Post by Emperor AAdmin on Feb 8, 2017 17:26:10 GMT -5
100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time
By Rob Sheffield
September 21, 2016
There's never been a creative boom for TV like the one we are living through right now. Ever since The Sopranos changed the game at the turn of the century, we've been in a gold rush that gives no signs of slowing down. What better moment to look back and celebrate the greatest shows in the history of the art form?
So we undertook a major poll – actors, writers, producers, critics, showrunners. Legends like Carl Reiner and Garry Marshall, who sent us his ballot shortly before his death this summer. All shows from all eras were eligible; anybody could vote for whatever they felt passionate about, from the black-and-white rabbit-ears years to the binge-watching peak-TV era. The ratings didn't matter – only quality. The voters have spoken – and, damn, did they have some fierce opinions. On this list you'll find vintage classics and new favorites, ambitious psychodramas and stoner comedies, underrated cult gems ripe for rediscovery, cops and cartoons and vampire slayers. You'll find the groundbreaking creations of yesteryear as well as today's innovators. (There was nothing like Transparent or Orange Is the New Black or Game of Thrones a few years ago, but who could imagine this list without them?) Our list is guaranteed to start plenty of loud arguments – but the beauty of TV is how it keeps giving us so much to argue about.
100. 'Eastbound and Down'
2009-13
Danny McBride created a timeless American slob hero with the travails of Kenny Powers, a washed-up ballplayer who fought his way back to a trash redemption. Probably the only show in history with a fatal drug overdose set to "Walk Like an Egyptian." Testify, Kenny.
99. 'Oz'
1997-2003
The HBO prison drama was a searing exposé of life in maximum-security Oswald State Penitentiary: the shankings, the sexual abuse, the racial warfare. Brutally frank in its violence, Oz was too shocking for its time – and remains shocking years later.
98. 'The Golden Girls'
1985-92
Four sassy seniors share a party pad in Miami, where they romance the local gentlemen and share cheesecake on the lanai. All four Girls brought something special: Bea Arthur as cynical Dorothy, Betty White as sweet-but-stupid Rose, Rue McClanahan as sex bomb Blanche ("I'm jumpier than a virgin at a prison rodeo"), and Estelle Getty as the Sicilian avenging angel Sophia Petrillo, who summed it all up: "Sluts just heal quicker."
97. 'Portlandia'
2011-Present
Portlandia sure arrived with a bang – the opening song, "The Dream of the Nineties Is Alive in Portland," was an instant legend bit of boho-baiting satire. ("Portland is a place where young people go to retire!") But who could have guessed the genius duo of SNL vet Fred Armisen and Sleater-Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein could push Portlandia so far? Mocking the hipster aspirations of modern America is a topic that never runs out of comic juice for these two, whether it's pickle fetishes, artisanal shoelaces or the cult of kale.
96. 'Gunsmoke'
1955-75
Westerns were a staple of television's first half-century, with enduring sagebrush sagas from the Cartwrights of Bonanza to the Barkleys of The Big Valley. This Western lasted longer than any other drama of the pre-Law & Order era – 20 seasons – with James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon, pure frontier gravitas in a white hat.
95. 'Key & Peele'
2012-15
Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key aren't merely masterful comics – they're culture burglars breaking into taboo areas of racial stereotypes, gender politics, food, work and the erotics of ass-slapping. But their deadliest weapon was the way they hit hilarious insights on male neurosis, the topic they know best, as in their attention-getting sketch about the word (looks around nervously) "biiiiiitch." And Obama's Anger Translator might be one of the things we'll miss most about Obama.
94. 'Jeopardy'
1964-1975, 1984-Present
The longest-ruling, most ingeniously constructed, most endlessly playable quiz show of all time? What is Jeopardy!, Alex? Jeopardy! is the hardiest survivor from the old-school game shows (though many of us carry a torch for Charles Nelson Reilly-era Match Game and Paul Lynde-era Hollywood Squares), hosted by the dapper, though no longer mustachioed, Alex Trebek. You can still play along every night.
93. 'Mystery Science Theater 3000'
1988-99
A janitor and his robot friends sit in the dark and heckle some of the worst B-movies ever made, from Rocket Attack U.S.A. to Jungle Goddess, adding their own commentary – it sounds simple, but Joel Hodgson's MST3K turned into one of the era's most enduring cult comedies.
92. 'American Idol'
2001-16
The glitziest of singing competitions, it gave the world memorable freakazoids like Simon Cowell, the hostile judge in a V-neck, and Paula Abdul, the semi-coherent judge who just loved everybody for believing in their pitchiest dreams. Idol never recovered from losing its original judges, in 2009 – when it went bad, it went bad fast – but it found stars like Kelly Clarkson, Adam Lambert, William Hung and the "Pants on the Ground" guy.
91. 'Broad City'
2014-Present
Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer invent a new comedy sublime that we'll be seeing a lot more of in years to come: the two-woman stoner-slob hangout. These broads never learn or grow or achieve a thing; all they care about is each other, living their carpe day-umm lifestyle. When Abbi calls in the middle of a sex encounter to ask about pegging, Ilana's victory handstand dance is one of the most euphoric 10-second eruptions you'll ever see.
90. 'The Dick Van Dyke Show'
1961-66
As the Petries, Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore were TV's answer to JFK and Jackie – comedy god Carl Reiner put his own experiences into this look at the life of a TV writer. The way Dick kept tripping over the same ottoman in his living room was a handy metaphor for domestic life in itself.
89. 'Homeland'
2011-Present
Claire Danes made a big comeback 15 years after My So-Called Life – as a CIA agent in a Showtime drama about terrorism. With its bonkers plot leaps (she sleeps with the terrorist who killed the vice president and gets promoted!), lots of crying jags and the soothing presence of Mandy Patinkin's beard, Homeland became an unlikely hit.
88. 'Party Down'
2009-10
The great Lizzy Caplan and Adam Scott headed up a crew of caterers – you know, failing actors – who served hors d'oeuvres and despaired at porn-star conventions, high school reunions and other disasters. This masterwork never got anywhere near the attention it deserved. But for both laughs and pathos, the episode when they cater Steve Guttenberg's 50th birthday party can hold its own with any half-hour of TV comedy ever.
87. 'Doctor Who'
1963-Present
A science-fiction yarn that keeps thriving through the years, with the Doctor still traveling through space and time in his TARDIS time machine, a half-century after he debuted on the BBC. Like the Time Lord himself, the Doctor Who cult has the power to keep regenerating itself, with Peter Capaldi currently serving as the 12th Doctor.
86. 'Good Times'
1974-79
The Evans kids grow up in the Chicago projects – keeping their heads above water, making a wave when they can. They remain one of the most relatable TV families ever, from the 1970s boom for superfly black sitcoms that also gave us Sanford & Son and What's Happening!! Good Times had the dy-no-mite Jimmie "J.J." Walker, long-suffering mama Esther Rolle ("Damn, damn, damn!") and black-power little bro Michael, surely the first kid on TV to get sent home from school for calling George Washington a slave owner.
85. 'The Real World'
1992-Present
This MTV petri dish hatched the reality-TV virus that soon swept the airwaves. The Real World was hugely influential as soon as it debuted in 1992, bringing together an apartment full of strangers to fight, cry and jump into bed, with the promise "This is what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real." (In 1992, not being polite meant ignoring a ringing landline – those were different times.)
84. 'Real Time With Bill Maher'
2003-Present
For the past 20 years or so, Bill Maher has been one of the most reliably caustic political wits out there, managing to piss off new enemies every time the regime changes, with his unfiltered attacks on religion ("New rule: If churches don't have to pay taxes, they also can't call the fire department"), military spending ("We waste 20 percent of our budget basically fighting Russia in 1978") and every other brand of sanctimonious bullshit.
83. 'House of Cards'
2013-Present
This Netflix political thriller puts the newfangled concept of "binge-watching" front and center – thanks to Kevin Spacey's magnificently slimy performance as Frank Underwood, a murderous D.C. politician whose soliloquies are so compelling, there is no way you can stop with just one.
82. 'The Jeffersons'
1975-85
Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford were the coolest customers on the block, a couple who were ruthlessly sarcastic yet perfectly matched. George and Weezy moved on up to their deluxe apartment in the sky, but never lost their street swagger. Originally the Bunkers' neighbors on All in the Family, they got 10 times funnier on their own.
81. 'Dallas'
1978-91
Sue Ellen Ewing: "Tell me, J.R., which slut are you gonna stay with tonight?" J.R.: "Whoever she is, she's gotta be more interesting than the slut I'm looking at right now." Truly a marriage made in TV heaven. This sex-and-money blockbuster chronicled the spectacularly evil Ewings and their Texas oil empire, led by Larry Hagman's J.R. Dallas invented the prime-time soap tropes for family sagas from The Sopranos to Empire – as Hagman said proudly, "Even the mother was bad."
