15 greatest HBO series of all time
Image: HBO
3. Fraggle Rock
I was not one of the lucky kids who grew up with Jim Henson’s charming Fraggle Rock. As with most Henson projects, the creativity, imagination, and ingenuity that went into producing the HBO series are staggering and the love and effort show.
Like Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock was partly educational — but more for emotional development and intuition than for ABCs and 123s. Like Star Trek for kids, Fraggle Rock strived to communicate compassion and empathy for others and taught kids to celebrate diversity.
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It also communicated a humorous perception of how the universe is ordered (humans are the “silly creatures” that live in the universe outside Fraggle Rock) and the idea that although we are often separated by borders or culture, we are all connected in a universal symbiotic relationship.
In the end, we are all dependent on each other for everything from food and trade to science and invention to culture and education.
Image: HBO
2. True Blood
On the other side of the spectrum, we have the “so bad its good” category. True Blood is trashy, bloody, sexy, soapy, and compulsively watchable.
While it capitalized on the Twilight inspired vampire-craze (it was released the same year as the first Twilight movie and only a year ahead of The Vampire Diaries), it injected the genre with some much needed gothic horror and occasionally aimed at social commentary.
It was never much more than a gratuitous and campy indulgence, however, and one that became more and more self-indulgent and desperate as the series played out.
Not content to stick with vampires, writers started developing storylines involving other other-worldly creatures in an attempt to keep things lively — as if fans needed any more motivation for watching it than all the gratuitous sex and mystical violence.
It was pretty much the beginning of the end once they started experimenting with the Fairy Land.