TV’s 20 best slow-burn romances

This is a rare TV romance in which true love’s progress was impeded, at different points, by the deaths of both of its members. The love story between John Chrichton (Ben Browder), an Earthman trapped in space, and Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black), who was raised by fascists but is trying to be better, is the longest-running story arc of ’s four-seasons-and-a-miniseries run. The attraction is obvious from day one, as Black expertly portrays Aeryn’s disgust at her desire for this backward, idealistic, frequently obnoxious alien. But the love part has a lot of trauma to fight its way through, as Aeryn and John both spend huge parts of the show daring the other to say “I love you” first—only to have some kind of sci-fi tragedy (brain-hijacking, alien conquerors, and, yes, literal, actual death) inevitably get in the way each time. When it lands, though, Crichton and Aeryn become one of genre TV’s great power couples, a pair of badasses happy to point a gun at the head of the universe if it keeps the things that they love safe. [William Hughes]