TV Completionist Introduction and List of Series Covered

We’ve been in a golden age of television for nearly two decades now. The quality of TV series has increased significantly throughout that period of time and thanks to the expansion of cable programming and the streaming rush, the quantity of shows has jumped even more exponentially. At FX’s Television Critics Association presentations the past few years, network head John Landgraf has maintained that there are simply too many scripted TV series out there. Every year he counts up the number of scripted series and season premieres that aired during the last calendar year and without fail, that number keeps going up (though it is finally starting to level off a bit). That number from last year was a whopping 532 (up from 495 in 2018). With the launch of multiple new streaming services in 2020 (HBO Max, Peacock, and many others) and the holdovers from late 2019 (Disney+ and Apple TV+), that number is likely to be even higher this year even with the COVID-19 pandemic bringing series production to a halt. Add in reality TV and documentary series (which aren’t included in Landgraf’s count), and you’ve got far too many shows than anyone could reasonably expect to consume (even if they only watch the “good” ones). With so many options, its almost impossible to decide what to watch. When there’s a new critically-acclaimed series (or two) coming out nearly every week, how do you decide what to watch?

Hopefully that will be where TV Completionist comes into play. Our goal with this series of TV reviews (along with sister series Movie Completionist and Video Game Completionist), is to cover as much media as we possibly can, let our readers know which are worth their time, and to curate media to the audiences that will enjoy them the most via list posts. While it isn’t feasible to watch everything (it’s actually mathematically impossible), with TV Completionist we will try to watch and review as many series/seasons as we can to hopefully help you find your next favorite TV show to binge. While you can definitely expect a lot of newer TV series and season reviews, we also plan on covering shows from the 75+ year backlog of television history (we have hundreds if not thousands of TV seasons on DVD in our media library to catch up on). We also plan on covering anime and web series in this post series as well, neither of which are included in that 532 number from the previous paragraph. While there’s more than enough great shows currently airing to cover in this series, there’s also plenty of older shows that deserve to be spotlighted as well. Thus, we will be digging through the failed, flawed, forgotten, and mediocre series as well to find a hopefully endless stream of great or hidden gem series to recommend to our readers.

We watch a ton of television (more than we probably should) and at least somewhat enjoy every genre out there. However, just like everyone else, we of course have some favorite genres and types of shows we enjoy more than others. To be upfront, those “biases” include a love for science fiction, quirky and unusual shows, serialized dramas, most comedies, and documentary series. Genres we probably won’t cover very often (as we don’t enjoy them as much) include most cable reality series (especially the type that play on channels like Bravo or MTV), procedural dramas (outside of comedic ones), and mainstream sitcoms (think CBS or FOX). That doesn’t mean we’re not going to cover those genres at all, they’ll just be written about far less frequently than others. Expect a mix of new and old series, well-known programs and ones very few people watched, and both short-lived and long-running shows (though these will probably be broken up into multiple posts covering a season or two each).

TV Completionist posts will be reasonably short and to the point as there are far too many great shows out there to watch and write about. They will be slightly longer than Movie Completionist posts (as obviously there is more to talk about with a 10-episode TV season than a 90-minute movie) but will mostly be in the 600-1400 word range. Of course the time commitment for shows is also greater than movies so expect fewer posts in this series compared to Movie Completionist. The goal will be to publish at least one or two TV Completionist posts per week though. We do not consider ourselves to be critics so don’t expect in-depth critical analysis or for us to write about the artistic merits of the latest HBO hit. Instead, these posts will be mainly about what the shows covered do well and poorly, how entertaining or interesting they are, and which audiences we think will enjoy their time watching them. With this post series and the blog in general, our goal is to curate and hook readers up with shows that will entertain them, not write flowery reviews focusing on deep dives or critical analysis.

Our goal with these Completionist post series is twofold. Our main hope is to use these post series to help readers find new and unique content that they’ll love to watch, play, or read, including titles they’ve never even heard of or knew existed. This post series will also help with the overall goal of Geeky Hobbies, which is to curate the world of entertainment (and hobbies) to help busy people know what titles are worth their time. As we cover more and more titles for this post series, we will also be compiling list posts with our thoughts on each and every piece of entertainment that fits the bill (see our Walt Disney Company Documentaries: The Complete List and Guide to What to Watch post for an example of what we mean). In addition to these full list posts, we will also be writing smaller bite-sized ones for every genre imaginable (for example, 5 Video Game Development Documentaries You Need to Watch or 5 One-Season Wonders You Should Watch). We want to watch as much media as we can so we can confidently tell people what are the best TV series in every super obscure genre or topic (everything from the best quirky comedies to the must-watch Netflix original series). We want our list posts to be as comprehensive and accurate as they can possibly be to help people enjoy the few hours of entertainment they get each day instead of wasting it on mediocrity. TV shows aren’t our only interest though, we will also be covering movies, video games, novels, and other media in their own similar “Completionist” post series. Short films and documentaries (which we consider to be titles under 40 minutes long) will be covered via our Short Films Showcase and Short Documentaries Showcase post series.

If you have any recommendations for TV shows we should watch for TV Completionist (especially titles similar to those we’ve enjoyed in past posts), feel free to leave a comment on this post or any other post in the series. A full list of all TV shows we have covered for TV Completionist can be found below. We have included both alphabetical and chronological lists so you can look for a certain title to see if we’ve covered it or browse our TV review journal by the order we wrote them. We have also included some stats regarding this post series at the bottom of the post. At the beginning of each month, we will also do a Completionist roundup post on all of the titles we covered in the past month, including the TV shows, films, video games, etc. we enjoyed the most. For those curious, a list of all of the TV show seasons we own and still need to cover is currently in the works and will be linked here soon (so you can let us know what we should watch next).

TV Completionist Posts By Series Title:

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A

B

C

D

E

F

G

• Ghosts: Season 1 (2019) (#001)-4/5
• The Great Heist (2020) (#002)-3.5/5
• Great Pretender: Season 1.0 (2020) (#003)-4.5/5

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

TV Completionist Posts By Entry # (Chronological Order):

• #001-Ghosts: Season 1 (2019)-4/5
• #002-The Great Heist (2020)-3.5/5
• #003-Great Pretender: Season 1.0 (2020)-4.5/5

All-Time TV Completionist Stats and Records:

• Days Running: 5 (Series Began on August 27, 2020)
• TV Seasons/Series Reviewed: 3
• TV Episodes Watched: 26
• TV Seasons/Series Reviewed By Year:
  • 2020: 3
• TV Episodes Watched By Year:
  • 2020: 26
• TV Seasons/Series in My Collection: TBA
• TV Seasons/Series in My Collection Watched: 0
• % of TV Seasons/Series in My Collection Watched: TBA
• Most TV Seasons/Series Watched in a Month: August 2020 (3)
• Most TV Episodes Watched in a Month: August 2020 (26)

Monthly TV Completionist Stats and Roundup Posts:

• August 2020: TV Seasons/Series Reviewed-3, TV Episodes Watched-26, Media Completionist Roundup Post (Coming at the end of the month)