80. 'The Fugitive'
1963-67
Dr. Richard Kimble got falsely convicted of murdering his wife – but after he broke loose, he went hunting for the real killer. The finale was a historic ratings smash as the whole country tuned in to see him catch the one-armed man.
79. 'In Living Color'
1990-94
Keenan Ivory Wayans blew the roof off with this hit, bringing a hip-hop sensibility to sketch comedy. In Living Color had Homey the clown ("Homey don't play that"), the World's Hardest-Working West Indian Family ("I have 15 jobs!" "You lazy lima bean!") and a rubber-faced token white guy then-called James Carrey. (Whatever happened to him?)
78. 'Thirtysomething'
1987-91
The ultimate yuppies-in-love drama, as ad execs and their wives reckon with parenthood, marriage, work and real estate. Thirtysomething's white-collar suburbanites climbed the corporate ladder, looking for ways they could live with their compromises both at work and at home.
77. 'The Walking Dead'
2010-Present
The zombie apocalypse to end all zombie apocalypses, based on the Robert Kirkman cult comic book. AMC's The Walking Dead is a monster hit in every sense of the word, with a band of humans battling to survive the onslaught of the undead walkers, featuring some of the small screen's most viscerally repulsive violence.
76. 'Late Night With Conan O’Brien'
1993-2009
When a redheaded nobody named Conan was announced as the successor to Letterman, everyone assumed his talk show would bomb even faster than Chevy Chase's. But over the years, nobody could touch Conan for sheer comic velocity and masturbating-bear-worthy weirdness. Even now, exiled to TBS, Conan continues to give the world Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, which would be enough to seal his legend.
75. 'American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson'
2016
Even after all Ryan Murphy has achieved, he proved he's still peaking with a 10-part miniseries of the O.J. murder case. With out-of-nowhere career performances from John Travolta, Sarah Paulson and David Schwimmer, it made the ultimate made-for-TV trial disturbing all over again.
74. 'The Ren & Stimpy Show'
1991-95
In the post-Simpsons days, when everybody was watching to see where the next great animated comedy was coming from, it turned out to be John Kricfalusi's Nickelodeon toon about this lovable duo – a high-strung Chihuahua and his loyal cat pal. Happy happy, joy joy.
73. 'Transparent'
2014-Present
Jill Soloway's painfully compassionate drama was like nothing else the screen had seen before – and remains that way, with Jeffrey Tambor as the patriarch-unto-matriarch of a bitterly estranged family, transitioning from Mort to Maura on sheer nerve. Transparent hits emotional notes on every level – who can forget the Trans Got Talent show where Maura sings "Somebody That I Used to Know" to the empty chairs she reserved for her kids? Sing on, Maura.
72. 'Girls'
2012-Present
Lena Dunham aspired to be the voice of her generation – or at least a voice of a generation – with this unflinching HBO sitcom about a quartet of acid-tongued young women failing their way through their twenties, striking out at relationships, rehab, careers, school and basically everything else they attempt.
71. 'Mr. Show'
1995-98
What completely bizarre careers Bob Odenkirk and David Cross have had – and how bizarre that we first met them as the duo behind this wild-ass HBO cult sketch show, always erratic but often astounding, with future stars like Sarah Silverman in the crew. They excelled at high-concept stunts like their Jesus Christ Superstar parody, with Jack Black as the hippie messiah, or the gay metal band Wyckyd Sceptre. Best line: "I'm not talking to clouds on a sunny day!"
70. 'Roseanne'
1988-97
The lights go out. The Conner family just got their electricity cut off because they can't pay the bill. Out of the darkness, Roseanne's voice: "Well, middle class was fun." Roseanne came as a blast of Midwestern blue-collar grit that made all other Eighties sitcoms look like contemptible fluff as soon as it dropped. She was the unsaintly matriarch of this struggling heartland family, with biker husband John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf as her hard-luck sister, Jackie. Roseanne carried the torch during a truly wretched time for network comedies.
69. 'The Ed Sullivan Show'
1948-71
The Ed Sullivan Show aired live on Sunday nights as America's big showbiz variety fest, presided over by a granite-faced host who didn't look more than a century or two old. Sullivan gave the Beatles their big U.S. debut, breaking ratings records in 1964 when 73 million Americans tuned in to see the moptops do "She Loves You." He was also the guy who censored Elvis from the waist down and ordered the Stones to change "Let's spend the night together" to "Let's spend some time together," which may help explain why he finally went off the air in 1971.
68. 'The State'
1993-95
The MTV comedy show was a whiff of youthful arrogance in the early Nineties, with 11 college wise-asses running wild in manic sketches about monkey torture, Muppet-eating and the mailman who only delivers tacos. After three years on MTV, they jumped to a network – and got destroyed amid the corporate machinery. But their cult kept growing, especially after they masterminded Wet Hot American Summer.
67. 'The Odd Couple'
1970-75
Tony Randall was neurotic neat-freak Felix; Jack Klugman was cigar-chomping sportswriter slob Oscar. Thrown out by their wives, they shared a Park Avenue bachelor pad, taking out all their midlife male angst on each other. Though based on Neil Simon's play, it worked even better in sitcom form, thanks to Randall and Klugman's negative chemistry and that perky theme song – their dance on a Central Park lawn is one of the truly romantic visions of New York.
66. 'Downton Abbey'
2011-16
Welcome to the aristocratic English countryside circa 1912, where Julian Fellowes' Crawley family acts out the decline and fall of the British Empire, from the bed-hopping elites to the downstairs schemes of the servants. Dame Maggie Smith steals the show as the delightfully nasty shade queen Dowager Countess, who does a better job than anyone else here at pretending the world isn't changing. Her best line: "What is a 'weekend'?"
65. 'Happy Days'
1974-84
R.I.P. to the late, great Garry Marshall. The sitcom maestro's opus was this 1970s hit set in the 1950s, with Henry Winkler as the Fonz, the leather-boy greaser who ruled Arnold's Drive-In with his nerd pals Richie, Potsie and Ralph Malph. It's easy to forget the Fonz had a dark introspective side – best seen in the surprisingly harsh episode where he stars in Richie's production of Hamlet ("I thought a couple of times about whether I wanted 'to be or not'"). Happy Days gave us Scott Baio as the Fonz's douche cousin Chachi, but that can be forgiven, as can the time Fonzie got on water skis for an aquatic stunt that invented the concept of "jumping the shark."
64. 'Chappelle’s Show'
2003-06
Comedy – it's a hell of a drug. Dave Chappelle was an electric madman genius who defied any attempt to predict his next move – sometimes his Comedy Central show was brilliant, sometimes it was crap, and he eventually decided it wasn't worth the money or the trouble. But it sent shock waves through pop culture, whether Chappelle was immortalizing Charlie Murphy's memories of Rick James ("He is a habitual line-stepper") and Prince ("This bores me") or playing the world's only blind black white supremacist. It's a celebration, bitches!
63. 'The Wonder Years'
1988-93
Timed perfectly for the late Eighties, The Wonder Years depicted the childhood of baby boomers in the most nostalgic terms, as Fred Savage's Kevin Arnold grew up in 1960s suburbia and learned about life from the girl next door, Winnie Cooper – played by future mathematician Danica McKellar.
62. 'Sex and the City'
1998-2004
Or The Golden Girls: The Early Years. This shoe-porn Manhattan fantasy was ubiquitous, to the point where Jay Z could rap that Beyoncé wouldn't talk to him when Sex and the City was on. Nothing could stop fans from feeling the Carrie fever, as Sarah Jessica Parker and her clique – Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis, Kim Cattrall – date, shop and quip their way through a borough full of rich straight guys, eventually realizing their only true soulmates are one another. And maybe also Manolo Blahnik.
61. 'Your Show of Shows'
1950-57
Sid Caesar perfected the sketch-comedy format in the Fifties, with legends like Carl Reiner and Imogene Coca. When Nanette Fabray replaced Coca in 1954, the title changed to Caesar's Hour, but the spirit remained the same. His writers' room broke in hungry young rookies like Mel Brooks, Neil Simon and Woody Allen. Flights like the 1955 opera Gallipacci still look fresh – especially when the manic Caesar whimpers "Just One of Those Things," in clown drag, blubbering in pure faux-Italian gibberish. Indescribably moving, not to mention seriously fucked up.
60. 'Beavis and Butt-Head'
1993-97, 2011
Mike Judge captured the spirit of American adolescence, epitomized by two cartoon butt-munches who live for metal, nachos and breakin' the law (or at least putting poodles in the washing machine). It was liberating how cheap and crummy the animation looked, compared with the sophisticated rococo of The Simpsons or Ren & Stimpy, but Beavis and Butt-Head spoke their own kind of trash poetry, whether they were heckling MTV ("Stop in the name of all which does not suck!") or looking for wholesome fun: "This sucks. Let's go over to Stewart's house and burn something." And they hung with Daria, who got her own classic show. Kids, do try this at home.
