Honorable Mention (Thriller): The Quiet Game by Greg Iles.   
This is the first book in the Penn Case series of mystery thriller written by Greg Iles set in Natchez, Mississippi. After reading the first one I quickly devoured the next three (Turning Angel, The Devil's Punchbowl and Natchez Burning) and am looking forward to the forthcoming The Bone Tree  with baited breath.

My Top 10 Films (Released In 2014)

This post contains the list of the Top 10 films that I saw in 2014. The year before my favorite film was  12 Years A Slave. This year it was very hard to decide between the very best film of the year, with three contenders essentially tied with each other but each had a very powerful impact on me in their own way.

Anyway, here is my Top 10 list of the films released in 2014 that I saw last year. This year I saw roughly 17 films in the movie theaters and then another half dozen or so through other channels (at home on television via premium cable or iTunes) and on planes.

10. Blackbird. This is the latest film by Black gay wunderkind Patrik-Ian Polk (Punks, Noah's Arc). It stars Mo'Nique in her first film role after winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Precious and is a film adaptation of the classic book by the same name about a young Black boy coming of age in the South. Unfortunately, Blackbird still has not found a distributor but I was able to see the film twice in 2014, once at the Pan African Film Festival, and then several weeks later at Outfest Fusion. The main strength of this film is its authentic portrayal of a gay teenager's life and love, and even though the actual twists of the story are melodramatic, it felt good to see representations of Black gay men like myself on screen. If you get a chance to see Blackbird, grab it!

9. Snowpiercer. I had heard of Snowpiercer but it just looked like another bat-sh*t crazy Tilda Swinton movie. My interest was piqued when I discovered that the always fun to watch Chris Evans (Captain America) was also in it. Sadly, Evans has an extensive beard and shows almost no skin in the film but delivers an effective performance that grounds the film, even though, by any measure, Snowpiercer is a pretty wild ride of a film. It is reminiscent of other wild, visually arresting classics like Brazil, The Fifth Element and The Matrix. Just like those movies, the story doesn't make much sense but somehow you can not stop watching it. Definitely a movie I will remember years from now, probably more so than some of the higher ranked films on this list.

8. Big Hero 6. This was the best animated film that I saw in the theaters this year. (The LEGO Movie I saw on AppleTV soon after it left the theaters and despite what the Oscar voters say, it is better than Big Hero 6.) Like Edge of Tomorrow, Big Hero 6 is based on content from another source, this time a popular Marvel comic of the same name. The best thing about Big Hero 6 is the inflatable robot named Baymax, although the main character of Hiro Hamada (voiced by Ryan Potter) is a close second. I guess one of the main reasons why I liked Big Hero 6 is that it reminds me somewhat of one of my favorite movies, The Incredibles.

7. Edge of Tomorrow. If you had told me when I wrote last year's Top 10 list that a Tom Cruise science fiction flick would be one of my favorite movies of the year I would not have believed you. But Edge of Tomorrow also stars Emily Blunt in a big screen adaptation of a Japanese graphic novel with a fiendishly clever script, directed by a well-respected action director (Doug Liman, known for his work on the Bourne series starring Matt Damon). Since the film was so badly marketed I went it to the theater with low expectations, which were happily easily exceeded.

6.  X-Men: Days of Future Past. This latest entry into the X-Men franchise was directed by animating force behind the reboot: Bryan Singer, which is a good thing. The key feature of this movie is that it featured Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart from the first set of X-Men films as well as Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy playing the same characters (Magneto and Professor Xavier, respectively). It's really fun to have both sets of actors in the film, even though they basically have no scenes together (since they are playing the same characters in different eras). Another strength of this film was the plot which, although it depended on a somewhat cheesy time travel device allowed the film to be mostly set in the early 1970s, which was an inspired choice. 

5. The LEGO Movie / Guardians of the Galaxy. At the beginning of the year I guess I might have been one of the many people who did not know the name of the actor who plays the young, tall, goofy white dude on Parks & Recreation but there are very few people who don't know who Chriss Pratt is now after he appeared in not one but two of the biggest box-office hits of the year. The LEGO Movie sounded like it would be a painfully bad attempt to leverage a well-known nostalgic brand (Battleship, anyone?) but instead was a surprisingly clever romp strengthened by the voice talents of Pratt and Morgan Freeman, the silly but hyper-infectious theme song "Everything is awesome!" and a snarkily satirical script. The Lego Movie was fun and a huge hit but since Pratt does not physically appear in the film it took the summer blockbuster
Guardians of the Galaxy to really send Pratt's profile into the stratosphere. Guardians of the Galaxy  can not be considered a surprise sleeper hit like The Lego Movie since it is one of the Marvel suite of comic-book movies but even in that context, Guardians of the Galaxy is a surprisingly effective entertainment. And Pratt is front and central to the movie's runaway success, in all his attractive goofiness.

