Quentin Tarantino’s favourite TV show of all time is awful: “The one show that I always keep watching”
There are a few names among the elite of Hollywood that straddle both commercial and critical success. Quentin Tarantino may well be one of the most commanding presences in the directorial circuit, famed for his box office pulling power, but he has managed to achieve those eye-watering numbers by providing a uniquely authentic collection of movies that align with his own artistic values.
Tarantino has built that impressive directorial career on the back of his forays into the world of arthouse violence. After making some of the definitive cult classics of the 1990s like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Tarantino has continued to provide undeniable evidence of the fact that he still has what it takes to be a top filmmaker through modern gems such as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Tarantino’s relationship with the cinematic medium stretches far back, starting from his childhood, during which he wrote screenplays and watched a lot of films. Later in his life, he earned a reputation as a major film buff in his neighbourhood while working at the local video store, where he curated the collections and handed out stellar recommendations to people – ranging from obscure foreign films to blockbuster flicks.
Throughout his career, Tarantino has maintained that he was influenced by westerns, exploitation films and horror movies. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Sergio Leone and Mario Bava, he managed to continue their legacy through his own works. He has also routinely expressed his admiration for his contemporaries like Paul Thomas Anderson, particularly blown away by Anderson’s 2007 magnum opus There Will Be Blood.
Judging from his impeccable taste in films, it is only natural to assume that Tarantino has similar choices when it comes to television shows. Although TV once more often looked on unfavourably compared to cinema, masterpieces like The Sopranos and The Wire have shown that the television medium can be a very powerful tool and can exceed the narrative capabilities of cinema.
Tarantino was even named after a character played by Burt Reynolds in an old TV western called Gunsmoke, a show that he has said he loves alongside other classics such as Star Trek and The Green Hornet. However, his favourite show of all time isn’t an old American TV gem or even a modern HBO opus. In fact, he has criticised HBO shows like True Detective for being “really boring”.
The director, with a penchant for cinematic violence, considers the cheesy sitcom How I Met Your Mother to be his favourite TV experience. “Hands down, my favourite show is How I Met Your Mother,” Tarantino declared. “I’ve been watching that since the very first episode, so that’s the one show that I always keep watching”.
It’s an incredibly surprising choice. For a director who has so often been concerned with delivering authentic and credible art, to fall head over heels in love with a sitcom so saccharine and, ultimately, sickly is beyond belief. It’s not to say that How I Met Your Mother is without any artistic value, it’s chief operation as a deliverer of a barrage of grade-B jokes about being humans in the modern world is admirable in its devotion to achieving comfort, but to call it your favourite show of all time is upsetting to say the least.
Tarantino is a huge fan of the hopeless romanticism of mainstream romcoms and has called them his “guilty pleasure”. This genre has moved him so much that he admitted to having wept due to their emotional impact. It looks like the pervasive influence of American sitcoms spares nobody, even the director of Pulp Fiction, who spends most of his time studying and advocating for the promotion of foreign films.
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