In Retrospect, Maybe Not a Good Idea Quiz

Answer:

"About a Girl" is a Canadian comedy that follows Amy Ryan (Chiara Zanni), a young girl who shows up at college only to find that her dormitory is totally unacceptable. She moves off-campus and winds up sharing a house with four guys. As you may have guessed, things don't always run smoothly in this arrangement. The show premiered in 2007 and ran for a single season.

"Absolutely Fabulous" was created by, and stars, Jennifer Saunders, basing the material on the 1990 sketch comedy "Modern Mother and Daughter" that she had built with fellow comedienne Dawn French. Saunders plays Edina Moon, a PR executive who drinks too much and enjoys abusing drugs. She strives to lose weight (and fails miserably) by following every new diet fad that comes along. Her partner in revelry is Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley), who makes Edina's addictions look positively pedestrian. Premiering on British television in 1992, this highly successful sitcom ran for five seasons.

Jim Belushi plays the title role in the US sitcom "According to Jim" (2001-09). Jim runs a construction company, but has a slacker attitude, so he's constantly looking for ways to get things done with as little effort as possible. Add to this, he's selfish and cheap and this winds up getting him into all sorts of strife with his wife Cheryl (Courtney Thorne-Smith). The family unit also consists of three children, which grows to five by season seven.

Tim Conway is the trench-coated, hard-boiled detective in "Ace Crawford: Private Eye". As an investigator, Crawford has a tendency to bumble his way through cases, in a way that belies his first name. Yet, he always ends up catching the bad guy. Joe Regalbuto plays Crawford's assistant Toomey. He idolizes the detective and truly believes that all of Ace's bumbling is merely a cunning strategy. Sadly, the series only lasted five episodes.

"Ada Twist: Scientist" (2021-23) is an animated pre-school show that is based on the book series of the same name, created by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts. Ada is a highly intelligent and very curious eight-year-old girl. She is also a scientist with her own magic lab, all of which she uses to solve mysteries.

"Aeon Flux" is an American adult animated series set in a bizarre dystopian future. Two city-states- Monica and Bregna - exist in an otherwise barren, Earth-like world and the two nations continue to wage a never-ending war amongst themselves. Aeon Flux (Denise Poirier) is a highly skilled spy who specializes in infiltration, sabotage, and assassination. She operates for Monica, working against Bregna, a city that is ruled by Trevor Goodchild (John Rafter), who is also Aeon's part-time lover. The series ran for three seasons between 1991 and 1995.

With a title such as "Affairs of the Heart," you may be lulled into thinking that this British sitcom is a love story. Far from it. Derek Fowlds plays Peter Bonamy, a man who suffers a serious heart attack and, upon release from hospital, needs to adjust to a sedentary lifestyle, one where he's not even allowed to drive his Porsche. To add to his chagrin, he is constantly molly-coddled by his wife Jane (Sarah Badel) and daughter Rosemary (Holly Aird). There were seven episodes of the show released between 1983 and 1985.

"The Agency" is an American spy thriller that commenced in 2024 and is a remake of the acclaimed French television series "The Bureau" (2015-20). Michael Fassbender plays Brandon Colby, a CIA operative who'd been based in South Africa for six years and is ordered to return to London. An old flame, Dr. "Sami" Zaheer (Jodie Turner-Smith), is also in London, and their renewal of acquaintances adds complications to Colby's life. One being that Sami knows Colby by another name, and the reunion puts not only his life in danger, but also hers.

Launched in 2016, "Agent Carter" enjoyed a two-season run before being cancelled. The series was created as a result of the positive viewer reaction to the character's appearances in a number of movies set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Hayley Atwell reprises her role as Peggy Carter from those films and, in the first series, set in 1946, she finds herself caught between balancing the life of a routine office worker with the SSR (the Strategic Scientific Reserve) and clearing Howard Stark's name after he'd been framed for selling weapons to the opposition.

"Alas Smith and Jones" is a British sketch comedy that was a spin-off from the highly successful "Not the Nine O'Clock News" (1979-82). The latter was built around the skills of the comedy quartet of Mel Smith, Griff Rhys-Jones, Rowan Atkinson and Pamela Stephenson. Atkinson and Stephenson left to pursue solo careers while Smith and Jones formed a double act. The pair appeared in the BBC1 comedy special "The Funny Side of Christmas" (1982) and impressed the BBC Board so much that they were offered their own show. The series, which is a play on words of the US western show "Alias Smith and Jones" (1971-73), ran for six seasons between 1989 and 1998.

"Alias" followed a wave of television shows, such as "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (1997-2003), "Dark Angel" (2000-02), and "Xena: Warrior Princess" (1995-2001), in the 1990s and the 2000s that featured strong female characters in the lead roles. In this series, which sprang from the fertile mind of J.J. Abrams, Jennifer Garner is Sydney Bristow, a double agent who works for the CIA but poses as an operative for a worldwide criminal organization known as SD-6. The series, which also features Ron Rifkin, Michael Vartan, and Bradley Cooper, ran for five seasons between 2001 and 2006.

Adapted from the 1988 film of the same name, "Alien Nation" (1989-90) features Gary Graham as LAPD detective Matthew Sikes paired with a "newcomer" Sam "George" Francisco (Eric Pierpoint). The "newcomer", Francisco, is a member of an alien race whose ship crashed in the Mojave Desert. The extraterrestrials have since assimilated into US society as immigrants. These aliens are humanoid in nature but with certain differences. The series uses these distinctions to set up morality stories built around racism and bigotry.

Created by Tony Gilroy, "Andor" is a part of the "Star Wars" franchise, and it serves as a prequel to the 2016 film "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story". The focus of the series is Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), a thief who becomes a rebel spy in the five-year period that leads up to the above-named film. With an ensemble cast that includes Adria Arjona, Stellan Skarsgard, Benjamin Bratt, and Ben Mendelsohn, the series launched in 2022 with storylines that explore the formation of the Rebel Alliance and Andor's own radicalization against the Empire.

"Ashes to Ashes" (2008-10) which serves as a sequel to the hit series "Life on Mars" (2006-07) and, like its predecessor, brings a touch of fantasy into a police procedural drama. Detective Inspector Alexandra "Alex" Drake is shot during a hostage situation in the year 2008 and then blacks out. She awakes to find herself as a member of the team at the Fenchurch CID... in 1981. Using her skills from the future, she helps to solve crimes in 1981 while she tries to resolve her own predicament and get herself back to 2008. In the same manner as "Life on Mars", the series runs the gambit of ambiguity, through some clever writing, so that the viewer is unsure whether Drake has really been transported back to 1981 or she lies in a coma back in 2008 and is dreaming all of this.

David Jason plays the cynical, yet mercurial Detective Inspector William "Jack" Frost in ITV's "A Touch of Frost" (1992-2010). Frost may be a great detective, but he's not the finest of human beings and the writers have blessed him with a number of frailties. However, it is this dichotomy that has allowed the show to continue to flourish for a staggering 18 years. Frost will drink your beer if you're not careful, he has no fashion sense unless disheveled makes a comeback; he avoids paperwork, clashes with his superiors and is not averse to planting evidence if it means he will get his man. And, despite getting suspended, disciplined and threatened to be dismissed, the man is well respected and admired by his colleagues.