4. Gone Girl. Regardless of what Oscar voters think, in my opinion David Fincher's representation of Gillian Flynn's blockbuster mystery novel was one of the best directed  and most thrilling movies I saw in 2014. Even though I read and quite enjoyed the book, I was very impressed with how much of the book was able to be included in the film. There are very strong performances by a bevy of well-cast actors, starting with Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike as the (un)happily married couple Nick and Amy Dunne at the center of the film, and also including Carrie Coon as the suspicious detective who investigates Amy's disappearance,  Neil Patrick Harris as Amy's obsessive childhood crush and even Tyler Perry as Nick's buffoonish but media savvy defense attorney. Fincher's film also includes a wickedly dark sense of humor that adds oomph to the impression it leaves on the psyche.

3. The Imitation Game.  This film was another one of my most anticipated films of  2014 that also lived up to my expectations. Additionally, it also provided a fair number of surprises by giving information about the story of Alan Turing's life and work that I was unaware of even though I was generally familiar with the broad outlines of his heroic contributions to society and the tragedy of his personal biography. In fact one of the key strengths of The Imitation Game is its ability to present a British period piece in a way that is both compelling and suspenseful, even though we know how the story ends. Another major strength are the performances by Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley as well as the structure of the screenplay adapted from Andrew Hodges classic biography.

2.  The Grand Budapest Hotel.  This is the only film that I saw multiple times throughout the year and was also one of my most unexpected pleasures at the cinema all year long. I have not been a huge fan of Wes Anderson's work in the past (I still have not seen Moonrise Kingdom) but was convinced by friends to see this one and found it absolutely delightful. The screenplay is so clever, and the film is anchored by the hysterical and self-possessed performance of Ralph Fiennes  as M. Gustave, the concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel as well as an impressive debut by Tony Revolori as the Lobby Boy. Additionally, the huge supporting cast (Willem Dafoe, Tilda Swinton, F. Murray Abraham, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody, Edward Norton) and surprising cameos (Bob Balaban, Jude Law, Tom Wilkinson, Jeff Goldblum, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Fisher Stevens) present an inexhaustible supply of smiles and giggles that cement this film as one of the most enjoyable films of the year.

1. Interstellar. When I started thinking about this list I did not place Christopher Nolan's film at the number one spot, although I was pretty sure it would be somewhere in my Top 5. However when I went back and looked at my written reviews I saw that I had basically felt that The Imitation Game, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Interstellar were all essentially tied as my favorite films of the year. Then as I reflected more upon the three I realized that Interstellar was not only my most anticipated film of the year it was also the film that had the strongest emotional impact on me after viewing. It was not a perfect film (some of the dialogue is painfully bad) by any means but there's no question that it was the film which had the most memorable visuals of anything I saw in the theaters all year long. The suspenseful plot and the always rock-solid performances by Sir Michael Caine, Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain and Matthew McConnaughey are other impressive strengths. I still do not think it was as compelling conceptually as Nolan's Inception (2010), which possesses one of my all-time favorite soundtracks and is a film that I have seen and enjoyed multiple times.

 There ya go. There are still some very well-regarded 2014 movies which I have yet to see, such as Boyhood, The Theory of Everything, Selma and Foxcatcher.

Some Honorable Mentions that could be on this list are Divergent (mostly for Theo James' hotness), and Birdman (although overall I think it is somewhat self-indulgent and a bit too-"inside Hollywood" for me).

Looking forward to seeing more movies in 2015!

WATCH: The Year 2014 In Movies!

My Top 5 Favorite TV Shows of 2012

Arya Stark, one of the most popular characters
 in the Game of Thrones series

I have previously blogged about the five favorite books I read in 2012. When I am not reading, I watch television on my DVR (or go to see movies). Now that the Super Bowl is over, the 2013 television season

The shows that I made sure my DVR recorded every week in 2013 and which I often watched live were some of my favorite television shows from 2012:

5. The Good Wife. I first found about the The Good Wife when Archie Panjabi won the Best Supporting Actress in Television Drama Series at the Emmys in 2010. She was so striking that I thought "I should really check out that show," especially since I was shocked she had beaten out the person I thought was the clear frontrunner, Rose Byrne from Damages. I knew that the show starred an alum from ER, Julianna Margulies but I think I saw it as a cheap knock-off of the Eliot Spitzer scandal. (The show follows the travails of the wife of a politician who admits to an affair and the "good wife" stands by her man.) I have actually never seen the first season of the show but I got hooked towards the beginning of the second season and have not looked back. It basically is an update of David E. Kelley's LA Law and The Practice with less sex, but more interesting cases, and with local politics thrown in. Margulies is very good and bring a lot more nuanced to her role as "the good wife," as does Christine Baranski in a dramatic role. They used to have Michael Boatman in a more prominent role but now the show's cast is almost overwhelmingly white but I'm still hooked. Besides, both Josh Charles and Matt Czuchry bring enough "cute white boy" energy to keep the casual gay fan engaged. 