59. 'Hill Street Blues'
1981-87
A police show too adult to ever get much traction in the ratings but cherished at a time when network dramas were the pits. These cops were troubled people dealing with moral conflicts, urban corruption and their messy personal lives. Precinct captain Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti) and public defender Joyce Davenport (Veronica Hamel) were secretly an item after hours – it was racy stuff in the Eighties to show an unmarried couple who liked to share a bathtub. So many landmark dramas came out of this precinct – the writers included everyone from Law & Order's Dick Wolf to Deadwood's David Milch, not to mention producer Steve Bochco.
58. 'Roots'
1977
Roots ran for only eight episodes, but it changed the way America saw its own history – the topic of slavery was an unspeakable taboo in U.S. culture until this miniseries brought the horrifying details to life. Roots set ratings records in January 1977 – a 100 million Americans tuned in live as it followed Alex Haley's family history from Africa to the slave ship to the plantation, without any attempt to water down the violence for mainstream appeal.
57. 'Fawlty Towers'
1975-79
John Cleese based this most horrible of hotel owners on a resort where the Monty Python gang once stayed. Basil Fawlty is the nastiest piece of work Cleese has ever played – one of his most famous scenes features him snarling at a nun. But nobody infuriates him like his customers, especially the one inconsiderate enough to die in his room. "It does actually say 'hotel' outside, you know. Perhaps I should be more specific: 'Hotel for people who have a better than 50 percent chance of making it through the night.'"
56. '24'
2001-10
Can Agent Jack Bauer save our nation? This adrenaline thriller starred Kiefer Sutherland as the Counter Terrorism Unit's most lethal weapon, leaving no principle of civil liberties unviolated in a cloud of ass-kicking and CGI effects. It also had that innovative real-time structure, each season another 24-hour crisis point and each episode another hour of Jack racing the clock.
55. 'Six Feet Under'
2001-05
A California family with a funeral home to run – which means that mortality and grief are never far from anyone's mind. Every episode of Six Feet Under opened with a disturbing (or comic, or both) death scene. Alan Ball's dark yet tender HBO drama explored new terrain, and the closing episodes helped innovate the idea that a series finale should be an artistic epitaph, rather than just a death rattle.
54. 'The Muppet Show'
1976-81
Jim Henson's Muppets became a global phenomenon in the 1970s – a hit only Statler and Waldorf could hate, starring Kermit, the Great Gonzo, the Tom Waits-esque piano dog Rowlf, the Swedish Chef, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and everybody's favorite, Beaker. (Meeeep!) The jokes were nonstop corn – "Fozzie, what are you carrying that fish for?" "Oh, just for the halibut" – with one-shot guests like Marvin Suggs and His All-Food Glee Club. Full of unforgettable music moments too, like Elton John doing "Crocodile Rock" with a choir of gators or Animal mangling the drums to "Wild Thing." Thanks to these characters, the gentle hippie spirit of Henson lives on forever. Play us out, Animal.
53. 'The Bob Newhart Show'
1972-78
Newhart was already a comedy legend for his brilliant 1960s stand-up monologues – his albums routinely topped the charts. His button-down mind seemed too dry and cerebral for TV, but he hit the jackpot as a Chicago psychologist seeing one nut case after another – perfect for Newhart's unflappable deadpan. He could get laughs just clearing his throat. (Nobody ever was a throat-clearing virtuoso like this man.) Suzanne Pleshette was his wife – in one of the Seventies' most enduringly hot TV marriages.
52. 'The Colbert Report'
2005-14
"Anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you." With that mission statement, Daily Show correspondent Stephen Colbert set off on a whole new approach to fake news, playing a character named "Stephen Colbert" who happened to be a conservative twit, dedicated to the principle of "truthiness" and pushing the slogan "Blame America Last." "We want people to be in pain and confused," he told Rolling Stone in 2006. "I have no problem making things up, because I have no credibility to lose." The Colbert Report remains sorely missed, especially in an election year like this one.
51. 'Fargo'
2014-Present
Well, this was an obviously terrible idea – turning the Coen brothers' classic true-crime film into an FX series. Anybody could have told FX Fargo would never work. Yet Noah Hawley proved that terrible ideas often hold the seeds of greatness. The first season was a welcome surprise, but the real killer was the next chapter, one of the best seasons any drama has ever had, a small-town gangster tale involving state trooper Patrick Wilson, desperate housewife Kirsten Dunst and Bruce Campbell as the real-life Ronald Reagan.
50. 'ER'
1994-2009
The hospital drama to put all others on the DNR list, ER blew up in the early Nineties, making stars out of Julianna Margulies and the previously obscure George Clooney, until then best known as the big-hair hunk teacher from The Facts of Life. But the real surprise was how ER kept thriving, replacing all its original stars yet remaining itself for 15 years, with hour after hour of life, death and romance amid the scrubs.
49. 'Taxi'
1978-83
It seemed like an unlikely idea for a hit – a bunch of depressive taxi drivers working the night shift, trying not to think about the rotten disappointments that got them stuck at the Sunshine Cab Company. But Taxi hit pay dirt because it had warmth, as these losers bonded together – Andy Kaufman's babbling naif, Christopher Lloyd's wacked-out hippie, Tony Danza's meatball, Judd Hirsch's cynic. And Danny DeVito suddenly became a star playing a larger-than-life monster as the drunken dispatcher Louie De Palma.
48. 'The Office (U.S.)'
2005-13
Nobody expected this to be more than yet another example of a U.S. network trying to rip off an edgy Brit-com and getting it all wrong. Except, with Steve Carell as the world's worst boss, it turned out to be a groundbreaking and original comedy in its own right, with a dream team of eccentric employees lost in the cubicles of Dunder-Mifflin. It was looser, riskier and more ambitious than the U.K. version, not to mention warmer – Carell's Michael Scott wasn't hateful, just a moron – with a cast including Rainn Wilson's Dwight ("Through concentration, I can raise and lower my cholesterol at will"), Mindy Kaling's Kelly and the ever-bilious Creed Bratton. (Let's just pretend those last two post-Carell seasons never happened, OK?)
47. 'The Rockford Files'
1974-80
James Garner was a new breed of TV detective – a small-time P.I. who got stuck with the loser cases nobody else wanted, living in a Malibu trailer with his elderly dad. Rockford didn't exactly live the glamorous life: He was an ex-con wisecrack machine who had done hard time in San Quentin, now scraping by as a freelancer while routinely getting his ass kicked or getting stiffed on his fee. But thanks to Garner, he always got by on a superhuman supply of cocky charm.
46. 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'
1970-77
Hail Mary: the ultimate template for how to make comedy gold out of being a grown-up neurotic making it on your own in the big city. She worked in a Minneapolis TV newsroom full of cranks like Ted Knight's windbag anchorman and Ed Asner's hard-drinking boss, Lou Grant. ("I haven't been this mad at anybody since 1944." "Did anything much happen?" "I captured a town in Germany.") Revolutionary at the time, blasé about sex and birth control, it also pioneered the all-too-rare concept of going out on top – it signed off in 1977, a massive hit to the end. Every sitcom still steals from MTM, but Moore's heart and soul remain one of a kind.
45. 'Battlestar Galactica'
2003-09
The 1970s original was a promising but failed sci-fi franchise, one of many the networks rushed out in the wake of Star Wars. But Ronald D. Moore's version was the rare reboot that topped the original, with a space colony of humans escaping the Cylons and searching for a home somewhere in the universe – maybe this planet they've heard about called Earth. Edward James Olmos is the commander who leads the way; Mary McDonnell is the president with a very different vision of this society. And Katee Sackhoff's Starbuck remains one of the most badass frakking action heroes ever. So say we all.
44. 'Columbo'
1971-78
Peter Falk's cheap detective was the coolest TV cop of the Seventies. With all due respect to Kojak, Baretta, Starsky, Hutch and all six of Charlie's Angels, it was Lt. Columbo who snagged the cover of Rolling Stone. John Cassavetes sidekick Falk hit the streets as a rumpled dirtbag in a trench coat, always mumbling and asking for a pencil, walking away from the bad guy at the end but then turning around with one of his crazy grins to say, "Oh, wait – just one more thing." He's always the underdog, but that's how he plays his mind games on all the smug L.A. high-society types who make the fatal mistake of thinking he's an idiot.
43. 'The Americans'
2013-Present
There's never been a TV marriage like this one: Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys play a pair of deep-cover Russian spies living in the D.C. suburbs in the early 1980s. They pretend to be a nice, normal, happy American couple – except these two do things like kill a hit man to the strains of "Tainted Love." The FX masterwork is both a taut espionage thriller and a bleakly intimate marital drama – as if leading double lives full of deceit and betrayal makes this couple real Americans after all.
