How I Met Your Mother (seasons 1 to 5)

Finding myself watching this a lot on tv, I was sufficiently hooked to go through the whole thing to date on dvd. It's really a very nice show, insightful, sharp-witted, fresh-feeling, and sweet-natured without tripping into sentiment. The love of wordplay is a feature, as is its use of structure - along with the basic framing device, the frequent temporal stop-starts and reversals are very effective, not least in keeping things interesting - and the deliberate, self-conscious use of repeating motifs and images (the yellow umbrella being probably the most obvious, but the technique is apparent from the very first episode, with the blue french horn). But what really keeps me watching is the characters and the situations they find themselves in - with all the inevitable self-aware qualifications, HIMYM seems like an idealised version of the familiar.