My generation, often called generation X, is the generation that saw the birth of the music videos, home computers, video games (many predicted nintendo and later sms-addicts would make the best surgeons we have ever seen - do they?) but I think it will be remembered more as the first generation that got hooked on television series. 

My early teenage years are filled with many memories of playing outside with friends, field trips and outdoor activities but I also remember the waiting, the agony of having to wait for your favourite tv-show for a whole week! There was medical drama ER, Cheers, then Frasier and my longtime favourite The X-files (that I still can watch today with as much enthusiasm, its not for no reason I named my son Fox!). Of course there were other tv-series before that and soap operas that have become cult since then (remember Dallas and Miami Vice?).

The 90's might possibly have been the golden years of television. The way people watched television was different. Life didn't go as fast back then (or maybe I feel that way because I was a kid and Nostalgia seems to creep back in slowmotion) The way we watch now has possibly changed but we still get as hooked and the most popular shows still have the same content: they are about the police, lawyers and doctors. That is still what people want to see in 2010 (see this link on new dramas coming for season 2010-2011). And lets not forget the teenage dramas! There is a long way from My so-called life though (about a girl and her brother with Down syndrome) to Gossip Girl (where NY teenagers behave like adults, drinking cocktails and coffees-to-go all day long and having sex with everybody, without any emotional ties). I get shocked by that show almost every time and wonder what message it portrays to my 14 year old niece. Sure, the clothes are fab, but no ordinary person can afford them, or do I see any 17 year old wearing 15 cm heels to school in real life. The teenage dramas of my teenage years seemed so much more innocent, Beverly hills 90210 and Dawson Creek (that I have been recently re-acquinted with thanks to Danish television). I had one channel growing up in Iceland (and it started at 6 o clock in the evenings- there wasn't even television on thursdays! Imagine that today! impossible!) so I "missed out" on the inital buzz following a few series on the other channel back then. Television series such as Seinfeld, Buffy and Felicity went totally over my head so to speak. I got into Friends late, closer to my twenties and like so many others I can watch episodes of Friends again and again. And again. That show has nailed the sitcom concept, its funny, light but does address very universal subjects at the same time. It just doesn't get old. There have been plenty and I mean PLENTY of crap series but that you would watch occasional episodes of if you had nothing better to do (isn't there always something better to do than to watch television?)Series such as Murphy Brown and Spin city offered nothing except obvious jokes and have become the recipie for so many bad shows today (types like King of Queens, etc).

But lets get back to the lawyer dramas. I would like to believe that the likable Matlock, that always tricked the bad guy on the stand and even German Derrick led the way for all those law/cop shows that since have emerged. All these law and orders (the original started in 1990),Boston Legal, The Practice, Judging Amy (a very bad show), Ally MacBeal (with a very special mix of humor and fantasy, not often seen on the small screen) with quirkies such as The Mentalist, Dexter and Eli stone later following in its footsteps, the list is endless. Police shows like CSI, NYPD Blue, The shield and The Wire (that I have not watched) prove that people want to see crime stories and English shows are actually quite good at this, Inspector Morse, Inspector Barnaby, Frost, Taggart or Wire in the blood are often more realistic than their american counterparts and I remember feeling scared of the English countryside when I lived there, so much has british crime drama affected me in my young years.

Then there are the medical shows. ER was there clearly the frontrunner - one of the best shows ever made (think about it, how do you make serious medical issues attractive to the lamda viewer while still using extremely complicated medical terms? Medical teams apparently helped with the script writing) It ran for 15 seasons and paved the way for shows happening inside hospitals such as Grey's anatomy, Chicago hope and Nurse Jackie (that is unusual in that it focuses on a nurse and not doctors). There have also been plenty of medical private practices on the screen such as Private Practice (a spin-off from Grey's that concentrates on gynecology), House MD (who specializes in rare conditions, and interestingly has an Englishman that plays the lead), Nip Tuck (about very self-absorbed plastic surgeons) or Scrubs (a silly comical way of portraying hospital staff). It doesn't matter which one it is, I see one, I have to watch. And Im not the only one. I just love medical stories, patients, rare diseases, finding a cure and of course all the drama happening inside the hospital (somehow people find their match in these shows all the time). Its weird. And was even weirder when I had to stay in one for over 9 weeks. Because ultimately no one talks in one-liners, its not as exciting and no doctor looks like George Clooney!

So we want to see blood and drama but more importantly justice (offered as a convinction of criminals or death of faulty characters in the medical dramas). If the shows are good we laugh/cry and even get emotionally attached to the characters. Yes it's sad but when you grow up "meeting" them once a week, they become part of your life. I will admit it, I love television. And I can say this now because its part of my generation. We ALL have one (or more) favourite show. Or had. Because now there are so many of them out there, and with the help of the internet, you can get into the first season of a show that then gets cancelled - the worst example of this being Arrested development, a hilarious comedy that clearly did better in Europe than it did in America, too subtle perhaps? (And no, I haven't forgotten all the women-in-dilemma shows like Sex and the city, Desperate housewives, Cougar town, 3D rock, 30 something, coupless, etc but that is yet another topic) There just SO MANY OF THEM! Where to start? The choice is endless and ratings are everything. Therefore the era of you following shows or them following you is sadly over. There wont be another scully/mulder duo. It was just part of that time. But Im excited because you'll never know what comes next.