Late to the Party: What movies, music, or television shows have you discovered much later than everyone else and yet became some of your favorites?

Shaun of the Dead.

I started enjoying “That ‘70s Show” about 8 years after it ended.

This week, I’ve been watching the later seasons of Absolutely Fabulous, which I’d never watched before. I have no idea why I hadn’t, but am enjoying them now.

I tried so hard to like The Americans! So many people I know are fans, but I just couldn’t sit through it.

I seem to arrive late to everything. Everything from. Seinfeld through 30 Rock I found in reruns or get through Netflix, Amazon, etc. with the ROKU.

The Americans is fantastic. I wish I had just finished the first season. It keeps getting better.

I was lucky. I didn’t know of The Wire, Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, Dexter, and The Walking Dead until they were almost over.

And I have The West Wing, Mad Men waiting in the wings. I haven’t seen either.

House, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones.

Game of Thrones. Forgot about that. I haven’t seen it yet and I am waiting for it to end so I can marathon it.

I often arrive late, but I more usually don’t care for the hype. I mean, not that many trends go unoticed by me. I know about them, but I just choose not to follow them. More often I let them slide until much later, when I suddenly have the urge or something external affects me like a party with friends…

But come to think of it in the broader sense, your question applies to most movies I watch, since I’m fond of old movies. I discover and watch classics often, that’s not so uncommon. Same goes to music and sometimes television series too.

West Wing. I didn’t watch it during its first run, I saw it all in rerun a few years later.

Miracle on 34th St. I didn’t start watching it until my 20’s.

The Good Wife. I started watching a few year in. There was a catch up marathon, and that’s what I did, I caught up.

House. I had seen two shows when it was first on and had a hard time watching it, but years later I got into it on the recommendation of a friend’s son.

Homeland. I saw the first two seasons on demand about 5 years ago I think. I just borrowed season 3 from the library. They have season 4 too.

I catch a lot of things late, and I’m totally OK with that. It means I don’t have to wait every week for a new episode or ten months for them to figure out next season.

I started watching Battlestar Galactica a few months after the series ended. It’s one of my favourite shows. I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation with my dad when I was a kid, but I didn’t really get into it until much later. I waited for Voyager to be completely over before watching that one, too. I marathoned The Tudors, and Breaking Bad, and Mad Men.

@cookieman South Park. Some good laughs!

Back in the day, I completely avoided any news about the O.J. Simpson arrest and trial. It seemed that everyone was fixated and talking about little else, which was very tedious. I also didn’t find it entertaining to follow a brutal, double-homicide.

I recently watched ESPN’s five-part documentary, though, and found it fascinating. The mini-series skipped much of the lurid drama and focused more on the man himself. Some of the episodes had almost nothing to do with the murders and focused, instead, on Simpson’s life before and after his trial. This portrait of a sociopath was interesting to watch.

About a year ago I began downloading all the films listed on the IMDB 100 Best Film Noir. Of the ones I’d never seen or heard of, there are a few that have become my favorite films of all time and have watched repeatedly:

A Shadow of Doubt with Joseph Cotton, 1943. Amazing and twisty for such an old movie. Hitchcock, of course. Sappy ending probably slapped on to meet Hollywood Code, but still a great story.

The Lady from Shanghai with Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles, 1947. A really weird film that needs to be watched more than once to fully appreciate, especially the character of George Grisby played by Glenn Andrews. Classic, complicated, over-the-top Welles. It’s the film with the famous Fun House Mirror Scene at the end. I can’t believe I’d never heard of this one before.

Caught with Barbara Belle Geddes and Robert Ryan (King of American Noir), 1949.

Human Desire with Gloria Graham and Glen Ford, 1954. “She was born to be BAD… to be KISSED… to make TROUBLE!” Excellent noir film in spite of the cornball femme fatale description. A lot of these films were necessarily written in a subculture code to cover up such unmentionables as homosexuality (Peter Lorre’s scented calling cards and language in Maltese Falcon, 1941), S&M, Femdom, etc.—especially those taken from the books of Raymond Chandler like The Big Sleep (Bogart & Bacall with cutie-pie compulsive submissive Martha Vickers, 1946). Human Desire has obvious hints of Femdom and male masochism as does Double Indemnity (Barbara Stanwyck, 1944), Sunset Boulevard (Gloria Swanson, 1950), The Postman Always Rings Twice (Lana Turner, 1946) and The Lady from Shanghai (see above).

