Gravy is awesome... but I'm such a gravy snob. Canned gravy is shit, powdered gravy is 10x worse. Too many restaurants it, and those that make their own gravy usually use cheap stock to make it anyway.
Cook up a roast, save the pan drippings. Dump the fat from the drippings into a small frying pan. Add a couple tablespoons of flour and fry it into a roux, then dump in the rest of the drippings, a bit of red wine and some good beef stock*. Cook it until it thickens, season and you're done. Takes about 10 minutes to do, easy to pull off while your roast cools.
*Beef stock is also something else that's so much better when it's homemade. Save the bone from your roast and make stock out of it.