Approved Television
Fantasy
Game of Thrones: The GRRM's pet project finally made it to the small screen. Combines the epic swords and sorcery of high fantasy with the nihilistic hopelessness of actual medieval life. Thanks to Martin's amazing horrible skubtastic writing and HBO's massive budgets this show has gone a long way towards making fantasy "respectable".
Carnivale: A group of depression era carnies are caught up in a Manichean struggle between the forces of light and darkness. One of HBO's first experiments with high concept, high budget fantasy. Died ignominiously after two seasons due to scripting problems, audience apathy, and grimdark overload; but paved the way for those who would follow.
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys: Concentrated nostalgia from back in the days when fantasy shows were relegated to Friday night time slots where they couldn't harm the general public. If you're a neckbeard in your twenties, this show probably had something to do with it. Kind of embarrassing by today's standards, but it pioneered everything from CGI monsters to filming in New Zealand. Resulted in it's much more famous spin off series...
Xena: Warrior Princess: Before you knew her as an uppity Cylon or an insane Roman housewife Lucy Lawless was the leather clad, god slaying, amazon OG. If you're a neckbeard in your twenties (or a ca/tg/irl who liked Gabrielle a little too much), you probably fapped to it. The cultural cache of this show is so great that even underage B& that never could have seen it will recognize the character.
Historical
Spartacus: Blood and Sand A faithful historical narrative about the third servile war and the various social pressures that precipita... phhht no I'm kidding it's wall to wall tits and ultraviolence. Despite being a relentlessly silly 300 wanna-be that had no business ever being green lit it actually managed to be a treasure trove of feels and awesome, due in large part to unusually solid writing and some heroic performances by actors like John Hannah, Lucy Lawless, Craig Parker, and Peter Mensah.
Rome: It's HBO so the tits and ultraviolence spigot is still wide open, but this one actually does some good world building and political intrigue on the side.
三国 (Three Kingdoms 2010): Widely regarded as the best and most accessible version of China's most famous story (essentially their Iliad). Almost a hundred hours long, epic scope, tons of actors, and legions of extras (you can buy them by the bushel over there). Almost worth it for Chen Jianbin's gloriously dickish Cao Cao alone, but there's plenty of other reasons to stick around. The entire thing is available on youtube and elsewhere because CCTV could not give two shits about licensing it outside of the country.
Deadwood: Another HBO series, focusing on the settlement of Deadwood and its development from mining camp to frontier town. The attempts to make the town and its world come alive are glorious. Excellent performances across the board, with the standout being Al "Fuck That Cocksucking Motherfucker" Swearengen. GMs looking for how wild and lawless frontiers can become platforms for adventurers should check this out, and steal as many subplots as you can for your Deadlands game.
Marco Polo: A Netflix exclusive series, Marco Polo follows the famous Italian merchant while he tries to survive in the court of Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis motherfucking Khan. While not historically accurate it is certainly very entertaining with war, political intrigue, and concubines out the ass. If anything, the character One-Hundred eyes makes the show worth the watch because of how badass he is. Seriously; a Daoist monk that Kublai blinded with a spitting cobra because he wouldn't teach his martial art to. And he can still kick ass while blind.
Sci Fi
Babylon 5:
Farscape: Muppets in spaaaace! This show, produced by the Jim Henson company, is dark. Even media in self-professed grimdark settings rarely put their main characters through this much torment. You wouldn't think it when it starts out, the first half of the first season being notoriously cheesy, but the cheese you wade through at the start belies an intense series as every major military organization in the galaxy targets our hero for torture, mindrape, and death. Few stories to date put their heroes through such a gauntlet, but the audience follows John Crichton's journey from all-American hero to notorious interstellar terrorist from start to finish, rooting for him the entire way.
