10 Great TV Shows With One Major Flaw

If you go back and watch the first five seasons of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, they look butt ugly, and that's because they were filmed at 480p resolution, with the hit sitcom finally making the leap to 1080p HD in season six.

Yet that scuzzy, low-fi aesthetic was entirely appropriate for a show set in a Philly dive bar centered around a quintet of shameless degenerates - it felt like precisely the sort of bolted-together equipment the characters themselves would use to make their own show.

But from season six onwards the aesthetic became cleaner and crisper, somewhat detracting from the visual grottiness of its earlier, arguably better seasons.

In recent years other dubious stylistic alterations have been introduced, such as flooding the Paddy's Pub set with far more light, lending it an unnatural, sanitised "cinematic" studio look which again runs counter to the unvarnished nature of the show and its central characters.

And let's face it, if there's any show that doesn't benefit in any way from looking polished, it's this one. Get back to a more minimalist lighting setup, and hell, restore the original 4:3 aspect ratio if you want to be really cute about it.