Television has become one of the best methods of delivering a long form story in recent years. Some have gotten incredibly detailed, symbolic, and introspective as the times have shifted to more dedicated and serious viewers. Others have taken the opportunity of an abundance of shows to skimp out on details and cheapen the experience. Others have used the attachment that people grow towards the characters to make drastic changes to their development, and some stories have been created with characters who are less sympathetic figures.

What are your favorite drama series? There are a lot out there, and so many of them have their own distinct flavor to them.

Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul go hand in hand to make one of the greatest audiovisual experiences I've ever had. It evoked meaning and symbolism behind every decision, camera shot, and conversation made in both series, and it had cinematography that completely changed the game. There was always something to look for or appreciate, whether it was a funny scene or a grossly disturbing one. The first series, Breaking Bad, was a pretty action packed show. You may already know, but it was about a very smart high school chemistry teacher that was diagnosed with incurable cancer and wanted to secure his family's future, so he became a meth cook. Over the course of five seasons, he slowly becomes a more and more dangerous figure, even to the cartel. The first season is slower paced than the rest of the series, but it needs that time to establish the humanity in the characters, and how they react to each others decisions and emotions. Each season was amazing, with the end of each season being explosive and very upsetting. The final season is on another level when it comes to a conclusion. You can't tell me there's a better wrap up or feel good ending to the series, and with the way Better Call Saul and the film spinoff El Camino handled their endings, it only feels more poetic. Better Call Saul was the second series, which started out as a much slower legal drama featuring a younger version of the lawyer who represented Breaking Bad's main character. He had a history of scams and wanted to turn his life around by being an honest public defender, but his need for more turned him to greater criminal activity. This show features a lot of the well liked secondary characters from Breaking Bad, as well as a couple of characters and villains who didn't appear in the first series who make quite an unspeakable impact on what happens and formed the situation that we saw unfold in Breaking Bad, while also giving us the character building and careful attention to detail to many of the characters who we knew were complex, but the way the show displays the power of choices, justice, and family are not like any other form of messaging I've seen in any other show. It uses the slower pace and long pan camera shots to fully immerse you, and it's always one step ahead of you in the storyline, something is always coming up that you'll never expect, and it only gets more disturbing and dangerous, while becoming more poetic and ingenious.

Another drama series I like is Mr. Robot. It's about a computer hacker who tries to overthrow a megacorporation with the help of his long lost father. I assure you it is FAR FAR more complicated but that but I think it's best to go into it with as little knowledge as possible. Without giving any plot details, the way the show handles mental health and the psychology of a computer hacker is very unique, and it had a ton of truly mindbending moments, and utterly perfect moments of personal catharsis for its characters. It had a truly warping final season, with so many things explained about the main character and countless shocking twists that make you question everything you know.

Another show I really liked was Silicon Valley. It was like the Big Bang Theory if it had purpose and wasn't just bullying people with disabilities. It's about a team of software developers trying to build a seamless compression software off an algorithm made by the protagonist. It is a very dramatic series that packs some seriously funny jokes into the storyline and character dialogues. It becomes a lot more upsetting and morally questionable as things go on, and it has a very satisfying ending, at least for me. It's made primarily by Mike Judge, the creator of King of the Hill, Beavis and Butthead, and Office Space/Idiocracy, who has a bachelors degree in computer science, and tries to parody the tech world as much as it can satirize it, while ultimately being a more serious show in tone.

There's a couple more, but I can always come back to it.

I actually do quite enjoy Nancy Drew (2019) I'm sorry that it's going to end this year but I like what they did with it, and holy crap that twist (it was revealed just as COVID was starting to be a PITA, I'm still made that Trump's speech had to pre-empt it)

and although I consider it to be more of a dramedy than a drama on it's own, Hudson and Rex, I do recommend it, if you are in the US it's on something called Up Faith and Family, though I do hate that sometimes I have to remind people the real reason why we watch the show...Rex of course