I watch a LOT of television, or to be more accurate, I watch an awful lot of television series but I watch them mostly on dvd so I don't catch any of those pesky advert things. Generally I watch the American stuff although I've recently picked up a few more UK series which seem to be adopting the similar production values. I'll watch pretty much anything that doesn't involve members of the public or celebrities, although I tend not to watch sitcoms either at the moment.

Andromeda

Andromeda: Season 1

I watched the pilot episode in disbelief that anything could be so horrifically bad, by episode 4 though I was hooked and converted. The opening of the series is so amazingly poor it has to be seen to be believed - the acting, scripting, plot, science, fx, art design, costumes, hell even the stunts were terrible. However after a while they realise that the Grand Plan is so self-righteous and over the top that it's best approached with a certain amount of sarcasm by the characters and that there's scope for a rip-roaring adventure.
This is really taking sf back to the values of the original Star Trek, larger than life villains, noble hero, firefights and a small band of dedicated side-kicks dutifully following along while rolling their eyes. Many of the concepts have been done before and since, but they're well handled here, particularly the sentient ship (very Banks) and the Nieztscheans (kinda anti-Klingons).
The crew itself is fun, if occasionally suffering from eratic appearences and character traits. The characters seem a little familiar now - Harper is a cross between Firefly's Wash and Atlantis' McKay, Tyr is Atlantis' Ronan Dex and many of the other characters have startling aspects of Firefly about them (one even says "shiny!" early on). The effects and stunts remain pretty flaky throughout the season, as do the plots, but the episodes usually manage to be entertaining adventures.

Special Features: The dvd collection I had included a marvellous 10 minutes of out-takes (it's amazing they ever got anything done) and interesting collection of interviews from cast and crew. Kevin Sorbo's interview clocked in at about episode length and talked about the characters and cast, and their interactions, nicely focusing on what makes the show fun.
There's a lot of deleted scenes included and these were all deleted for good reason. Sorbo's introductory comments to the episodes are funny solely because he's hopeless at remembering what's going on!

Andromeda: Season 5

I watched the first season of Andromeda with a disbelief that anything could be so bad and yet still somehow be fun to watch, some spark managed to emerge from the poor scripts, hammy acting and budget directing. I continued watching the series but in such a haphazard way that I couldn't say for certain which episodes I've seen, even when re-watching them. The plots all blurred together and got very confused. So I gave up and jumped to season 5 where they do something of a reset and deliver all their characters to a completely isolated solar system.
I thought this would be great, back to the basics of what worked, storylines filled with firefights and adventure and a band of characters happy to make fun of the situation and each other. Sadly that was not to be, the writers seemingly completely muddled about what they wanted to do and what their characters were about. There was no sense of camaraderie from the group, each character adopting an "it's all about me" attitude that just wasn't fun to watch. The number of weird and wibbly metaphysical plots seemed to grow again and I generally couldn't be bothered to pay attention.
Somewhere along the way this show lost it's spark, which was kind of sad.

Television Series