42. 'NYPD Blue'
1993-2005
Nearly a decade after Hill Street Blues, Steven Bochco raised the ante for down-and-dirty police realism. The 15th Precinct was home to hard-boiled detectives brought to life by the likes of Jimmy Smits, Amy Brenneman and David Caruso. Dennis Franz's Detective Sipowicz was a foulmouthed alcoholic racist bully – and he was the most sympathetic cop here.
41. 'The Honeymooners'
1955-56
One of the founding Fifties comedies, spun off as a sketch from Jackie Gleason's hit variety show, about Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden and his put-upon wife, Alice, played by Audrey Meadows. No Father Knows Best here – this was brutalist blue-collar city life. It was the template for every sitcom marriage between a boorish slob and a tsk-tsking shrew, with Ralph shouting threats ("To the moon, Alice!") and Art Carney as his dimwitted pal Ed Norton.
40. 'The Shield'
2002-08
The first time we meet Vic Mackey, he's shooting a fellow cop in the face – to stop him from ratting on what a sleazebag Vic is. Like his captain says in the premiere, "He's Al Capone with a badge." Michael Chiklis created one of TV's most fearsome cops in Mackey, a dirty detective with plenty of street smarts but barely any scruples. Shawn Ryan's FX drama followed Vic through seven seasons of murder, drug dealing and torture, with a hell of an endgame.
39. 'Lost'
2004-10
A cosmic mystery trip so complex nobody has ever quite figured it all out – a band of castaways trapped on an island after the crash of Oceanic Flight 815, with a smoke monster and the enigmatic group called the Others, multiple timelines, the Seventies backstory of the Dharma Initiative, each episode crammed with clues to be argued over for years to come. Lost proved there was a broad audience out there who wanted their TV to be more unpredictable and challenging, not less – and TV would never be the same.
38. 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'
1997-2003
Sarah Michelle Gellar created a supernatural feminist avenger in Joss Whedon's saga of Buffy, the California girl who finds herself by kicking vampire ass. On Buffy, surviving adolescence and fighting off the undead forces of evil turn out to be the same thing. And the musical episode – "Once More, With Feeling" – is a classic in itself.
37. 'Orange Is the New Black'
2013-Present
When Jenji Kohan's women's-prison drama started, there was no real way of knowing it would remain great after four years – in fact, the brilliance of the first season looked like a fluke. But it keeps getting better – the recent fourth season is the most intense yet. No other drama can match this ensemble, as actresses like Uzo Aduba, Jessica Pimentel, Danielle Brooks and Samira Wiley go deep on these characters and the heart-shredding stories that brought them here.
36. 'Law & Order'
1990-2010
Dick Wolf's long-, long-, long-running procedural created its own formula – gruesomely violent crimes ripped from the headlines, clock-punching cops, idealistic lawyers, stern judges who bang the gavel and say "I'll allow it," each character a different cog in the crime-solving machine until the trial scene at the end. All of its different incarnations, from Logan and Briscoe to Benson and Stabler, just proved what a rich formula it was, not to mention a chance for countless aspiring NYC actors to get their first real taste of catering.
35. 'My So-Called Life'
"Ignore Angela. She can't help herself – she's the product of a two-parent household." Claire Danes became a teen-angst heroine with this high school classic, so ahead of its time it got axed after one season. The World Happiness Dance episode – where two lost and lonely kids find a moment of disco redemption together – might be the Nineties' most emo hour of TV, which may explain why some of us out here still get a little dusty whenever we hear Haddaway's "What Is Love."
34. '30 Rock'
2006-13
Alec Baldwin said it best: "You are truly the Picasso of loneliness." He has a point. Tina Fey's Liz Lemon is a single gal who spends her evenings playing Monopoly alone, working on her night cheese or watching the Lifetime movie My Stepson Is My Cyber-Husband. But Fey made her a timeless heroine, turning her SNL writers-room experience into the backstage antics at The Girlie Show, with a crazy-deep bench that included Tracy Morgan, Jane Krakowski and Jack McBrayer. And Baldwin chewed up the role of his life, turning what could have been a generic sitcom boss into the only man worthy to stand by Lemon.
33. 'South Park'
1997-Present
Trey Parker and Matt Stone touched America somewhere deep and special, and you must respect their authori-teh. Year after year, this cartoon began, Matt Stone told Rolling Stone, "We would view success as finally getting to the point where we get canceled because no one gets it." So here's to nearly 20 years of failure – and hopefully 20 more.
32. 'I Love Lucy'
1951-57
The adventures of real-life Hollywood couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz – he was Cuban bandleader Ricky Ricardo, and she was the daffy redhead housewife as slapstick queen. They were TV's premier married couple, in an era when the network would only let them sleep in separate beds – and awaited the real-life arrival of Little Ricky without allowing anyone to utter the word "pregnant" on the air.
31. 'Sesame Street'
1969-Present
No kiddie show has ever been as fiercely beloved as this urban utopian fantasy, set in a brownstone neighborhood populated by a multiracial cast of smiling adults, a gigantic yellow bird, a grouch in a garbage can, and math-loving vampires, plus countless talking letters and numbers. It has great songs, but most important, Sesame has soul, which is why the air has stayed sweet for 40 years – or as the Count would say, 45! 46! 47 years!
30. 'The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson'
1962-92
Heeeeeeere's Johnny! There's a reason Carson remains the template for every late-night host, after ruling The Tonight Show for three decades. Like a TV answer to Frank Sinatra, he epitomized Rat Pack cool, and his monologues were a soundtrack to generations of Americans boozing themselves to slumber every night. Nearly 25 years after he signed off (and more than 10 years after he died), Carson's the ghost king who still haunts late night. When he abdicated in 1992, Letterman and Jay Leno began battling for his throne and somehow never quit. (In his final show, Letterman cracked, "It looks like I'm not going to get The Tonight Show.")
29. 'Monty Python's Flying Circus'
1969-74
And now for something completely different. The perfect comedy cocktail – five British intellectuals and a token American clod, Terry Gilliam, running amok on the BBC. Monty Python were the Beatles of comedy, each one an indispensable element in the chemistry, from John Cleese's spluttering rage to Eric Idle's pointed-stick wordplay. The Pythons were godfathers to all ambitious jokers who followed – Lorne Michaels and Chevy Chase met in line for a Holy Grail screening. But these 45 episodes remain the comedic equivalent of Mount Everest: forbidding, aloof, terrifying, the mountain with the biggest tits in the world.
28. 'The X-Files'
1993-2002, 2016
Oh, the Nineties – when our scariest worry about the government was its plot to cover up alien abductions. Chris Carter created a whole sci-fi mythology with The X-Files. All of the sinister conspiracies in the universe aren't as tough as the loyal bond between two FBI agents: David Duchovny's Mulder (he wanted to believe) and Gillian Anderson's Scully (she didn't). X-Files invented a new kind of TV fan for the online-message-board era, alternating between "monster of the week" and the overall arc, but always throwing in geek details for the hardcore devotees. And their archenemy: the Smoking Man, William B. Davis, the marvelously evil bureaucrat lurking in the shadows of every conspiracy from the JFK assassination to rigging the Super Bowl.
27. 'Arrested Development'
2003-06, 2013
Mitch Hurwitz's absurdist tale of the Bluth family seemed too far out to survive in the network wasteland. Yet it managed to last three seasons on Fox (and then a 2013 Netflix reboot) without losing its kinks, thanks to Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, David Cross and Henry Winkler as the family lawyer. It reaches odd emotional heights, as when Jeffrey Tambor hides in the attic to spy on his own funeral while Portia de Rossi honors his memory: "You know what? I'm gonna throw on a skirt, take off my underwear and make your Pop-Pop proud!"
26. 'Friends'
1994-2004
A group of twenty-somethings in New York sit around complaining about their day jobs, their sex lives, their screwed-up families. It's a formula countless sitcoms tried to get right over the years (nice try, Herman's Head), but it took the Central Perk crew to get the right mix of personalities, from Lisa Kudrow's flaky folk singer to the schlub-fox romance of David Schwimmer's Ross and Jennifer Aniston's Rachel. Even at the time, it was ridiculous how huge and luxurious Monica's West Village apartment was, and the story line where she's banging Tom Selleck just gets more stomach-turning the longer Blue Bloods stays on the air.
25. 'Veep'
2012-Present
Julia Louis-Dreyfus presides over the Oval Office in HBO's political satire, still getting more horrifyingly brilliant with each season. Her President Selina Meyer is one of the truly great monsters in TV history, a politician you can count on to say things like "You're gonna cancel this recount like Anne Frank's bat mitzvah." Each episode is a warp-speed blast of insults, many aimed at Timothy Simons' delectably loathsome aide, Jonah. ("How am I doing? Eating so much pussy I'm shitting clits, son.") Veep's peak for sheer gall might be the "Testimony" episode, a frantic half-hour when almost every line of dialogue is perjury. Four more years, please.
