Fringe

I've come across an awesome TV series.  It's called Fringe.  It's by J.J. Abrams, the man who came up with Lost.  If you enjoyed that show, this one has a bit of the same flair for the weird as that one.  Fringe is like the X Files if the X Files a.) was entertaining  b.) was aware of how ridiculous and laughable the premise it is based upon is and c.) had interesting and entertaining characters played by actors that actually know what acting is rather than stereotypes played by people who couldn't act wet in a thunderstorm.  (That's right X Files fans, I went there)  In short, it's pretty much everything that the X Files wasn't that I wished it to be.

The story is about a small FBI group trying to find the source of strange phenomena in the Boston Area, recruiting the aid of former mad scientist and current insitutionalized crazy person Walter Bishop, and his son Peter as a handler and minder of the now, often childlike Walter.  For the first season and a half the show is pretty much just about the monster of the week like the X Files, but you get hints throughout of a much larger story, which the rest of the series deals with, an interdimentional war between Earth and an alternate version of Earth that was inadvertently started by Walter in his younger, mad scientist years while he was just trying to do something good for someone on the other side.

The series is 5 seasons long, the fifth and final currently playing this fall on Fox, and is well worth the time to watch for anyone that enjoyed Lost or the X Files, or just really likes science fiction or well written, entertaining TV.