Comics Without Borders

Cathy Jamison is a suburban Minneapolis high school teacher, wife and mother with less than a perfect life, despite it perhaps seeming so to much of the outside world. Her life is given a major shock when she is diagnosed with melanoma, the first news of such to her being when it is at advanced stage IV, meaning that she will most likely succumb to it within short order barring some extreme or radical intervention. Cathy goes through a myriad of emotions concerning the diagnosis, including how she will deal with it in relation to family, friends and people close to her in other ways. These people include: Paul Jamison, her college sweetheart husband, who is often just another big kid in their relationship, while Cathy has acted the responsible adult; Adam Jamison, Cathy and Paul's teenaged son who is going through typical issues of being a teenager and only child; Sean Tolkey, Cathy's hyper-environmental anti-establishment brother, who chooses to be homeless to live off the grid and who abhors what he sees as Cathy's bourgeois suburban lifestyle; her students, such as Andrea Jackson, who openly stands her ground on any issue, including her weight problem and her African-American background; and her elderly seemingly crotchety female long-time neighbor, who Cathy has not made the effort to know despite their close proximity for years.

Watch the Irish American family the Gallaghers dealing with their alcoholic father Frank. Fiona, the eldest daughter, takes the role of the parent to her five brothers and sisters. Lip, Ian, Debbie, Carl, and Liam deal with life on the South Side of Chicago. Fiona balances her sex life and raising her siblings. Every episode is another crazy situation that one or more of the Gallagher six get into. Watch them grow and learn how to make their way in life with what little they have.

A drug-addicted nurse struggles to find a balance between the demands of her frenetic job at a New York City hospital and an array of personal dramas.

Creator/showrunner Jenji Kohan's hit Showtime satirical dramedy series told of Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), a widowed mother of two boys - Silas (Hunter Parish) and Shane (Alexander Gould) - who begins selling marijuana to support her family in Agrestic, Southern California. Other main characters include Nancy's lax brother-in-law Andy (Justin Kirk) moving in to help raise her children; foolish acquaintance Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon); narcissistic neighbor Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins) living unhappily with her husband Dean (Andy Milder) and their daughter Isabelle (Allie Grant); as well as Nancy's wholesalers Heylia James (Tonye Patano) and her nephew Conrad (Romany Malco). During the fifth season, Nancy has a third child-Stevie (Mateus Ward and replaced by Ethan and Gavin Ken in season 8)-with Esteban Reyes (Demián Bichir), the mayor of Tijuana, Mexico and leader of a drug cartel. Over the course of the show, the Botwin family become increasingly entangled in illegal activity.

Ethan Hawke stars as abolitionist John Brown in this limited series based on the National Book Award-winning novel. The story is told from the point of view of "Onion," a fictional enslaved boy who becomes a member of Brown's motley family of abolitionist soldiers battling slavery in Kansas, and eventually finds himself in the famous 1859 Army depot raid at Harpers Ferry, an inciting incident of the Civil War. It's a humorous and dramatic tale of Antebellum America and the ever-changing roles of race, religion and gender in American society.

British writer-producers Beverly and Sean Lincoln (Tamsin Greig and Stephen Mangan), have a wonderful marriage and a hit TV series to their credit. Things couldn't be better. Until Merc Lapidus (John Pankow), a Hollywood network executive, gushes over their series at a gala. Merc is certain that a remake of the show will go over well with an American audience. After making the Lincolns a lucrative offer, they pack up and ship out to the States. It doesn't take long for them to figure out that Hollywood is a place where deals are made and broken in the same breath. They soon find themselves holding on tight as creative control of their show starts to slip away from their hands. Merc ultimately dismisses the original star, an elder, distinguished, gentleman, for Friends (1994) actor Matt LeBlanc, a charming, yet manipulative beast, with a grocery list of demands. Hollywood is not what the Lincolns had in mind, but Sean believes he can swim with the sharks. As for Beverly, she'd rather go back to the UK than deal with these Episodes.