As of the last few months, I find myself basically ignoring most modern shows. I remember spending a lot of my childhood watching old sitcoms with my grandmother and my Saturdays watching black and white Tarzan flicks. Somehow, I find myself preferring the kind of shows that used to run, be it MASH, the Golden Girls, or Good Times. And most of them, I've never actually seen so it's not necessarily out of familiarity.

Particularly these days, I LOVE Gunsmoke. Matt Dillon, Festus, and the rest of the bunch. The stories range from sad to humorous, but they're oft quite well written and feature a lot of characterization of the visitors coming to Dodge City.

Maybe it's me, but is there any old time TV shows you just can't look away from?

Bad modern TV had a different affect on me: I turned off completely.

There were some good shows but they were so much in the minority that they weren't enough for me to stay watching.

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However, with good older shows I recently got the whole DVD set of "Jason King" staring the sublime Peter Wyngarde, the set also included one episode each of two other ITC shows that had featured Wyngarde: Department S (where Jason King the character came from), and The Baron.
Jason King was pretty amazing because Wyngarde's character was so interesting (an elegant fop ladies man). The shows themselves weren't always that clever and sometimes very poor, but they were still cool and a great window on the extremely Hip, Cool, and Groovy side of the early 70's.

Actually, I can understand this. We ditched our cable completely a few months ago before the mandatory boxes. The TV in this shack is just for video games and movies now. I actually catch what few oldie shows I watch at the school where I work or online. The latter, in particular, has nice short commercials instead of several minute long pitches.

I love old TV shows! I miss the days when things could be clean and funny. I used to watch it with my grandma as well. I Love Lucy, Leave it to Beaver, Cheers- awesome. M*A*S*H is my favorite, I always watch it if it's on. It tugs at your heart strings better than anything they put out nowadays. Plus, Father Mulcahy and I share a last name.

Modern TV is overly politicized and sexual all the time anymore. It's a real turn off.

Cheers was great! And a little sexy too. Sam really got his oats
But it was tastefully done, that's for sure. I still love the theme song.

All in the Family. That show had guts.

I remember watching old shows from the 50's and the best parts were the commercials, they were so cornball it was awesome. But I got to say, my favorite American animated shows were made in the 90s. The Maxx and Spawn were fucking awesome and ballsy. And batman the animated series kicked so much ass.

The 90's eh? Galaxy Rangers was effing awesome. I don't know whether that was late 80's or earlt 90's, but that was brilliant. Swat Cats is another. The Maxx was animated but just barely... I liked that one too

Aeon Flux was shown at the same sort of time as The Maxx. I loved the original shorts where she ALWAYS died in some stupid way, and then the full length cartoons where she didn't. That was a very cool bondagey show. That Aeon was skin and bone, as were all the characters in the show, that freaky look was appealing but it made sure the extremely skimpy leather outfits were never that sexy.

Can't say I'm a fan of Chung's works, but I preferred the originals on Liquid Television, too. They were more mysterious as a result of the short nature and Aeon's constant death. As for the over defined anorexic model look, I think that's basically just his style with most of his main characters. Reign the Conqueror really wasn't that different, visually speaking.

The Maxx was superb, if just for the voice work and atmospheric use of timing. One could actually read the comic and art direction along with the episodes.

Yeah the comic and show were made by the same guy, so it really fit together well. Though the comic went longer than the series so the show ended kinda differently.

I never really got into Aeon Flux, since I didn't have MTV. I watched the Maxx and Spawn on Teletoon (Canadian cartoon channel).