Stargate: At first there was a Roland Emmerich movie based around the Ancient Astronaut theory and finding a Big Ring in Egypt which can take you to another world, which was an adequate science-fiction action romp. Even so, it did well enough to get a Television series in Stargate SG1. It changed a few things about from the movie (usually for the better) and had a rocky first season (for the worse), but after that it became one of the better science fiction series. Plenty of action, excellent characters performed by excellent actors, memorable humor and succeeds both as an episode to episode series as well as with long continuity arcs.
Doctor Who: The adventures of the universe's saddest time traveling bro. Absolutely ancient in canon and out (the show predates Star Trek by three years). Cheesy special effects, but it's got heart and (usually) good writing. It's bigger on the inside.
Firefly: Post-bellum Confederates, IN SPAAAAAACE. Like most of the Whedonverse praising it on /tg/ will unleash a category 5 skubstorm.
Star Trek: Is Star Trek. If you were born some time in the last half century you probably heard of it're not a drooling mongoloid you've hear of it.
Battlestar Galactica:
Comedy
Mystery Science Theater 3000: A bunch of Minnesotans with robot puppets riff on terrible movies. Achieved legendary cult classic status after being cancelled (since it confused and angered the norms) and spawned the venerable Rifftrax.
Western Cartoons
Avatar: The Last Airbender Considered by many to be a gold standard for animated shows in the 00'es and one of the best Western made narrative shows, it has garnered many a fan for their funny characters, deep story lines, character development and Asian inspiration. The sequel series, Legend of Korra, is rather skubtastic
Batman: The Animated Series: In a time when most cartoons were still glorified half hour toy commercials BtAS dared to defy convention with a dark art style, darker themes, and characters you actually gave a shit about. This show was so iconic that a lot of the stuff you think was from the original /co/ canon (Harley Quinn, Mr. Freeze's wife) actually started here.
Superman: The Animated Series: About the same quality of writing as the latest episodes of B:tAS (Bad, don't listen to the fanboys). This features 'the' seminal, if less popular, superhero: Superman from the planet Krypton. Made largely by the same crew as the above Batman, this series is another of the so christened 'Timiverse' that ended with...
The Justice League & The Justice League: Unlimited: More of the same from the above two, these times with Superman & Batman are: Wonder Woman (WONDER WOMAN!), The Flash, Green Lantern (token black guy), Martian Manhunter (token green guy), Hawk Girl, and The Flash.
Batman: Beyond: Sequel to the above series (but mostly BtAS) about a future Gotham where Bruce Wayne is a reclusive, cranky old man who had to give up being Batman due to heart problems, where a teenager is reluctantly accepted as a replacement Batman, using cyber-armor that is basically the batsuit sans cape but with rocket boots.
Green Lantern...
Batman: the Brave and the Bold...
Young Justice: Surprisingly dark show about assorted junior superheroes and sidekicks (Robin, Kid Flash, Superboy, Miss Martian, Aqualad) training together, ostensibly to become Justice Leaguers themselves, but in practice as covert operatives for the Justice League.
The Venture Bros. An absurd parody of Johnny Quest, 60's animated shows, comic books, and pretty much every action franchise ever. Episodes primarily theme around failure (so great for 4chan) and absurd comedy. Can be hilarious but like Austin Powers, it's hard to appreciate the comedy of it unless you've seen the source material.
Archer...
Exosquad: Basically the European Front of World War-II in space with Mechs and Power Armor. It is well plotted and can get surprisingly dark for what is supposed to be a kids show with a very high body count, policies of extermination through starvation and genocide. Even so it suffered from having a small budget and a few sub par designs.
Gargoyles: Disney's serious response to Batman: TAS (as opposed to Disney's satirical response to Batman: TAS of Darkwing Duck, which was pretty damn good itself if a bit more conventional). Some Gargoyles (a race of winged strong humanoid creatures that turn into stone during the day, rather than mere architectural adornments) live in Scotland the middle ages fighting Vikings, get betrayed, frozen in stone and are re-awakened in modern New York by a businessman who could give Tzeench lessons in plotting played by William Riker. That is just the beginning, as there are also stories of betrayal, robots, suits of power armor, cyborgs and a fair number of magical things borrowing from a variety of mythological sources, but most notably the works of William Shakespeare.
