Whew!
In order to avoid another negligent 2¢ worth comment I actually speed-read all 45 pages here.

Kreist, ye ken ye watch too much TV & movies when you can honestly say you've seen almost every series and movie put forth so far & this thread only goes back to 2018.

At 70+ I have the opposite kind of memory problem most older folks suffer from - I can't forget.
I still remember YUGE swaths of the 1st SCI-Fi book I ever read, in the 6th grade (Starman's Son: 2250 AD by Andre Norton).
Forget trying to get me to watch a movie or TV show less than 20-30 years old, I can practically lip-sync the dialogue from end-to-end.
(A wee bit of exaggeration, but not much of one.)

SparklingCrystal, I think I've sussed out what grabs you favorably, so what I'm going to do is toss some stuff at you that might pry you loose a bit more from your "preferred" consumption.
I agree with plenty you do like, though having seen practically anything worth watching produced on 3 continents and some from S.America & Asia too, I find almost all of it tiresome recycling of shows that have already been done (something Hollyweird seems especially hooked on, re-booting movies for the 3rd, 4th, or even 5th time - like Dracula, A Star is Born, etc.)
I ABSOLUTELY agree, "Dracula Untold" was the best version of Bram Stoker's tragedy ever made.

I also agree in general that BBC/UK police procedural shows are far superior to American-made crap.
(Line of Duty, Luther with Idris Elba, DCI Banks, Ripper Street, Unforgotten-has Nikola Walker EVER done less than stellar in ANY role she's inhabited?, Tom Burke's "C.B. Strike", & looking forward to more of D.I. Ray.)
If it's a UK procedural, it's somewhere on my 24TBs of hard-drive storage (7x4TB in a PC tower).

I believe the reason is not better scripts, it's the fact that English/UK/Irish actors tend to walk the boards long before they ever do a TV series & have earned/learned to project "Presence" in their roles - and in general shorter "series" runs of 4-6 episodes per issue, which allows tighter focus on the case at hand & avoids 16 episodes of drift from "fillers" until they get the baddies.

igotthegirth was also correct (5 times) about "Hell on Wheels" being A-1+ fare, particularly in the Westerns/Civil War era genre.
SF doesn't get any better than the "Battlestar Galactica" reboot with Eddy Olmos.
Throw in "Babylon 5" & "Crusade" for good measure.
Straczynski has crafted a 123 eps.+6 movies feast running over 5-years in 2 separate but intertwined series.
A galaxy-&-time-spanning political extravaganza covering millennia of wars & a veritable UN of Aliens.

Horror is something I gather really isn't your cuppa but I believe I can actually change your opinion in a limited fashion.
Eldest & I have taken to watching a number of "Nazombie" flicks (WWII movies with zombi-fied Nazis).
Start with the 3-part series of "Outpost" movies;
•Outpost (2008)
•Outpost: Black Sun (2012)
•Outpost: Rise Of The Spetnaz (2013)
Then move on to the Dead Snow series;
•Dead Snow (2009)
•Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead (2014)
If those five movies don't have you howling with laughter while also actually tense with a bit of dread, you are a lost cause.

Milla Jovovich, Oded Fehr, Iain Glen, James Purefoy, & a host of A-List appearances across the franchise keep it fresh & spice up what would normally be just zombie comic book fare in the "Resident Evil" movie series.

For good measure throw in a small Michael Mann film HE would rather forget but I found to be one of my favorite movies of all time, in ANY genre.
•The Keep (1983)
The Keep is very hard to find but www2.putlocker.digital does have it in 360 & 480p (check the gear wheel for settings).

I also did not "See" (see wot I dun dere?) anyone mention "Black Sails" (8+3x10 eps.)
John Malkovich's 1-off 9 ep. season, "Crossbones", is a nice companion piece to "Black Sails".
Zack McGowan does for 18th century piracy what Anson Mount does for the 19th century transcontinental railroad era ("Hell on Wheels").

Rob Roy is a better Scottish movie than Braveheart, even though the latter stole all the awards.

A particular favorite of mine was the 5-year run of "Person of Interest" starring Jim Caviezel ("Outlander" [2008]) & Michael Emerson ("Lost").
Something about it reminded me a bit of "The Pretender" series which ran 4 seasons in the late '90s - stoic ledes by Weiss & Caviezel I suppose.