Pickup on South Street with Richard Widmark, Jean Peters and the great Thelma Ritter, 1953. This is one of the best noirs depicting the gritty life of the demimonde of NYC. I love this film.

Out of the Past with Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, Jane Greer and Rhonda Flemming, 1947. This is full of twists, too. You’ll never guess the ending. “Danger! Corruption! Duplicitous Dames!”

One very late Noir that I’d seen when it first came out and didn’t quite understand was Chinatown with Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and old John Huston, 1974. This is beautifully filmed in great LA settings rehabbed to look as they did in 1939, when the story takes place. The interior art deco decors, the broad lapels and cut of the men’s suits, the incredibly sexy dresses worn by Ms. Dunaway and other female characters are impeccable and correct. The story is as about Noir and coded as one can get—at a time when “coding” was not necessary and used to be consistent with Noir verisimilitude. The music is a seductive, haunting, slow jazz piece played throughout. Great cinematography.

The sequel, The Two Jakes (1990) takes place in the same environment after the War and it only makes sense if you’ve seen Chinatown recently before viewing this film. PI Jake Gittes, after a stint in the Marines, takes a case that brings him right back into the surreal circumstances of the first story—that he’d spent the previous fifteen years or so trying to forget. I highly recommend this underrated film, but only if you’ve seen Chinatown again within a few days.

The Mask of Dimitrios with Peter Lorre in an unusual role, Sidney Greenstreet, a coupla dames and oily, good looking Zachary Scott (1944). A great story about tracking down a spy/assassin through Europe from Istanbul through Greece, Switzerland and Paris set in 1938. In the end it is very hard to decide who the bad guy really is.

I was very late in discovering Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, didn’t discover Fantasy Fest until it had been popularized and inundated by drunken frat boys, and like many fans didn’t discover Firefly(TV_series) until well after it had been cancelled.

@JLeslie @johnpowell West Wing is still the most amazing tv ever.

@Espiritus_Corvus I love film Noir too, I’ll check out a couple of those soon.

I have never been a reality TV type and don’t have/ watch TV.
However, I will admit I have been watching some of the Americas got talent and Britons got talent on Youtube recently. I have discovered several, amazing singers whose careers were launched on these shows. I like seeing all the raw talent and some are amazingly good, star material no doubt.

Watching clips from these shows is very entertaining.
I also loved the “Dexter” series about 4–5 years ago after my daughter turned me on to it.

Most things in popular culture come to me this way: i.e., very late. I don’t watch TV, but I don’t mind renting DVDs of series TV shows. I came about seven years late to MI-5 (aka “Spooks”) and five years late to Downton Abbey, just to name two good ones. That way I got to binge-watch them until I caught up. Then I had to wait impatiently like everyone else.

In general, though, I prefer to watch TV and movie series and read series novels only when they’re complete. I like to know beforehand that there’s a proper ending and that I can plunge ahead to it as fast as I choose. I also usually manage to avoid spoilers, sometimes for six months or more, even when they’re hot.

@Jeruba Ohhh – I just downloaded Spooks, and have been looking forward to watching that.

@dappled_leaves, well, I can tell you that that one does have a proper ending, meaning that it’s logical (if not predictable) and completes a story arc. Naturally I won’t tell you what it is. (Take care not to look too closely at one of those series guides that tell you how many episodes a character is in, or you’ll see spoilers.)

The series does take a few weird zigs and zags before it’s done. But I enjoyed it very much and was sorry when it ended.

I’m very late to the “Fast & Furious” franchise. I recently developed a bit of a crush on the late, and extremely gorgeous, Paul Walker, so I decided to watch. My brother bought the DVD set as a gift.

There sure are some sexy men in those films! Manly men…sigh…

@Jeruba Yes, it sounds like it’s right up my alley. I generally avoid reviews, etc. until I’ve seen the thing, if it’s a thing I suspect I’ll enjoy.

I didn’t start watching “The Walking Dead” until the third season was halfway through (but I watched it from the beginning during one of the marathons.)

Queen. They hit it big when I was a teen, but I didn’t like much pop music. I was a rock & roll and classical snob.

It was actually a Fluther question that changed my mind. Someone asked who’s the best front man ever, and Freddie Mercury got a lot votes.