Teen Titans 2003: Unlike the pure shittiness that is Go! This series is pretty good. But barely makes it onto this list. It stars a group of DC characters no one usually knew about until this show (unless you read the comics) It had mostly good character development and it had the Half-Demon awesomeness that is Raven. However, it's bogged down by bipolar tone, a shitty character that dares to name herself after Holy Terra, and some bullshit plot devices.
Megas XLR
Samurai Jack: A time lost samurai kicks ass and saves lives in his quest to get home. Elegance in simplicity. Amazing animation.
Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles: Take the best parts of the book and film and none of the crap. One of the early CGI shows (and it shows) cut short due to budget (as in just short of the ending).
Rick and Morty: Gravity Falls:
Transformers: Near-legendary multi-series franchise dating back to the mid-80s, all of which revolve, in some way, around giant alien robots fighting a war that has been raging for millions of years without end. Different series have different aspects, so pick carefully.
- Generation One: The original and, to many grognards, still the best. Classic 80s goofball action with typical "to sell toys" levels of continuity. The post-season-2 movie is best known for awesome 80s Rock songs and its villain, Unicron, a planet-sized planet-shifting killer robot that eats other planets whole for power.
- Beast Wars: 90s CGI show by Mainframe (better known as makers of Reboot) involving robot would-be terrorists and scientists pressganged into police duty crashing on an alien world, with each trying to wipe the other out. Starts out fairly silly, but gets much more serious and action packed, especially in the second season. Surprisingly deep and thought provoking in some episodes, a hell of a lot more mature than G1. (Of note: Several franchise-important ideas originated with BW, most notably the concept of "The Spark", TF's version of "robot souls".)
- Beast Machines: Sequel to Beast Wars, but highly contested. On the plus side, major grimdark atmosphere - the good guys are the only ones left after their villain opponent unleashed a plague that wiped out the rest of his species, and he recycled their corpses into mindless drone warriors. On the down side, serious character derailment if you're coming from the Beast Wars show combined with a very hamfisted green aesop. Perhaps singlehandedly responsible for scaring Transformers-producers into their present "recycle G1's storyline" mindset.
- Energon Trilogy: Set of three anime shows that essentially retell the story of G1 in a slightly different way. The first show is alright, and introduces the first ever badass and not-a-brainless-traitor version of Starscream ever, but the other two are pretty much unwatchable drek.
- Animated: G1 revamp with goofball cartoon animation and an interesting twist of setting; the usual band of heroes aren't the dogged resistance, but a bunch of space janitors who accidentally stumble upon a superweapon from the ancient war that brings the bad guys out of hiding to claim it including a posh british sounding Megatron. If you can get past the animation style, pretty damn good.
- Prime: CGI show made to cash in on the pretty shitty Michael Bay movies, but actually very good. If you can ignore the damn Japanese girl, it's a story of considerable impact, with a pretty dark atmosphere. We see one of the heroes get killed when Starscream rips his heart out with his bare hands in the first 10 minutes of the first episode. That's gotta count for something.
War Planets/Shadow Raiders: Forgotten third show from Mainframe in the 90s, alongside Reboot and Beast Wars. Four alien races that have been screwing each other over for thousands of years because they need the resources of each other's worlds have to put aside their difference in the face of a common foe -- a "Beast Planet" that devours entire worlds and their civilisations whole, overwhelming its prey first with armies of mindless drones. Very intense, very good characters, plenty of action. The Beast Planet is kind of a "Necrons imitating Tyranids" enigma, which may be a good or a bad thing.
Conan the Adventurer: A surprisingly good cartoon from the early 90s based off of, what else? Conan the Barbarian. Probably best known for its rocking opening theme, but it's surprisingly mineable for Dungeons & Dragons and has a lot of actual novel lore scattered through the kid-friendly stuff.