"The Man in the High Castle" (4x10 eps.) is a brain stretcher alt-history/multiverse series based on a P.K. Dick novelette that might not really fit you, but it's worth a look-see (see wot I dun dere -AGAIN?)

There's been a ga-jillion Star Wars TV spinoffs but "The Mandalorian" (4x8 eps.) is by far the best of them.
The Book of Boba Fett (7 eps.) is a companion piece prelude but not strictly necessary.

As for a few movies I specialize in uncovering but which few people ever "see" (did it again LOL) - I guarantee they are worth the watch;
•"Quigley Down Under" (Tom Selleck)
•"The Grey Zone" (concentration camp)
•"Rabbit-Proof Fence" (trackers chase abo escapees from a Native resettlement camp across OZ for 1,600 km - true story)

Two unusual detective flicks with Jean Reno ("The Professional" aka: "Léon:The Professional") in the lede.
•"The Crimson Rivers" (FR-2000)
•"Crimson Rivers II: Angels of the Apocalypse" (FR-2004)
There is a 4x8=32 eps. spinoff TV series, "The Crimson Rivers" (2018-2022), but Reno plays no part in it.

My wife had a few favorites as well, though she was inclined to romantic movies & B&W films AND had what we laughingly referred to as "Video Voodoo", whereby every unknown VHS movie she picked out at the rental store was HORRIBLE! (mostly).
She did know good acting, good scripts, & good directors, better than anyone else I've ever met though.

She watched good movies over & over, which for me would be cruel & unusual punishment.
•"The Good Earth" (1937-Paul Muni)
•"The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946-returning WWII vets)
•"The Helen Morgan Story" (1957-Paul Newman)
•"Spender in the Grass" (1961-though she detested Warren Batty, she loved this movie & "Bonnie and Clyde" [1967])

She was a bootlegging gangsters aficionado & also cultivated more mental ephemera about that era than anyone else I ever met and which helped me immensely in my research into Organized Crime's reach into the NFL (fully half the Owners are mafia/criminal underworld-adjacent if not outright involved, like the SF DeBartelo family, the NYG Maras & PIT Rooneys) - but I digress.


Finally, I remember you saying something about not reading books.
Is there anyone who doesn't like "The Age of Sail" genre?
For those who do AND hold Sci-Fi to no longer be "low-brow" entertainment, I present to you a pair of authors who combine the both of them with great storytelling;
•David Drake: the Republic of Cinnabar Navy (RCN) series which is currently 13 volumes and won't be more as Drake passed in 2023.
•David Weber: the Honor Harrington universe with 16 main-line books & 28 (& counting) splinter volumes about service in the Royal Manticoran Navy or being allies/enemies with Manticore.

I swear to you, both series will have you itching for more once you let yourself immerse in those worlds & start running a sync-ed movie of the adventures in your mind.
I have already seen the movies, at least how I would direct, cut, & edit them, were I to be tasked with turning them into films.
Oddly enough, I really admired what I thought I knew about Weber from his prodigious 100+ books output, but after watching the horseshight he spouts on his FaceBook account these past couple of years, I find myself in the awkward position of still loving the crimes while simultaneously very much not-loving the criminal.

Sorry if that was a long read but I tried to edit in sufficient breaks to get you through it without ending up with "Lazy Eye" & "Cross-Eyed" afflictions.

I binge read, same as I binge watch.
Last year I read about 300-350 books in mobi format (more like a book with pages than EPUB & its eternal scrolling).
I use Calibre (Freeware) to convert formats on eBooks & set mobireader to display 3 pages horizontally at a time.
I can read roughly 100 pages per hour if nobody is bothering me.
I've read prolly somewhere around 2,500-3,000 SF novels over the past decade.

