A remake of a popular mini-series became one of the biggest shows from 2024. Shogun was unbelievably well done with episodes chocked full of drama and some of the best performances you are ever going to see.
And there may be no greater shock than when Lady Mariko sacrificed herself at the end of episode nine. I did not see that coming and it was a huge event for a show that proved it could do anything.
The show won multiple Emmy Awards and was so good that they wound up giving it a season two despite it supposed to be one season only.
Hiroyuki Sanada, Cosmo Jarvis and Anna Sawai led the amazing ensemble cast in this show.
This is at #99 for a couple of reasons. One, I did not see every season of True Detective. However, season one was so great that it can carry a lot through. I also really enjoyed True Detective: Night Country, which was the most recent version of the series.
The second reason was that I was not a fan of season two, which felt like such a step down from the first season. So the outstanding seasons were balanced off by the iffy other ones.
This is the first post for the new Daily Countdown on EYG. We will be counting down a list with a new post every day until we reach #1.
As I stated yesterday, the TV Show list is our first countdown. I had made a list of shows that I wanted to consider during the history of TV and I had to cut quite a few great shows.
Here are the list of shows I cut from the list: Perfect Strangers, The A-Team, Three’s Company, Malcolm in the Middle, Desperate Housewives, Doctor Who, Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Animaniacs, White Lotus, One Piece (live action), The Wonder Years, Silo, Dukes of Hazzard, Bewitched, The Carol Burnett Show, Family Ties, Revenge, Land of the Lost, Gilligan’s Island, The Andy Griffith Show, Home Improvement, Poker Face, Baywatch, Unsolved Mysteries, Mindhunter, The Studio, Get Smart, Orphan Black, Dexter, Bosom Buddies, and Man from Atlantis.
Quite a eclectic list, huh?
I should also state that there are some beloved shows that I have never seen so shows such as The Sopranos, Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Game of Thrones, The Wire, OZ and so on will not be on my list despite their universal popularity.
With that said, here we go with the first post of the Daily Countdown: TV Shows.
#100.
The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams
Starring Dan Haggerty as Grizzly Adams, Denver Pyle as Mad Jack, Don Shanks as Nakoma, and Bozo as Ben the Grizzly Bear.
They call me Mad Jack. And if there’s anybody in these mountains that knows the real story of James Adams, that’d be me. So I’m putting it down in writing, just the way it happened, in hopes of settin’ the record straight. My friend Adams was accused of a crime he didn’t commit. So he escaped into the mountains, leaving behind the only life that he ever knew. Now that wilderness out there ain’t no place for a greenhorn, and his chances of survivin’ were mighty slim. Weren’t no time at all ‘for he was beaten down, ragged and nearly starved. Long about then, he come upon a grizzly bear cub, all alone and helpless. Now Adams knew that little critter couldn’t survive without his help, so he started right down that cliff, riskin’ his own life… to save it. Heh Heh Heh heh heh. Now that cub took to Adams right off, and that was when he discovered that he had … a special kind of way with animals. They’d just come right up to him like he was a natural part of the wilderness. But that bear cub, he was extra special. As he growed, he became the best friend Adams ever had and, together, they became a legend.
This voice over opening by Denver Pyle was one of the most memorable part of the show Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, which was a syndicated show that was based on a movie from 1974 with the same title. The show ran for two seasons and had only 37 episodes, which was a lot fewer than I thought.
I remember watching this every Sunday morning. It was always so enjoyable and so hearty. I loved Mad Jack. I loved Mad Jack’s burro Number Seven. Adams and Jack’s relationship was great. It felt like a group of heroes living in the wilderness.
What a greenhorn.
And number 100 is The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams.
Welcome to the brand new feature entitled EYG Daily Countdown. This is going to be a bit of a challenge. I am going to compile Top 100 lists of certain topics and then count them down with a daily post for the following 100 days.
I have some rules I will be following.
First of all, I will choose a topic and as soon as I compile the list, the topic is closed. If something new and awesome comes out while I am making the list, it will not be added and it will have to wait for a future list for its flowers.
Second of all, clearly this is going to be my own personal choices. That means there will be items from the topics that I will not have on my list. I’m not setting this up as a debate. It’s my list. You can make your own.
I will have had to see or hear or experience it to be on the list. If something is considered the greatest of all time, but I have not seen it, it will not be on my list.
This is going to be building toward something that has scared me forever… a list of the Top 100 of my favorite movies of all time. I am not ready to dip my toe into that list because of how monumental that feels. I am going to work my way to that impossible list with some less impossible lists.
Any kind of list is fluid. It changes constantly. Maybe a rewatch leads me to move something up or down. Just because I finish a list, does not mean that it could not change. Perhaps down the road I could revisit the lists as we move along to see how time has changed my opinions.
I plan on starting this some time over the next week. I do have a topic, which I will announce below, and I have started to compile possible entries for the list. I will tell you that I have currently 132 potential choices for my Top 100 list so I will need to narrow it down.
These are tough things to do, so my expectations are that I will be missing some along the way. Again, that is tough, but there will be nothing I can do about it. I will do my best to make the list as comprehensive as I can.
Each day, I will make a post with one entry on the list. I will start with #100, the following day will be #99, then #98… and so on. One a day, every day.
I may yet compile a running list on the site to keep track of the list as we go.
With that out of the way, the first topic for the EYG Daily Countdown will be:
Top 100 Favorite TV Shows of All-Time.
This is quite an undertaking, but it is not as wild as movies would be, so I thought I would kick it off with this. Good luck and here’s hoping the new challenge will be a lot of fun.
EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 