Especially if you like nerdy stuff like Sci-Fi, Supercomputers, Tech Startups and everything else around the geek culture.
1. Mr. Robot
Kicking things off is the current hot favorite, Mr. Robot. It’s a story of a genius programmer who is led down a dark path by his own delusions. The picturisation of this show is fantastic, not a single frame is wasted. Sam Esmail, the creator of the show, has put great effort to get every detail about cyber-security and modern technology just right. It’s almost impossible to spot mistakes in anything that is shown on Mr. Robot. And I guarantee you, you’d be hooked after watching a couple of episodes. There’s a lot of hacking involved by a secretive group of people, who are led by Elliot, the main character. The fight is against the evil E Corp, whose logo looks a lot like Enron. Remember them?
2. Silicon Valley
Another hot favorite of the season is Silicon Valley. As the name suggests, the show revolves around the tech startups and big companies based in the most happening place in tech. We see the Valley through the eyes of a struggling startup (Pied Piper) who are led by a not-so-confident-but-genius programmer. There are many topics which the show deals with, including seed funding, sexism in the tech world, VCs lifestyles and so on. Some characters also are known to be loosely based on real-life people in the tech world. It’s lighthearted and quite different from the dark and ominous Mr. Robot.
3. Star Trek
The show which gave us one of the most celebrated lines in geek culture, Live Long and Prosper, Star Trek is a geek favorite. Even though the original show which aired in 1966 might look funny now, but this show really was the trend-setter for all sci-fi shows that followed. From memorable characters as well as lines which are remembered even now, it had it all. A slightly more modern version of the sci-fi show revolving around exploring other planets in the Universe aired in 1987. This was called Star Trek: The Next Generation and was equally loved by the fans of the franchise. The recent movies, however, are based on the characters and stories from the original Star Trek.
4. Doctor Who
It’s strange to describe a show which has been running on BBC since 1963, but was on ‘hiatus’ from 1989 to about 2005. The story revolves around the adventures of the Doctor, a Time Lord—a space and time-travelling humanoid alien. Everything about the show is quintessentially British, including TARDIS, a sentient time-travelling space ship which looks like a British Police Box. Twelve different actors have played the lead role of the Doctor over the years, but the core of the show has remained intact. It’s a great show which often has the main character and his companions traversing time, sometimes ending up in the past and at times getting famous people of the past to the present and showing them what a difference they’ve made.
5. Person of Interest
The very first line in the opening credit of this show is, “You are being watched. The government has a secret system, a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because I built it.” With an ominous monologue, the tone of this show is set. About government spying, built on every possible camera that is hooked to the internet. Some of the concepts that the show deals with are realistic, though some, like the same guy who narrates the monologue claiming to be the inventor of the internet (from ARPANET days) seem a bit stretched. But, if you can go with the flow and simply enjoy the drama of secrecy, politics and everything in between, then this is the show for you.
6. Halth & Catch Fire
I was recently introduced to this show and I must admit, I’ve quite liked it. To learn about how we got to this fully-connected world, it’s nice to step back and see how the computer revolution really began. Not from the point of view of Apple or Microsoft or IBM, but an obscure company that even not many geeks have heard of. That company, later went on to become one of the most successful companies in the computing world. And since most of you might not have seen this show, I’m not going to say which. Intrigued? You should be. And if you want to learn how IBM PCs were made back in the day, here’s a cool video by Computerphile showing just that.
Crowd Favorite?
Of course, I have skipped a few shows like The Big Bang Theory (it got real boring last year), The Flash (not sure why the lead actor wasn’t cast in the movie) and others too. There can only be these many favorites for a guy, but you can let us know yours in our comments section.