I do have a dead trees book collection, which I've been adding to since the early '70s, & which stands at 6,534 volumes of SCI-FI paperbacks (about half are 1st printings) dating as far back as the 1950s.
(Know anybody that wants to buy the whole collection? Cover prices add up to ~$30,000 but I'd let it go for $10k.)
I mark 1,863 of the paperbacks as read but many of them are also present in the 156 GB of eBooks on my hard drives (124,753 Files, 21,071 Folders - many of them are in multiple formats (7:1+cover photo), which is why the files count is so much higher than the books/folders count) and have also been read even though they aren't listed as such in my Master SF paperback Excel & Access databases.
I have a sneaking suspicion that although my family is extremely long-lived, I'll never get to read them all but I do try to clear dead authors' entire bibliography before moving on to the next - i.e. I've read everything Isaac Asimov ever wrote, etc.

As for the Nazombie flix I listed, I took into account your non-predilection for both WWII & Horror genres but I believe they are really neither - more along the Bruce Campbell Evil Dead campy trilogy genre, intended to be spoofs on both genres, but funny as hell at the same time.
Stretch yourself SparklingCrystal, give 'em at least a stab at letting yourself enjoy a few good laughs.
You might surprise yourself.
I mean, whooda thunk you could combine SF & Westerns (Cowboys & Aliens)?

2¢ always welcome Zee.

Yeah, this account has been scooped up THREE TIMES now.
At least admins are getting better at correcting the AI-bot's screw ups.
The 1st time it took 13 days to get it back, the 2nd time almost a week, & the third (this) time 3 days.
Of course it's gunna happen again, this account is just AI-antagonistic I guess.

Yup, liked Annika a lot. It falls into that UK procedurals category I mentioned liking.

About your choice in reading....MZB sound familiar?
Darkover is just about the richest universe of fantasy I've ever read from end-to-end.
C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Andre (Alice) Norton, Ann McCaffrey, Janet Morris, James (Alice) Tiptree Jr. and of course one of my correspondence partners, C.J. Cherryh - ALL terrific Fantasy authors in my collection(s) & all far more worthy of having movies made from their works than puddin'head Philip K.Dick.
At least Hollyweird got it right by producing movies from a number of Ursula K. LeGuin novels.

I use SF broadly but it encompasses Fantasy as well - though I'm most partial to military hard SF like Hammer's Slammers (Drake) & some of the new blood authors like Jay Allan, M. D. Cooper, & J. N. Chaney.
These new breed of SF authors are actually more like writing co-ops, putting out co-authored volumes at such a prodigious rate it's hard to keep up.

My favorite fantasy story of all time is "Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand" by Vonda N. McAntyre.
I've read it 3 times now, about a decade between readings, & I still get all misty-eyed every time.

Did ya ever wonder that maybe it's cuz of your long-azzed bio??? holy hanna Bob.. that's a short story in itself!!

That's the writer in me, Zee.
Never was a day 1 word would suffice when I could write an entire novelette in an afternoon.
I did a lot of sports (NFL-Packers, mostly) writing for 25 years, covering everything from the draft, free agency, pre-game & post-game dissections, to filling requests from fans of other teams to get my opinion on one thing or another about their team or players.

I built a pretty substantial reputation in those circles as someone who could write objectively and without fan bias in my opinions.
All told I posted over 33,000 articles and more than 4 million words on NFL football from 2001-2025.

I've contributed Guest columns to the local rag from time to time as well.
Been friends with an editor emeritus of the Cap Times since the 90s.

Knowledge is power.
While my profile is a long read, no woman capable of doing so should waste her time on me if what I describe myself as doesn't meet her desires.
Problem is, hardly any of them bother even looking at it, let alone attempting to read it.
Most of 'em can't even be bothered to fill out their own profiles, f/f/s.


Makes it a little easier to separate the wheat from the chaff anyhow.
If they can't be arsed enough to find out something about me before sending me emails asking me to jump onto Wazzapp or googlychat, then they aren't serious enough to be a potential companion anyway.
Ain't no shortage of 'em trying, on this site, though.

Not sure if I've given Annika a whirl... I'll have to watch an episode to find out.

LOTR and The Hobbit are great! I never read the books, just the movies.
I also like The Hunger Games. And the Divergent movies.

As for King Arthur... Have you seen King Arthur Legend of the Sword?
Brilliant movie! With Charlie Hunnam as King Arthur.
The movie is shot the same way as "300 Rise of an Empire". A style of filming I absolutely love for certain movies.