4. Modern Family. This is simply the best comedy on television, taking the overdone format of a sitcom about simple domestic living and turning it on its head by trying to represent as much family diversity as possible. So, there's the family with the hot Latina trophy wife Gloria (Sofia Vergara) and her pedantic son Manny living with the rich and grumpy curmudgeon (Ed O'Neill) Jay; the very gay couple Cameron (overweight,dramatic & queeny camer Eric Stonestreet) and Mitchell (red-headed, dramatic & queeny Jesse Tyler Ferguson) raising their adopted Asian girl toddler Lily; and the "typical" nuclear family consisting of a pretty, neurotic mom (Julie Bowen) Claire and a childlike father (Ty Burrell) Phil with their three kids Haley, Alex and Luke. It should be noted that despite the astonishingly good writing and uniformly good acting (the entire adult cast regularly gets nominated and Best Supporting Actor has been won by a Modern Family castmember every year it has been on television) this is another show which does not have a regular African-American castmember, even though the producers have clearly tried hard to represent the wide spectrum of diversity present in America. One extra thrill for me while watching the show is knowing that is filmed in my home town of Los Angeles and from time to time recognizing some of the locations that the characters are in. The unapologetic portrayal of a "real" gay couple is one of the clear highlights of the show, but Burrell, Bowen, Stonestreet are also comedic actors performing at the top of their game. 

3. Homeland. The first season of Homeland may be the best first season of a television drama, ever. (Although I think the producers of The Wire, Battlestar Galactica and Lost may quibble, and I would add the first season of 24, Alias and Six Feet Under to that list. Homeland has the DNA of 24 through producer Howard Gordon but stars Claire Danes and Damian Lewis as the co-leads. Both of these actors are infinitely superior to Keifer Sutherland, but when you throw in Mandy Patinkin there's no contest. But the key to Homeland is its writing, and in the first season the writers conceived and executed a perfectly timed, insanely suspenseful sequence of realistic events involving lifelike, complicated characters that it was simply breath-taking to behold. Although they were unable to maintain that high level of excellence through the second season (which also happened in 2012), even a slightly flawed Homeland was still better than 99% of everything else on television. 

2. Walking Dead. I had heard about this new show about the zombie apocalypse based on a series of popular comics graphic novels airing on cable but since I don't read graphic novels I was somewhat uninterested in watching it. I'm not sure what convinced me to watch the first episode, but I happened to run into it a few weeks before the debut of the now-infamous second season and was immediately hooked after seeing the pilot and devoured the entirety of the rest of the first season (only 5 1-hour episodes) in the next twenty four hours. The brilliance of Walking Dead is that it works on many levels. If you are interested in blood-spattering gore and violent situations then you will get more than your fill of both, basically in every episode. If you are interested (like I am) in emotionally-laden, nuanced situations that complex characters have to navigate in a dangerous, difficult world extrapolated from our own then you will also see a lot of that in every episode. The show is based on very popular material from another medium from which it is slightly deviating (with the approval and participation of its creator Robert Kirkman) that brings along another whole fan base. It's this combination, plus the ruthless policy of the producers (enacted to maximal effect multiple times already) that literally no character is safe from extinction that makes and made Walking Dead the most watched show by the most coveted audience (18-49) on cable television.

1. Game of Thrones. The top two shows on my list are similar, in that they are genre pieces of fiction (Walking Dead is based on a horror-speculative fiction graphic novel while Game of Thrones is based on one of the best selling swords-and-sorcery fantasy series of all time) that also have participation from the creator of the original work. Game of Thrones airs on HBO which means that both the budget of the show is much larger (rumored to be on the order of 50-60 million dollars per season, or more than $5 million per episode) while its audience is relatively smaller (Walking Dead averaged about 5 million and 7 million viewers per episode in its first two seasons while Game of Thrones averaged about 2.5 million and 3.5 million in its first two seasons). Because it's on premium cable, Game of Thrones is also able to be more sexually explicit than its rivals (this also applies to Homeland which airs on Showtime) and it uses (some would say abuses) this ability, primarily by including lots of female nudity. For me, the reason why the show is a must-see is that I am a fan of the underlying source material, and I am curious to see how the producers are going to bring the books to life on screen. But, the reason why I am a fan of that material (as well as the show) is that it is fascinating political drama, based around compelling characters that we have come to care about, put in harrowing situations. One could really argue that the television adaption is taking an already great series of books and improving on them by making use of the medium to highlight and create nuances and meanings which may have either escaped notice while reading (or may not have even been there in the original text!) And the exciting thing about the series is that although we know what happens in the first several seasons of the show because they are based on the first few books, George R.R. Martin hasn't finished writing the books yet so no one knows the ultimate resolution of any of the fates of the characters. Similar to Walking Dead, Martin is also fairly ruthless about his characters and many, many heads roll, even of characters that the audience loves (and some that they hate). Another key feature that separates Game of Thrones from its rivals is the sheer magnitude of the cast of characters. They are numerous and multifarious, providing different kinds of viewers with people that they can cheer for and root against. My favorite is Tyrion Lannister (played to Emmy award-winning perfection by Peter Dinklage) who happens to be a "bad guy" in the series, but he is also (one of) the smartest person in the books, while also being an amoral, brutally scarred dwarf scion of the richest family in the Kingdom. Even if you have not read the books (as my Other Half has not) you can still quite enjoy the series, although I think if you have read the books it gives one an extra frisson of pleasure.

Honorable Mentions
The Big Bang Theory, True Blood, Happy Endings, Boss and Alphas. Guilty pleasure: Scandal.