[PatK]

"Recently added" and "In Progress TV Shows"

If these are useful, I would think 'Last Played' https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=279131 would be a natural, I'm always testing out recent files, and everything gets listed with rodrigs addon, and I'll second the vote on LazyTV. If you want meta-data from the web, you're going to have to set-up Kodi properly to fetch it.

[mxlance]

@TheGame1986 – thank you for the suggestion it gave me an idea.
Not sure if this will work, perhaps I could create a custom tag for TV Series documentaries and a playlist based on that. I will look into it later this weekend. 

@PatK – I will be reading this info next, thanks 

Thank you to everyone for the help and ideas. This is community is what makes kodi what it is!

[PatK]

"custom tag for TV Series documentaries and a playlist base on that"

Catch 22:->Alas tags and smart playlists all make use of the library, and videos will not be available to these functions; unless they are already scraped into the library. While 'Last Played' sees everything you've clicked to play.

[mxlance]

Testing update: Tried to assign a custom Tag to a TV Episode. It appears this is not possible. 

@PatK- LastPlayed does not appear to be a good fit my goals, however it is a cool addon that may be a good tool for other needs.
Thanks for the tip. 
I have not looked at LazyTV yet.  

thanks again

[nickr]

@mxlance can you remind us exactly what you want to see in the GUI? Is it unwatched episodes? Or next up in the current shows you are watching? Or something else?

[Karellen]

I was hoping to consolidate some TV shows together in one place but retain as much metadata as possible.

This is what was stated in the first post. I understand he wanted to reduce the amount of scrolling/navigating.

[mxlance]

@nickr - I currently have a library category “TV Documentaries” this contains series such as:
Nature/9 seasons/ 14 episodes
NOVA/7 seasons/18 episodes
BBC Documentaries/4 seasons/7 episodes
Horizon/5 seasons/8 episodes
and so on, 11 documentary series in all. 

In addition to these, there are another 133 documentary TV show.
Blue Planet
Blue Planet II
The Vietnam War
and so on.
(Some of these shows originally aired as an episode of a series but are now available as a show and are listed on TVDB. These can be displayed as separate shows in kodi, not all do/can.}

The documentary series are the issue. Everything is in and scraped and works great in kodi.Other than browsing through these episodes.
My hope was, one kodi library item that displays all documentary series episodes in one place.
Easy fast browsing. 

EDIT: ERROR this does not work, you cannot add episodes only shows.
I can do this with the “Simple Favourites” addon but y ou can not get show descriptions with it.I get a thumb and a title and that is all. Not ideal. 

I hope this makes sense, I had a h*** of a time trying to describe this. 

Thank you for your continued interest and efforts.

[mxlance]

I surrender.
The closest I could get was Karellen’s suggestion from reply#4.
This option works but is impractical for adding new episodes on a semi-regular basis. 
The ideal option would be some way to create a smart playlist based on an episode, a tag, afolder or by files. 
Thanks for all the help

[nickr]

Why not just a Smart Playlist of type Episodes and Genre contains Documentary?

[mxlance]

@nickr – thanks, I tried that, not what i was looking for.
However I think if I move all the documentary series to a separate folder, then use a Smart Playlist (Episodes and Genre/Documentary) I may get what I am looking for.It is more work upfront but easy to maintain, I think. Will give that a try as soon as I can. 
Thanks for sparking a new idea.

[nickr]

Source folders have absolutely nothing to do with how the GUI shows your episodes.

[mxlance]

I got it working as I wanted! 
I made a new folder on my server “Doc Series” and moved all the desired Documentary series into that folder, leaving the other TV documentaries in the “TV Docs” folder. 

I added the “Doc Series” to kodi and updated the library. 
Next I made a Smart Playlist (Doc Series) Type: Episode/Paths to Doc Series/Ordered by Show 
I then created a Smart Playlist (TV Docs) Type: TV Show/Playlist: Doc Series and TV Docs 

Now I have a “TV Docs” home menu item that displays all TV aired documentaries, and a
sub-menu item “Doc Series” that displays a combined list of (only the Doc Series) episodes in one place. 

So now we have two ways of displaying and browsing through our TV documentaries. 

Thank you so much for all the help!