Awesome Show Alert: Battlestar Galactica

I have a weird attention span where I basically can watch either half hour comedies or 2+ hour movies. It's very weird, I admit. The hour-long drama format is usually just not for me. Hour-long shows I used to watch like "ER" or "Law & Order" just don't do it for me the way they used to. Part of that has to do with the declining quality of those programs, since "ER" now likes to go to Africa every other week and "Law & Order" is more about how deviant the crime in question can be.

My good friend Tony DiGiacomo, however, urged me to pursue a program to which I normally would not have been drawn: BSG.

The original "Battlestar Galactica" -- featuring Lorne Greene and Face from "The A-Team" was kind of a cheesy sci-fi show from the late 1970s. I had a few of the action figures when I was a kid, including that weird robot dog thing. When I heard they were remaking it, I didn't really think much of it, because I'm not a sci-fi geek. Just a regular geek. I wasn't sure I wanted to invest time in a show about robots and space and aliens. The evil Cylons in the show even sound like Klingons. I figured it probably wasn't my bag, baby.

But don't be fooled, this is one of the best dramas on TV. It does take place in outer space, but everything else about it is like a political/military drama. It's not a mystery like "Lost," and it's not really sci-fi like "Star Trek." It is complex in story and theme. There is depth of character, and actually very good acting. The cinematography is rather brilliant, since it's filmed with a handheld camera for most of the dramatic scenes.

Don't make the same mistake I made and let the sci-fi aspect of the show turn you away from it. There are no actual "aliens" in the show (at leat not that I've seen), and you could just as easily have all the major storylines on present-day Earth. The storylines are deep and the drama is often intense. I just finished the first season on DVD and am completely hooked on it.

As far as the first season goes, only the first season of "The Sopranos" even compares in terms of pure watchability, from episode to episode, and I would venture that "BSG" even surpasses that. It's definitely much better than any subsequent "Sopranos" season, by far.

Seriously, check it out. You know you can trust me.