24. 'Friday Night Lights'
2006-11
"Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose" is the golden rule in a dusty Texas town where everyone lives and dies for the high school football team. But Friday Night Lights isn't really about football so much as family, work, class, the bitter taste of dashed dreams, with Kyle Chandler as Coach Taylor, Connie Britton as wife Tami and Taylor Kitsch as Tim Riggins – the most memorable of the many vulnerable kids who pass through the Panthers' locker room. Riggins' story becomes especially moving after his gridiron glory fades and real life beats him down.
23. 'Deadwood'
2004-06
Al Swearengen's moral philosophy: "You can't cut the throat of every cocksucker whose character it would improve." Spoken like a true Founding Father. He's the villain of David Milch's epic Western set in the mud and slime of an 1870s South Dakota gold-mining camp. At the center of it all (i.e., the saloon), Ian McShane's Al glowers, pours drinks, counts money and slices jugulars, in a frontier hellhole full of prospectors, whores, drunks and lost freaks looking for one last fatal fight to get into (and often finding it at Al's place). It was like McCabe & Mrs. Miller with more depressing sex scenes. The first two seasons are solid gold, the third, flimsier, but Deadwood is about how communities get built – and all the dirty work that involves.
22. 'Louie'
2010-Present
Louis C.K.'s stubbornly auteurist FX sitcom doesn't look or feel like anything else on TV – he writes, directs and stars as himself, a single-dad stand-up comic in New York. If Louie wants to show himself in the car air-drumming to "Who Are You?" and mortifying his daughters, he goes for it. If he wants to abandon the half-hour comedy format entirely for an extended indie-film vibe with Charles Grodin and Ellen Burstyn, he does that too. Louis C.K. may disappear into his own head for entire seasons, but he also hits totally original emotional peaks like the one when he travels to Miami and accidentally makes a male friend. (No, it doesn't last.)
21. 'The Office (U.K.)'
2001-03
Ricky Gervais created one of TV's most agonizing comic tyrants in David Brent – a bitter, awkward, pompous ball of vanities terrorizing his employees at a London paper company. He fidgets, fondles his tie, cracks awful jokes, plays guitar ("Free Love Freeway"!), invisible to anyone except the long-suffering office drones who have to put up with him. This mockumentary raised the cringe level of sitcoms everywhere, spawning the surprisingly great U.S. version (also on this list) while paving the way for the glories of Parks & Recreation and Peep Show.
20. 'Cheers'
1982-93
You need a place where everybody knows your name – even if it's just a dive bar in Boston full of regulars with no place else to go. Cheers started with a focus on the mismatched romantic banter between Ted Danson's washed-up Red Sox pitcher Sam and Shelley Long's uptight bookworm Diane. ("Over my dead body!" "Hey, don't bring last night into this.") But it regularly renewed itself by bringing in new blood like Woody Harrelson, Kirstie Alley and Kelsey Grammer. Cheers was like that bar, to the point where you could tune in just to see which regulars would hang with you tonight.
19. 'Curb Your Enthusiasm'
2000-Present
The master misanthrope behind Seinfeld goes to L.A., where all the sunshine on his bald pate just makes him more miserable. We thought we already knew Larry David via his Seinfeld be the most painful-to-witness tryst of Larry's abysmal career as a single guy. Who can forget Larry cringing under his Palestinian sex goddess as she snarls, "I'm going to fuck the Jew out of you"? From religion to race, from the mock Seinfeld reunion to the burning ethical dilemma of whether men should wear shorts on airplanes, Larry is always there to make every awkward situation worse.
18. 'Star Trek'
1966-69
The Starship Enterprise took off with a five-year mission: "To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations," and it succeeded in creating the most beloved of sci-fi franchises, not just inspiring countless spinoffs but also codifying fan fiction as an art form. Gene Roddenberry's original series remains the foundation, with William Shatner's awesomely pulpy Capt. Kirk, Leonard Nimoy's logical Mr. Spock, Bones, Sulu, Uhura and Scotty. They make contact with bizarre and inexplicable life-forms – Romulans, Gorns, Joan Collins. During its three years, Star Trek suffered from low ratings until NBC pulled the plug, but thanks to the most doggedly loyal of TV cults (remember when "Trekkie" was an insult?), Roddenberry's vision lives long and prospers to this day.
17. 'Twin Peaks'
1990-91
"These girls are authentically dreamy," Twin Peaks auteur David Lynch told Rolling Stone in 1990. "They're all just boss chicks. And they're just jampacked with secrets." The small town of Twin Peaks is full of these women and their deadly secrets, from murdered high school homecoming queen Laura Palmer to alive-and-how seductress Audrey Horne. A few years after Blue Velvet, Lynch's surreal Pacific Northwest mystery followed Kyle MacLachlan as FBI agent Dale Cooper, on a quest for damn-good coffee as well as the solution to the murder of Palmer.
16. 'M*A*S*H'
1972-83
The Korean War show that lasted three times as long as the Korean War, taking off from the revolutionary 1970 Robert Altman comedy, as the doctors and nurses of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital wait for the next chopper with the next crop of wounded grunts requiring "meatball surgery." M*A*S*H began as a gritty comedy, with Alan Alda's Hawkeye and the rest of the staff trying to keep their sense of humor alive amid the daily carnage with booze, sex and hijinks. It evolved into a solemn (if sometimes preachy) meditation on the futility of war. The finale was seen by more than 120 million and remains one of the most-watched TV events of all time.
15. 'The West Wing'
1999-2006
Aaron Sorkin gave America the leader we didn't quite deserve in Martin Sheen's benevolent President Jed Bartlet, a high-toned Catholic professor from New Hampshire. Premiering in the fall of 1999, The West Wing played like a Bubba-era fantasy of how the political future would look (like if the Democrats had a little more courage, or if the Republicans had a principle or two) that soon turned out to be utterly out of step with the Bush-Cheney years. But Sorkin's trademark rapid-fire dialogue and the Bartlet administration's idealism made this a welcome parallel universe.
14. 'The Larry Sanders Show'
1992-98
The late, great Garry Shandling could have taken over as host of The Tonight Show – but instead he starred in his own nightmare fictional version. As Larry Sanders, he played a showbiz monster whose loathing for all forms of humanity (especially himself) left him no choice but to make small talk with strangers behind the desk of his late-night chatfest. Larry Sanders debuted on HBO in 1992 with a whole new look – single camera, no laugh track, a constant stream of bile and abuse – and became a word-of-mouth hit. Larry always had the biggest ego in the room, but he had competition from Rip Torn's producer Artie and Jeffrey Tambor's pitiful sidekick, Hank. Countless comedy legends cut their teeth here – Judd Apatow, Sarah Silverman, Bob Odenkirk, Janeane Garofalo and Dave Chappelle for starters.
13. 'Late Night With David Letterman'
1982-2015
A failed Indiana weatherman takes over the graveyard shift after Johnny Carson and completely changes the way America sees itself. Letterman brought weirdos to the tube like we'd never seen before – from Larry "Bud" Melman to Harvey Pekar, from Peewee Herman to Sandra Bernhard, from R.E.M. to Andy Kaufman. Not to mention Paul Shaffer, the indispensable piano man. Letterman was a connoisseur of American eccentrics without ever pretending to be one himself, and a master interviewer, especially when he was up against a fellow curmudgeon, like when Cher called him an "asshole." (She was right, and thank God for that.) When Letterman made the move to CBS' Late Show in 1993, he changed titles and time slots, but kept that same acerbic spirit alive – especially in his magnificent final weeks, as he broke down the statistics: "33 years, 6,028 shows, eight minutes of laughter." We'll never see his like again.
12. 'Game of Thrones'
2011-Present
The night is dark and full of terrors, especially on Sundays when Game of Thrones is on. With its premise of "The Sopranos in Middle-earth," it's the HBO fantasy series that broke through genre boundaries to stake its claim as one of the most compellingly realistic dramas on the air, going beyond George R.R. Martin's books. It might grab attention with the nudity, the dragons and severed heads, but at heart it's a political thriller. As Martin told Rolling Stone, "History is written in blood, a gold mine – the kings, the princes, the generals and the whores, and all the betrayals and wars and confidences. It's better than 90 percent of what the fantasists do make up."
11. 'Freaks and Geeks'
1999-2000
A typically brilliant Freaks and Geeks moment: High school mathlete Lindsay takes her first puff of weed but gets busted by one of her fellow nerds, who tells her, "I know what high people look like. I went to a Seals and Crofts concert last summer!" Paul Feig and Judd Apatow truly captured the agonies of American adolescence in this intensely compassionate comedy, set in a Michigan town in 1980. It tragically lasted only one season, but all 18 episodes hit home, with a rock soundtrack and a cast of future legends. Martin Starr's Bill, Jason Segel's Nick, most of all Linda Cardellini's Lindsay – these are kids who don't fit in, craving a place they might belong, whether that's a Dungeons & Dragons game or a van following the Grateful Dead tour.
