FOUR

These are the four television series I fell in love with this year.

Misfits
In three words: Heroes meets Skins.  This show features five miscreants who, while working off court-ordered community service hours acquire powers after a freak electrical storm.  They're all misfits, all anti-heroes-- and it's hard not to root for them.  Misfits explores so many of those classic superhero tropes with verisimilitude, with a wickedly cynical satirical edge.  The five main characters are all incredibly flawed young adults and I adore them all.  My favorite is Kelly, the girl with the power to read minds, who has the greatest chav accent that I can barely understand at times.  She's tenacious, says what she means and isn't afraid to get physical.  The actress who played her, Lauren Socha, won a BAFTA award-- the British Oscars/Emmys--for her portrayal of Kelly.  But the other four actors' work is nothing to scoff at.  This show reminds me of Community in that every episode has a different structure, focus, and approach to a topic that has been done before but with less finesse, hilarity, and profanity.

Avatar: The Last Airbender
I want to say that there's never been a show with so much heart and with kids who can manipulate water, fire, earth and air...and then it sounds like I'm a Captain Planet enthusiast.  This show may have been a Nickelodeon animated series but it's a show that grown-ups can enjoy too.  The main characters are all preteens and their personal growth is carefully, poignantly built up over the three seasons; like Misfits it deals with kids with special powers, but these kids feel the weight of their responsibilites much more acutely and within the context of learning to leave childhood behind.  Plot aside, the animation is beautiful and expansive thanks to the ever-changing setting, be it in the isolated and pristine north pole, lush tanga, or imperial kingdom.  And the music! I can't think of a single design element that I didn't enjoy.  I'd more aptly perform an interpretive dance to express my passion for this show than to put it in words. 

Circus
I love any behind-the-scenes look at the performing arts.  PBS put out the six-part series on the happenings in the 2008-2009 season of the Big Apple Circus.  Last year I saw the series The Fire Within that was on Bravo and featured about eight performers from the start of their training to their opening night Cirque du Soleil show Varekai, so I had some expectations of what I might encounter in this series.  I liked this series a bit more in that it had no narrator and delved more into the performers' personal lives.  For example, the man who plays the feature clown Grandma finds out that he has cancer, and the camera crew follows him to the hospital as he gets an MRI done.  He is claustrophobic, despite having spent many years crammed into a car with like a bunch of other clowns.  Also, unlike the other series, Circus also lets the audience in on the lives of the crew, the people who aren't performers but literally put the circus together. 

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
I don't watch SNL much but I've seen a fair amount of Jimmy Fallon's work there.  I'd say his gig as the host of Late Night was the perfect transition, as it allows him to be funny and laugh at his own jokes.  He's an earnest, enthusiastic goofball and does a good job at putting the guests at ease-- again, because he's not afraid to laugh at himself.  Sure, his name is in the title, but it's clear that his house band The Roots and his writing staff really bring it all together for consistently entertaining shows.