I started watching some Youtube videos, and I bougth A Night at the Opera. I went back to the question and voted for Freddie.

I was also late to The Sopranos on HBO. My wife got me watching during season 5. After a few episodes, I borrowed seasons 1–4 from the library and caught up in a few days of binge watching.

My husband and I just began watching House of Cards and Game of Thrones this past winter. We are caught up with everyone else now. These two are our favorite shows right now.

We also just started watching Supernatural with our daughter. She’s almost done with season 2, but she’s re-watching the first season with us. We all enjoy it so far.

@Espiritus_Corvus Hey! I thought no one else share my love for film-noir. Let’s run away together!

@jonsblond I started watching Supernatural this summer, too, but am now on a long break. I found it was just too much for a binge watch. I think I would enjoy it better if I watched an episode or two per week.

@dappled_leaves. I agree. After three episodes in a row I begin to feel like I’m watching Scoobie Doo, but I still enjoy it. I can’t get enough of Dean.

@Mimishu1995

”@Espiritus_Corvus Hey! I thought no one else share my love for film-noir. Let’s run away together!”

Maybe you can rent a scooter, meet him and his vessel at Non Nuoc Beach, and sail away to Hollywood!

@jonsblond Agreed! I’ll go back to it eventually, and just take it slower.

I guess you could also say I’ve come a little late to Japanese cinema from the war and postwar period. (That would be World War II, and no, I wasn’t born yet.)

TV shows: Six Feet Under, The L Word and The Shield

Music: Nine Inch Nails, The Cure, Peter Murphy,Peter Gabriel era Genesis
and all the famous orchestras/singers etc from the 1930s and 1940s

Bollywood musicals. Oh my. They came up in a recent Fluther question.

Here’s a great example from 1998 – Chaiyya Chaiyya

Here’s a number from 1964 – Jaan Pehechan Ho

That’s entertainment! I want to start a troupe in my neighborhood now!

I discovered jazz great Stanley Turrentine fifteen years after he died. What a sax. Better than Grover. Late night stuff.

BBC’s Sherlock! I remember friends constantly telling me to watch Sherlock, it took me more than a year to actually watch the series… And oh there’s no tv show I love more than this one. I even read all the books and stuff <3 ——Even went to London to get more of “the Sherlock vibe”——

@Lemley Always good to find another Sherlock obsessive!

So many series are on my list of things to watch (list in my head, not on paper). I binge-watched The Tudors this past winter and I loved it. I was sad it was over. I’d like to see Mad Men, The Sopranos, Downton Abbey and a bunch of others.

@Love_my_doggie: I am in the middle of the OJ documentary and I love it. It’s about so much more than the courtroom stuff. It’s also about so much more than OJ – it’s about the culture and the times. I was considering asking a Fluther question about it.

@Espiritus_Corvus You may be interested to know that a third film was planned to complete a Chinatown trilogy.
It was to be called Gittes v. Gittes, and involved the events of Jake’s divorce, and the beginning of no-fault divorce laws in California.
The writer, Robert Towne, had planned to make it, but was upset that Jack Nicholson and the studio conspired to change the end of Two Jakes. He’s bitter.

Adding to my list of television series I am late for, I am taking advantage of a channel playing 6 seasons of Walking Dead over 6 Sundays.

@filmfann That’s too bad, it really is. It was to be called Cloverleaf. I can see where Towne might get a little upset. There were a lot of changes made in the first film. Polanski changed the ending of Chinatown. For the better, I think. Noah Cross (John Huston) originally would die from Evelyn Mulray’s bullet at the end, then she and her daughter would get away to Mexico as planned. But Polanski changed it to Noah Cross only getting wounded and Evelyn getting it in the back of the head, finishing the film with an elevated pan shot over the district after the famous Noir line, “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

I wasn’t surprised when Dunaway only got a voiceover in The Two Jakes. The stories you hear about her behaviour on the set are outrageous. Supposedly she used a female intern as a toilet flusher—Dunaway wouldn’t flush her own toilet in the trailer. And she supposedly threw a cup of piss on Towne. The Two Jakes almost never got made. Halfway through production, the writer, the director and the producer weren’t speaking. Eventually, Nicholson had to take over direction or the project would have been dropped. But you never know about these stories.

So, just forget it, @filmfann. It’s Hollywood.