10. 'The Daily Show'
1996-Present
The fake news show that became more credible than the real news. Comedy Central began The Daily Show in 1996, but it hit its stride when Jon Stewart took over in 1999. The Daily Show got more politically abrasive as the news got progressively worse. Stewart had the rage of a man who'd signed on at the end of the Bill Clinton years, only to end up with an America much scarier and uglier than the one he bargained for, and the anger showed. "It's a comic box lined with sadness," he told Rolling Stone in 2006. While the franchise struggles on without him, Daily alumni John Oliver and Samantha Bee keep that hard-hitting spirit alive on their own shows.
9. 'All in the Family'
1971-79
What a shocker to see this hit TV in 1971, in the middle of the Nixon years – loudmouth bigot Archie Bunker, wife Edith, feminist daughter Gloria and her hippie husband, Mike, all under one roof in Queens, having the arguments real families had at the time. And it was Number One in the ratings every year because it didn't belittle its characters – as creator Norman Lear told Rolling Stone, "People were interested in seeing themselves very correctly." Carroll O'Connor gave Archie dignity and decency, even as he expressed opinions like "England is a fag country." All in the Family went where TV never dared before (racism, homophobia, abortions, gun control, premarital sex, religion) – everything was fair game. Those were the days.
8. 'Saturday Night Live'
1975-Present
Live from New York, it's Saturday night – more than 40 years after the Not Ready for Prime Time Players first reinvented comedy as rock & roll. As Lorne Michaels likes to say, "We don't go on because we're ready. We go on because it's 11:30." SNL keeps that electric-edge energy running, even if that means flopping for episodes or even entire seasons at a time. Everybody thought the classic 1970s cast – John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd – was too wild and crazy to replace. But noooo: SNL gave the world Eddie Murphy in the 1980s, Mike Myers and Chris Rock in the 1990s, Will Ferrell and Tina Fey in the 2000s, Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant today. People keep deciding this time it's really Saturday Night Dead, yet time after time it surges back. No other show has unleashed so many beautifully demented performers on the world.
7. 'The Twilight Zone'
1959-64
"This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone." Rod Serling's sci-fi anthology series is the opposite of a period piece – it can still blow your mind today, with Serling's gritty staccato introductions and a host of supernatural scenarios. The best Twilight Zone episodes looked for freakdom in the everyday: space invaders posing as hotrod greasers, suburban neighborhoods turning into hysterical mobs, grotesque death masks, talking dolls. Countless vignettes remain classics, from William Shatner staring out the airplane window and seeing a gremlin on the wing to Richard Kiel as the gigantic, smiling alien who arrives with the solutions to all Earth's problems – simply because he wants to serve man.
6. 'The Simpsons'
1989-Present
How has America's favorite cartoon family lasted this long? Because they're also America's realest family. Especially Homer, the doofus dad everybody fears turning into, nature's cruelest mistake: "And to think I turned to a cult for mindless happiness, when I had beer all along!" Or maybe especially Lisa, the sax-tooting voice of wisdom. Not to mention Apu, Krusty, Flanders, Monty Burns, Amanda Hugginkiss or any of the other unforgettable kooks who make Springfield just like your town, except funnier. As creator Matt Groening boasted to Rolling Stone in 2002, "Characters on our show drink, smoke, don't wear their seat belts, litter and fire guns. In this season's Halloween episode, there's probably more gunfire than in the entire history of The Sopranos."
5. 'Seinfeld'
1989-98
The show about nothing that blew up into the great American comedy. Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer: four friends who happen to be horrible people, in a New York full of soup Nazis, close talkers, anti-dentites, sponge baths, astronaut pens and lobster bisque. Even at the time, everybody could tell Seinfeld was the funniest sitcom we'd ever witness, a week-to-week miracle. But no matter how many times you've double-dipped into all 180 episodes, they keep luring you back like pretzels making you thirsty. Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David set the rules from the start – "No hugging, no learning." As Julia Louis-Dreyfus told Rolling Stone in 1998, "The reality is that these four characters are a pathetic group, and they should disassemble promptly. I mean, if you stand back from it and look at what happens every week, they do terrible things to one another. And yet they continue to hang out. It's sociopathic." Not that there's anything wrong with that.
4. 'Mad Men'
2007-15
The American dream and how to sell it – except for Don Draper and the hustlers of Sterling Cooper, selling is the American dream. Mad Men became a sensation as soon as it appeared, partly because of its glam surface – a New York ad agency in the JFK era, all sex and money and liquor and cigarettes – but mostly because it was an audaciously adult drama that wasn't about cops or robbers (or doctors or lawyers), staking out new storytelling territory. Jon Hamm's womanizing adman, Don, is a genius at shaping other people's dreams and fantasies, but he can't escape his own loneliness – he's a con man who stole the identity of a dead Korean War officer and built a new life out of lies. "A good advertising person is like an artist, channeling the culture," creator Matthew Weiner told Rolling Stone. "They're holding up a mirror saying, 'This is the way you wish you were. This is the thing you're afraid of.'" Don can reduce a room to tears pitching the Kodak Carousel, even though the happy family memories he's selling are a fraud. There was nothing on TV as seductive as Mad Men before – and years later, there still isn't.
3. 'Breaking Bad'
2008-13
Bryan Cranston, previously the dentist on Seinfeld and the lovable dad from Malcolm in the Middle, became a villain for the ages in Vince Gilligan's AMC noir. Walter White, a bitter high school chemistry teacher, gets terminal lung cancer and decides to provide for his kids by turning into New Mexico's premier crystal-meth chef. Unfortunately for his family, his victims and practically everyone he meets, he loves his new secret life as the killer drug lord Heisenberg. "I am not in danger, Skyler," he tells his wife. "I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks!" Yet he's so frightening because he's so ordinary – any American loser who gets a chance to act on his most criminal fantasies, which in Walter's case is just the chance to finally be good at something. That's what makes Breaking Bad as addictive as the Blue Sky that Walter cooks. The more Walt transforms into Heisenberg, the deeper he digs into the grim side of the American dream. After one spectacular killing involving a kamikaze wheelchair bomb, he calls his wife to report, "It's over. We're safe. I won." The tragic part is he believes it – but he's lost her as well as himself.
2. 'The Wire'
2002-08
You come at the king, you best not miss. Former reporter David Simon aimed high with his epic HBO tale of the drug game in Baltimore – building an entire city full of corrupt politicians, corner boys and cops who keep learning the biggest crime is "giving a fuck when it ain't your turn to give a fuck." Each season told a different story – the Barksdale gang in Season Three, the doomed school kids in Season Four. "After the first season, I thought, 'There's no way I'm being renewed,'" Simon told Rolling Stone. "But no one has told us to stop. I mean, any schmuck making over 50 hours of TV on what ails the American city and expecting people to watch it deserves what he gets."
The Wire gave us characters no one had seen before, from Idris Elba's menacing Stringer Bell to Robert F. Chew's endlessly quotable Proposition Joe. But Michael K. Williams created the ultimate badass with Omar, the shotgun-toting trench-coat avenger. As Joe told Omar, "A businessman such as myself does not believe in bad blood with a man such as yourself. Disturbs the sleep." So many unforgettable moments all over The Wire – Bunk and McNulty canvassing a murder scene with one word of dialogue; Omar explaining his grief to bow-tied hit man Brother Mouzone ("See, that boy was beautiful"); Avon and Stringer on a balcony toasting a future they know will never come; Slim Charles holding the church hat of "a bona fide colored lady." Yet there's a sense of heartbreak all through The Wire. The game wins – they all lose.
1. 'The Sopranos'
1999-2007
The crime saga that cut the history of TV in two, kicking off a golden age when suddenly anything seemed possible. With The Sopranos, David Chase smashed all the rules about how much you could get away with on the small screen. And he created an immortal American antihero in James Gandolfini's New Jersey Mob boss, Tony Soprano, presiding over a crew of gangsters who also double as damaged husbands and dads, men trying to live with their murderous secrets and dark memories. As the late, great Gandolfini told Rolling Stone in 2001, "I heard David Chase say one time that it's about people who lie to themselves, as we all do. Lying to ourselves on a daily basis and the mess it creates."
What an inspiring, terrifying mess it is. The Sopranos ran away with this poll because it changed the world. Chase showed how much storytelling ambition you could bring to television, and it didn't take long for everybody else to rise to his challenge. The breakthroughs of the next few years – The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad – couldn't have happened without The Sopranos kicking the door down. But Chase had a tough time convincing any network to take on a story about a guilt-crazed gangster who goes to therapy, while his mom plots to kill him. "We had no idea this show would appeal to people," he told Rolling Stone. "The show quite unexpectedly made such a splash that it screwed us all up." Somehow The Sopranos kept going for the long bomb over six masterful seasons on HBO with a wild mix of bloodshed and humor. When FBI agents tell Uncle Junior which mobsters they want him to finger, he says with a shrug, "I want to fuck Angie Dickinson – let's see who gets lucky first."
