Here are some TV shows I think are pretty good. If you get a chance, check them out–they should all be on DVD at this point. 1. "The IT crowd": This is a British series about people who work in the IT Department at a company in the UK. It’s pretty funny, and the three leads are all very good. One example of the show’s humor: the lead woman in the show is a smoker. She and the other smokers (who are all Russian) are increasingly exiled further and further from the building in which they work. This whole sequence about her smoking is presented as a bleak foreign film–pretty funny on a couple of levels. You can find it at Amazon or Netflix for rent.
2. "In Treatment": This show, which ran every week night for months on HBO, tracks 4 indivduals and one couple through a weekly therapy session. There are several outstanding performances in the show, I think, including Gabriel Byrne as the psychotherapist, a young woman who plays a teenage gymnast who purposely caused herself to be in an auto accident months before Olympic tryouts, and Blair Underwood as a navy pilot who is having issues after having bombed people in Iraq.
Each episode is 30 minutes long and the episodes are generally very well written and directed.
3. "The Worst Week of My Life": Another British series, the first 6 episodes of which have to be some of the funniest TV I have seen in a long time. There are 3 6 episode seasons (each season is called a ’series’ in Britain), and the first details an about-to-be-married couple’s preparations for their wedding. Everything that can go wrong does, but in ways that are so excruciatingly embarrassing for the couple and esp. the man, that you almost can’t bear to watch.
Very funny. The second and third series are also very funny (esp. compared to most American sit-coms), but don’t match the first series. You definitely need to watch this.
4. "Carrier": A PBS series about life on the state-of-the-art Nimitz Aircraft Carrier, a floating city. Though the naval personnel aren’t always that interesting individually, learning about what life is like onboard such an amazing ship is certainly interesting.
I think you can watch the whole series streaming off of the PBS website.
"The IT Crowd" and "Worst Week" are available on DVD for purchase and rental; "In Treatment" hasn’t yet been released on DVD but soon will be.