Buried Treasures and Guilty Treasures...

[BobMurdoch]

OK, with an anemic Charlie Chat, and no new receiver or software news to speak of, I figure we need SOMETHING to get our creative juices flowing.

Some food for thought.....

I was cruising through the channels last night and found a show that I never thought I would watch. At 9pm on Wednesdays The Travel Channel has a regular series with Poker championships throughout the world. Seeing these gamblers go head to head was surprisingly riveting. This was my buried treasure that I found.

Then again, for my son I had been recording Samurai Jack, They shifted their schedule and now Justice League is on during that time. I don't know whether it is a case of arrested development or just cartoons that are MUCH more intelligent than the ones produced during my youth (Superfriends, Hong Kong Phooey, etc.), but I was HOOKED on this show.

My question then......

What buried treasures have you found while surfing some of the lesser watched channels, and what are some of the guilty pleasures that you are loathe to mention (that you watch regularly).

[Mark Lamutt]

"Guilty Pleasures" - Survivor, Big Brother

I've loved Survivor since the beginning and I was completely riveted to the live feeds of Big Brother last summer and am very much looking forward to them again for BB4.

"Buried Treasures" - The Dead Zone, Monk (on USA), The Shield, Lucky (on FX), Travels in Europe with Rudy Maxa (on PBS).

The first 4 in the list are refreshingly original, and Travels in HD on PBS is just stunning. This week, the episode was set in the Greek Islands (where I went on my honeymoon), and it was almost like being back there again.

[Mark Holtz]

I don't know whether to classify them as buried treasures or guilty pleasures, but...

* Iron Chef (Food TV) and Junkyard Wars (TLC) - Two very dissimilar shows with a common theme: With a extremely limited amount of time, create something based around a certain idea.

Iron Chef is a Japanese cooking show where a challanging chef challanges one of the four "Iron Chefs" (Japanese, French, Chinese, Italian). The chairman reveals a theme ingredient, and the chefs have 60 minutes to create dishes-each utilizing the theme ingredient in a certain way.

Junkyard Wars (aka Scrapheap Challange) is a show in which two teams of four (3 team members, one expert) have ten hours to construct an operational device (i.e. cardozer, car flinger, cannon, fire fighting boat) using only the stuff found in the junkyard. Some simploe-to-understand explanations are provided along the way.

Also in the same vein... Monster Garage - in which Jesse James and a group of craftmen have seven days and only $3,000 to convert a vehicle into something else. On the first day, they design, the next five they build, and on the final day, they race. Episodes include converting a RV into a mobile skatboarding ramp, a convertable into a firetruck, and others. The biggest problem: language.

There are also some good anime series on the air.

[Karl Foster]

Biggest Guilty Pleasures: "Jackass" on MTV, and "South Park" on Comedy Central.

Best Buried Treasures: "Session at West 54th" on Trio, and "The It Factor" on Bravo. Also like "The Rocky Mountain Sports Report" on FSRM - definitely on pertains to sports fans in Utah and Colorado.

[lee635]

The Shield. Guilty and buried treasure.

CNNFN - buried treasure - At night its turns over to what used to be called CNN International. You get to see the news spin from outside the States. And for some reason they run very few commercials!

Nascar - guilty pleasure - How many Saturday mornings are we cleaning up the house with a car race on!