poll: tv series

A while ago, our friend Vartan loaned us three seasons' worth of the British spy television series, "The Sandbaggers", which was first aired in 1978 and 1980. Jeff got hooked immediately; it took me a bit longer since I was distracted by Buffy. I'm also not a huge fan of British spy stories, but I couldn't help but be sucked in by the excellent writing, witty dialogue, intriguing character relationships.

From Opsroom.org:

"The Sandbaggers is remarkable for the many ways in which it inverts espionage genre conventions: Burnside doesnít drink, his top Sandbagger hates violence, no one has any flashy cars or gadgets or sexual liaisons, and the whole series features very few action scenes. A typical 50-minute episode consists of men and women having intelligent conversations and heated arguments in government offices, in London parks, and in the Ops Room, where missions are planned and controlled."

Anyway, Jeff started raving about the series to a few of our other friends, and began lending the DVDs to them with Vartan's permission. Then they started telling other friends, and so on. Last night, we got together (Jeff, me, Parki, Marc, Ray, Jennifer, Vartan) to watch the last four episodes of season three, which were on tape. Vartan was the only one who had seen in the episodes before.

The only real problem with this series is that it ends on a cliffhanger: Series creator and writer Ian Mackintosh died in a plane crash, and no more episodes were ever written. :-( As soon as the last episode finished, a howl of despair reverberated around our living room, and I immediately started beating Vartan around the head with a pillow.

Speaking of series, I'm up to the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the tapes that Vartan loaned me. Argh, my last season! I will have watched seven seasons in a less than three months (the first two seasons in a long weekend). I think that the only other television series of which I have watched every single episode is Classic Star Trek. Oh wait, and maybe The Partridge Family.

Poll: television series

Is there a television series where you know you have watched every single episode that exists? If so, which one?

Also, do you know of other tv series from the past that have ended with as frustrating a cliffhanger as the last Sandbaggers episode?

(This entry was written with ViaVoice, a voice recognition program, which sometimes has its own sense of humor. Please forgive any spelling or grammar quirks which Debbie has missed while editing. Thank you. )

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