Farscape
I caught all four seasons of Farscape during the SciFi channels marathon run-up to the mini-series. I had only ever seen the pilot and one random episode before, as I didn't used to have cable and the DVD sets are some of the most expensive around.
It was really good. Slid a little towards soap opera sometimes, but then so did Buffy. Unlike Buffy, the tightness of the overall story hung together a little better as it went on. (Though some of the latter stand-alone episodes did scream "filler.")
Two things I especially liked were the strength of the female characters, who were not punished for having sex every now and then, and the strength of the alien characters, even the muppets. For example, the baby storyline did not descend into Charmed-ville, where Aeryn became solely defined by the pregnancy and reduced to stories where she talked about her strange food cravings.
The coolest thing of the show was that it reversed the usually "alien among us" riff, by only have one human character hanging about. This forced them to find things for the other characters to do beside get in touch with their inner human, ala Spock and every other Vulcan Star Trek ever coughed up. And of course, with Henson doing the puppets, it's amazing how much emotion they can get out of foam and hair.
Any number of fans who watched all along probably are thanking me for catching up. I can certainly understand why everyone set up such a howl when they cancelled the show. The last regular episode ends with the lead couple romantically floating on an ocean as she announces the baby is his and he asks her to marry him, until out of nowhere comes an alien ship that blows them to smithereens.
I would have been cursing any producer who couldn't have edited out that last fifteen seconds and given me a happy ending.
The mini-series packed a huge amount of stuff into four hours. I remember checking the clock on Night Two and realizing that they'd only been going for half an hour! It neatly wrapped up all the loose ends, and resisted the urge to blow up the ship just for kicks. I don't know about further Farscape, but I could definitely take a look at anything the producers put out in the future.
