The West Wing, S1
I finished the first series/season of The West Wing over the weekend; I’m still enjoying it, but for me the show is saved by the character interactions and dialog. It’s weak point, for me at least, is actually the premise and setting that gives us these characters. I’m not necessarily saying that fictionalizing the Presidency and day-to-day White House business should be taboo, I just am not too interested in a show which is likely to show political bias and is likely to trivialize to some extent the office it portrays.
Sure, movies do this too, but this is a show that goes on much longer than any one film and thus attempts to be a representation, however faux, of everyday activity in the US executive branch. I dunno, it just comes across a bit disingenuous.
Still, I enjoy most of the characters (I’d be hard-pressed to pick one I don’t like) and am almost guaranteed a good laugh or two each episode with the banter these characters bring, so I’m going to continue on to the second series — even despite the cliffhanger ending offered by the first (the ‘cliffhanger ending’ is a particularly loathesome peeve of mine).
Yet another show that I really need to get back into watching. I’ll need to rewatch the whole first season, though, as there’s very little that I actually remember about it.