The Sopranos is full of broken characters who linger on in the long-term parking of our national imagination – Edie Falco's Carmela, Dominic Chianese's Junior, Michael Imperioli's Christopher, Tony Sirico's Paulie Walnuts. E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt became Tony's lieutenant Silvio – Chase spotted him on early Bruce Springsteen album covers. (As Chase told Rolling Stone, "There was something about the E Street Band that looked like a crew.") It wouldn't have been possible without Gandolfini's slow-burning intensity – he was the only actor who could bring Tony's angst to life. But all the writing, acting and directing went places TV had never reached before.
The Sopranos arguably hit its creative peak with the famous Pine Barrens episode, where Paulie Walnuts and Christopher get lost in the woods, knowing the Russian gangster they tried to whack is still out there in the darkness. They shiver in the cold. ("It's the fuckin' Yukon out there!") They wait. And worry. The Sopranos never solved this mystery – for all we know, the Russian is still at large, yet another secret these guys can't shake off. On The Sopranos, family loyalties flip, both in the streets and at home. Beloved characters can get whacked at any moment. It kept that sense of danger alive right up to the final seconds. And nearly a decade after it faded to black in a Jersey diner with the jukebox playing "Don't Stop Believin'," The Sopranos remains the standard all ambitious TV aspires to meet.
www.rollingstone.com/tv/lists/100-greatest-tv-shows-of-all-time-w439520/law-order-w439602?utm_source=aol&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=feb2017
By Rob Sheffield
September 21, 2016
There's never been a creative boom for TV like the one we are living through right now. Ever since The Sopranos changed the game at the turn of the century, we've been in a gold rush that gives no signs of slowing down. What better moment to look back and celebrate the greatest shows in the history of the art form?
So we undertook a major poll – actors, writers, producers, critics, showrunners. Legends like Carl Reiner and Garry Marshall, who sent us his ballot shortly before his death this summer. All shows from all eras were eligible; anybody could vote for whatever they felt passionate about, from the black-and-white rabbit-ears years to the binge-watching peak-TV era. The ratings didn't matter – only quality. The voters have spoken – and, damn, did they have some fierce opinions. On this list you'll find vintage classics and new favorites, ambitious psychodramas and stoner comedies, underrated cult gems ripe for rediscovery, cops and cartoons and vampire slayers. You'll find the groundbreaking creations of yesteryear as well as today's innovators. (There was nothing like Transparent or Orange Is the New Black or Game of Thrones a few years ago, but who could imagine this list without them?) Our list is guaranteed to start plenty of loud arguments – but the beauty of TV is how it keeps giving us so much to argue about.
100. 'Eastbound and Down'
2009-13
Danny McBride created a timeless American slob hero with the travails of Kenny Powers, a washed-up ballplayer who fought his way back to a trash redemption. Probably the only show in history with a fatal drug overdose set to "Walk Like an Egyptian." Testify, Kenny.
99. 'Oz'
1997-2003
The HBO prison drama was a searing exposé of life in maximum-security Oswald State Penitentiary: the shankings, the sexual abuse, the racial warfare. Brutally frank in its violence, Oz was too shocking for its time – and remains shocking years later.
98. 'The Golden Girls'
1985-92
Four sassy seniors share a party pad in Miami, where they romance the local gentlemen and share cheesecake on the lanai. All four Girls brought something special: Bea Arthur as cynical Dorothy, Betty White as sweet-but-stupid Rose, Rue McClanahan as sex bomb Blanche ("I'm jumpier than a virgin at a prison rodeo"), and Estelle Getty as the Sicilian avenging angel Sophia Petrillo, who summed it all up: "Sluts just heal quicker."
97. 'Portlandia'
2011-Present
Portlandia sure arrived with a bang – the opening song, "The Dream of the Nineties Is Alive in Portland," was an instant legend bit of boho-baiting satire. ("Portland is a place where young people go to retire!") But who could have guessed the genius duo of SNL vet Fred Armisen and Sleater-Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein could push Portlandia so far? Mocking the hipster aspirations of modern America is a topic that never runs out of comic juice for these two, whether it's pickle fetishes, artisanal shoelaces or the cult of kale.
96. 'Gunsmoke'
1955-75
Westerns were a staple of television's first half-century, with enduring sagebrush sagas from the Cartwrights of Bonanza to the Barkleys of The Big Valley. This Western lasted longer than any other drama of the pre-Law & Order era – 20 seasons – with James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon, pure frontier gravitas in a white hat.
95. 'Key & Peele'
2012-15
Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key aren't merely masterful comics – they're culture burglars breaking into taboo areas of racial stereotypes, gender politics, food, work and the erotics of ass-slapping. But their deadliest weapon was the way they hit hilarious insights on male neurosis, the topic they know best, as in their attention-getting sketch about the word (looks around nervously) "biiiiiitch." And Obama's Anger Translator might be one of the things we'll miss most about Obama.
94. 'Jeopardy'
1964-1975, 1984-Present
The longest-ruling, most ingeniously constructed, most endlessly playable quiz show of all time? What is Jeopardy!, Alex? Jeopardy! is the hardiest survivor from the old-school game shows (though many of us carry a torch for Charles Nelson Reilly-era Match Game and Paul Lynde-era Hollywood Squares), hosted by the dapper, though no longer mustachioed, Alex Trebek. You can still play along every night.
93. 'Mystery Science Theater 3000'
1988-99
A janitor and his robot friends sit in the dark and heckle some of the worst B-movies ever made, from Rocket Attack U.S.A. to Jungle Goddess, adding their own commentary – it sounds simple, but Joel Hodgson's MST3K turned into one of the era's most enduring cult comedies.
92. 'American Idol'
2001-16
The glitziest of singing competitions, it gave the world memorable freakazoids like Simon Cowell, the hostile judge in a V-neck, and Paula Abdul, the semi-coherent judge who just loved everybody for believing in their pitchiest dreams. Idol never recovered from losing its original judges, in 2009 – when it went bad, it went bad fast – but it found stars like Kelly Clarkson, Adam Lambert, William Hung and the "Pants on the Ground" guy.
91. 'Broad City'
2014-Present
Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer invent a new comedy sublime that we'll be seeing a lot more of in years to come: the two-woman stoner-slob hangout. These broads never learn or grow or achieve a thing; all they care about is each other, living their carpe day-umm lifestyle. When Abbi calls in the middle of a sex encounter to ask about pegging, Ilana's victory handstand dance is one of the most euphoric 10-second eruptions you'll ever see.
90. 'The Dick Van Dyke Show'
1961-66
As the Petries, Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore were TV's answer to JFK and Jackie – comedy god Carl Reiner put his own experiences into this look at the life of a TV writer. The way Dick kept tripping over the same ottoman in his living room was a handy metaphor for domestic life in itself.
89. 'Homeland'
2011-Present
Claire Danes made a big comeback 15 years after My So-Called Life – as a CIA agent in a Showtime drama about terrorism. With its bonkers plot leaps (she sleeps with the terrorist who killed the vice president and gets promoted!), lots of crying jags and the soothing presence of Mandy Patinkin's beard, Homeland became an unlikely hit.
88. 'Party Down'
2009-10
The great Lizzy Caplan and Adam Scott headed up a crew of caterers – you know, failing actors – who served hors d'oeuvres and despaired at porn-star conventions, high school reunions and other disasters. This masterwork never got anywhere near the attention it deserved. But for both laughs and pathos, the episode when they cater Steve Guttenberg's 50th birthday party can hold its own with any half-hour of TV comedy ever.
87. 'Doctor Who'
1963-Present
A science-fiction yarn that keeps thriving through the years, with the Doctor still traveling through space and time in his TARDIS time machine, a half-century after he debuted on the BBC. Like the Time Lord himself, the Doctor Who cult has the power to keep regenerating itself, with Peter Capaldi currently serving as the 12th Doctor.
86. 'Good Times'
1974-79
The Evans kids grow up in the Chicago projects – keeping their heads above water, making a wave when they can. They remain one of the most relatable TV families ever, from the 1970s boom for superfly black sitcoms that also gave us Sanford & Son and What's Happening!! Good Times had the dy-no-mite Jimmie "J.J." Walker, long-suffering mama Esther Rolle ("Damn, damn, damn!") and black-power little bro Michael, surely the first kid on TV to get sent home from school for calling George Washington a slave owner.
85. 'The Real World'
1992-Present
This MTV petri dish hatched the reality-TV virus that soon swept the airwaves. The Real World was hugely influential as soon as it debuted in 1992, bringing together an apartment full of strangers to fight, cry and jump into bed, with the promise "This is what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real." (In 1992, not being polite meant ignoring a ringing landline – those were different times.)
