My partner watches the new V series, but I haven't been able to get behind it. It suffers from (among other things) taking itself too seriously, and the NBC (and now ABC) tendency to over-hype everything and try to turn it into an Event. (Yeah, NBC even named another over-hyped series The Event, in a desperate plea to viewers.)
I'm old enough to remember when the original V miniseries came out. It was groundbreaking for its time, doing what good science fiction is supposed to do: hold up a mirror to our society. V was a heavy-handed Holocaust allegory, full of obviously good good-guys, obviously bad bad-guys, obviously immoral collaborators, and guinea-pig-eating aliens. It was also great fun, and a wonderfully heroic story of ordinary people standing up against tyranny. The final showdown between Julie and Diana (I won't spoil it if you want to Netflix it) still gives me chills.
(Please note these remarks only apply to the original miniseries. The subsequent mini- and regular series weren't as good. But I hear Diana from the original shows is being brought into the new series, so you might want to check out the old stuff before January.)
Sure, it's schmaltzy, and very 1983. But I highly recommend the original miniseries. It was written by Kenneth Johnson, who wrote for The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman (in fact, he wrote the episode of the former that introduced the latter), The Incredible Hulk, and Alien Nation. When he was on top of his game, Johnson was a master storyteller.
He could also turn out some pretty dire dreck, although to be fair many of those were sequels to his original stories and may have involved a) other writers, b) excessive input from the studio, and c) not enough time.
All of this is just my opinion, YMMV. I'm just very opinionated about what I consider Kenneth Johnson's best works. He is one of my heroes.