I really disliked the first few episodes of Universe. The Battlestar Galactica reboot’s grimdark edge was bleeding in very strongly. The show does mellow out on that as it goes. The basic character friction is still there, but toned way down and characters are usually finding common ground.



Lemme do two shows:
Kings just had a premise too esoteric for this world. It was like a retelling of the story of king David set in modern times in a constructed world that’s like ours though the Bible doesn’t exist within that world. There’s all sorts of remixed biblical strangeness in it.
Jericho was like if one of those “mystery box” shows actually had a thought out plot that moved forward. Nuclear explosions go off around the country, not-Blackwater PMC guys work for not-Dick Cheney, and the main characters just keep getting sucked in to a ramp up for a post apocalyptic civil war.