Playing Genre Catch-up this summer

In just a few weeks most of my television viewing will be done for the 2009-10 season. I'll still have Breaking Bad for most of June and Mad Men will be back in July, but other than a few shows I watch with my kids, my night's are going to open pretty wide for the next few months.

Over the last few years I've spent the summer between seasons catching up on older shows I always meant to watch but never seem to get around to, and this summer will be no exception. At my public library I'll be checking out a number of BBC shows, both comedies and dramas, but for today's post I figured I would talk about the five top shows I'm hoping to catch up on in the next 12 weeks.

Carnivale

This HBO series pairs up two of the strangest story elements I could ever imagine - Magic and and the American Dustbowl during the Great Depression. I watched the first series of this show with a bunch of friends as a weekly event back when it was first released on DVD, but haven't got around to the second season yet. I know it ends on a frustrating cliff-hanger (no spoilers please), but I really enjoyed the first season and am looking forward to the second as a fun treat.

Millennium

I was really into this show when it first came out, a little darker than it's parent show; The X-Files, and with a lot more horror elements. Due to unfortunate timing however, my youngest became a toddler when the shows third season originally aired and we just never seemed to have time for it. I'm looking forward to seeing how everything ended up for Frank Black in the third season.

Northern Exposure

This show was a huge favourite of my wife Kayla when she was growing up and as it came out on DVD we've bought every season. All we have left now is the final season, where a new doctor arrives in the small town of Cicely, Alaska. I've heard this is one of the weaker seasons, but what the heck, I'm a completist.

United States of Tara

During a promo of Movie Central (Canada's answer to Showtime), my wife and I saw the first three episodes of this cool little series earlier this year. Basically it's a regular family drama, except the mom has multiple personality disorder, and she's trying to balance her life while attempting to wean herself off of her meds throughout the first season. I'm a big fan of Diablo Cody (if you haven't read her book Candy Girl - it is totally worth the effort!), so I'm really looking forward to this one.

The Wire

Finally, this summer we'll be checking out the HBO series The Wire - a cop drama set in Baltimore. This is some of the densest written drama I have ever seen and I just loved the first two seasons, This summer I'm really hoping we'll be able to see how it all ends.

So there you go, a look at some of what I'll be checking out this summer, not counting movies or other shows that we get handed to us by friends (like House, which my BFF Mike just lent us and swears is really, really good - even if it breaks his own rule that any show without flying cars must be crap).