Nine months of TV are now over and the summer drought has started. But there is still something for everyone to watch, whether you like something new or something old.

The Midseason Marathon

It’s almost that time of year again.

Don’t worry, you didn’t forget submitting your christmas wishlist.
I’m talking about TV today, as the US main-season is over and all the big shows came to a close with thrilling cliffhangers or satisfying last scenes before we finally turn off the TV and get outside the house for once…

Well, not bloody likely, but apparently we don’t even have to.

First of all, have some perspective about what we’re dealing with:
Among the five major US Networks (ABC, CBS, The CW, FOX, NBC) there are a total of 109 (!!!) returning shows from the year before and an impressive 60 all new programs on prime-time television.
There are not enough hours in the day to keep up with even ten percent of it.
I myself am currently watching something around 25 shows over the course of one week.
And I’m a TV freak!

But even a freak like me can’t watch everything that interests him, which is why I was looking forward to the end of May and the finale of the 2015/16 season to catch up with everything I missed over the past 9 months during the summer. And now big TV is taking that away from me! Bringing high quality TV shows to the screen from June to August is the worst that could happen to me!
June 3rd already saw the premiere of Outcast, probably the scariest of the new shows this summer about a young man possessed by demons since childhood. UnREAL is now in season two, a series behind the scenes of a dating reality show brought to life by the real-life experiences of a former The Bachelor producer. A series that got me hooked and legitimately impressed me for the past two years is The Last Ship, the apocalypse show centered around a U.S. Navy Destroyer is now in season three.

As you can see, there are at least these three upcoming summer-season shows I’m looking forward to, and another one is even my favorite show of all time. (Go watch Person of Interest on CBS!) And I haven’t even mentioned Netflix or HBO who just don’t care about the conventions of network television. Game of Thrones season six started a few weeks ago and there’s always something new around the corner on Netflix (as we discussed in an earlier feature).

The point that I’m trying to make, and I promise there is one, is that we as the audience have power. It’s like the old saying: If you smell something, say something!
If something’s good, tell your friends about it, if it’s not, tell them that as well.
Only if the audience enacts it’s power of curating the good from the bad, the delicious strawberries from the huge pile of poop that is Reality-TV, a genre that currently makes up 20-percent of network programming, we have a chance of getting more and higher quality content across all distribution platforms.
There’s no way we could watch it with all the other stuff on TV (oh, and I’m a gamer as well), but there you go, you made the world a slightly better place.

My actual conclusion, from which I got sidetracked (sorry about that), is that there are incredibly well made and interesting shows in the summer, and although we should probably enjoy the sunny weather until we’re submerged under the rising sea-level, these shows tend to get overlooked for no other reason than the time of year they air in.
If you want a list of great quality TV across all genres, keep reading these features. There’s bound to be one coming up at some point.
But for now, go watch Person of Interest!

If you want more on TV, Movies and Games, follow me on Twitter @TheAncient_EU

Beitragsbild: Kevin Wendlandt
Bilder: CBS Television (Person of Interest), TNT (The Last Ship)