84. 'Real Time With Bill Maher'
2003-Present
For the past 20 years or so, Bill Maher has been one of the most reliably caustic political wits out there, managing to piss off new enemies every time the regime changes, with his unfiltered attacks on religion ("New rule: If churches don't have to pay taxes, they also can't call the fire department"), military spending ("We waste 20 percent of our budget basically fighting Russia in 1978") and every other brand of sanctimonious bullshit.
83. 'House of Cards'
2013-Present
This Netflix political thriller puts the newfangled concept of "binge-watching" front and center – thanks to Kevin Spacey's magnificently slimy performance as Frank Underwood, a murderous D.C. politician whose soliloquies are so compelling, there is no way you can stop with just one.
82. 'The Jeffersons'
1975-85
Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford were the coolest customers on the block, a couple who were ruthlessly sarcastic yet perfectly matched. George and Weezy moved on up to their deluxe apartment in the sky, but never lost their street swagger. Originally the Bunkers' neighbors on All in the Family, they got 10 times funnier on their own.
81. 'Dallas'
1978-91
Sue Ellen Ewing: "Tell me, J.R., which slut are you gonna stay with tonight?" J.R.: "Whoever she is, she's gotta be more interesting than the slut I'm looking at right now." Truly a marriage made in TV heaven. This sex-and-money blockbuster chronicled the spectacularly evil Ewings and their Texas oil empire, led by Larry Hagman's J.R. Dallas invented the prime-time soap tropes for family sagas from The Sopranos to Empire – as Hagman said proudly, "Even the mother was bad."
80. 'The Fugitive'
1963-67
Dr. Richard Kimble got falsely convicted of murdering his wife – but after he broke loose, he went hunting for the real killer. The finale was a historic ratings smash as the whole country tuned in to see him catch the one-armed man.
79. 'In Living Color'
1990-94
Keenan Ivory Wayans blew the roof off with this hit, bringing a hip-hop sensibility to sketch comedy. In Living Color had Homey the clown ("Homey don't play that"), the World's Hardest-Working West Indian Family ("I have 15 jobs!" "You lazy lima bean!") and a rubber-faced token white guy then-called James Carrey. (Whatever happened to him?)
78. 'Thirtysomething'
1987-91
The ultimate yuppies-in-love drama, as ad execs and their wives reckon with parenthood, marriage, work and real estate. Thirtysomething's white-collar suburbanites climbed the corporate ladder, looking for ways they could live with their compromises both at work and at home.
77. 'The Walking Dead'
2010-Present
The zombie apocalypse to end all zombie apocalypses, based on the Robert Kirkman cult comic book. AMC's The Walking Dead is a monster hit in every sense of the word, with a band of humans battling to survive the onslaught of the undead walkers, featuring some of the small screen's most viscerally repulsive violence.
76. 'Late Night With Conan O’Brien'
1993-2009
When a redheaded nobody named Conan was announced as the successor to Letterman, everyone assumed his talk show would bomb even faster than Chevy Chase's. But over the years, nobody could touch Conan for sheer comic velocity and masturbating-bear-worthy weirdness. Even now, exiled to TBS, Conan continues to give the world Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, which would be enough to seal his legend.
75. 'American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson'
2016
Even after all Ryan Murphy has achieved, he proved he's still peaking with a 10-part miniseries of the O.J. murder case. With out-of-nowhere career performances from John Travolta, Sarah Paulson and David Schwimmer, it made the ultimate made-for-TV trial disturbing all over again.
74. 'The Ren & Stimpy Show'
1991-95
In the post-Simpsons days, when everybody was watching to see where the next great animated comedy was coming from, it turned out to be John Kricfalusi's Nickelodeon toon about this lovable duo – a high-strung Chihuahua and his loyal cat pal. Happy happy, joy joy.
73. 'Transparent'
2014-Present
Jill Soloway's painfully compassionate drama was like nothing else the screen had seen before – and remains that way, with Jeffrey Tambor as the patriarch-unto-matriarch of a bitterly estranged family, transitioning from Mort to Maura on sheer nerve. Transparent hits emotional notes on every level – who can forget the Trans Got Talent show where Maura sings "Somebody That I Used to Know" to the empty chairs she reserved for her kids? Sing on, Maura.
72. 'Girls'
2012-Present
Lena Dunham aspired to be the voice of her generation – or at least a voice of a generation – with this unflinching HBO sitcom about a quartet of acid-tongued young women failing their way through their twenties, striking out at relationships, rehab, careers, school and basically everything else they attempt.
71. 'Mr. Show'
1995-98
What completely bizarre careers Bob Odenkirk and David Cross have had – and how bizarre that we first met them as the duo behind this wild-ass HBO cult sketch show, always erratic but often astounding, with future stars like Sarah Silverman in the crew. They excelled at high-concept stunts like their Jesus Christ Superstar parody, with Jack Black as the hippie messiah, or the gay metal band Wyckyd Sceptre. Best line: "I'm not talking to clouds on a sunny day!"
70. 'Roseanne'
1988-97
The lights go out. The Conner family just got their electricity cut off because they can't pay the bill. Out of the darkness, Roseanne's voice: "Well, middle class was fun." Roseanne came as a blast of Midwestern blue-collar grit that made all other Eighties sitcoms look like contemptible fluff as soon as it dropped. She was the unsaintly matriarch of this struggling heartland family, with biker husband John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf as her hard-luck sister, Jackie. Roseanne carried the torch during a truly wretched time for network comedies.
69. 'The Ed Sullivan Show'
1948-71
The Ed Sullivan Show aired live on Sunday nights as America's big showbiz variety fest, presided over by a granite-faced host who didn't look more than a century or two old. Sullivan gave the Beatles their big U.S. debut, breaking ratings records in 1964 when 73 million Americans tuned in to see the moptops do "She Loves You." He was also the guy who censored Elvis from the waist down and ordered the Stones to change "Let's spend the night together" to "Let's spend some time together," which may help explain why he finally went off the air in 1971.
68. 'The State'
1993-95
The MTV comedy show was a whiff of youthful arrogance in the early Nineties, with 11 college wise-asses running wild in manic sketches about monkey torture, Muppet-eating and the mailman who only delivers tacos. After three years on MTV, they jumped to a network – and got destroyed amid the corporate machinery. But their cult kept growing, especially after they masterminded Wet Hot American Summer.
67. 'The Odd Couple'
1970-75
Tony Randall was neurotic neat-freak Felix; Jack Klugman was cigar-chomping sportswriter slob Oscar. Thrown out by their wives, they shared a Park Avenue bachelor pad, taking out all their midlife male angst on each other. Though based on Neil Simon's play, it worked even better in sitcom form, thanks to Randall and Klugman's negative chemistry and that perky theme song – their dance on a Central Park lawn is one of the truly romantic visions of New York.
66. 'Downton Abbey'
2011-16
Welcome to the aristocratic English countryside circa 1912, where Julian Fellowes' Crawley family acts out the decline and fall of the British Empire, from the bed-hopping elites to the downstairs schemes of the servants. Dame Maggie Smith steals the show as the delightfully nasty shade queen Dowager Countess, who does a better job than anyone else here at pretending the world isn't changing. Her best line: "What is a 'weekend'?"
65. 'Happy Days'
1974-84
R.I.P. to the late, great Garry Marshall. The sitcom maestro's opus was this 1970s hit set in the 1950s, with Henry Winkler as the Fonz, the leather-boy greaser who ruled Arnold's Drive-In with his nerd pals Richie, Potsie and Ralph Malph. It's easy to forget the Fonz had a dark introspective side – best seen in the surprisingly harsh episode where he stars in Richie's production of Hamlet ("I thought a couple of times about whether I wanted 'to be or not'"). Happy Days gave us Scott Baio as the Fonz's douche cousin Chachi, but that can be forgiven, as can the time Fonzie got on water skis for an aquatic stunt that invented the concept of "jumping the shark."
64. 'Chappelle’s Show'
2003-06
Comedy – it's a hell of a drug. Dave Chappelle was an electric madman genius who defied any attempt to predict his next move – sometimes his Comedy Central show was brilliant, sometimes it was crap, and he eventually decided it wasn't worth the money or the trouble. But it sent shock waves through pop culture, whether Chappelle was immortalizing Charlie Murphy's memories of Rick James ("He is a habitual line-stepper") and Prince ("This bores me") or playing the world's only blind black white supremacist. It's a celebration, bitches!
63. 'The Wonder Years'
1988-93
Timed perfectly for the late Eighties, The Wonder Years depicted the childhood of baby boomers in the most nostalgic terms, as Fred Savage's Kevin Arnold grew up in 1960s suburbia and learned about life from the girl next door, Winnie Cooper – played by future mathematician Danica McKellar.
62. 'Sex and the City'
1998-2004
Or The Golden Girls: The Early Years. This shoe-porn Manhattan fantasy was ubiquitous, to the point where Jay Z could rap that Beyoncé wouldn't talk to him when Sex and the City was on. Nothing could stop fans from feeling the Carrie fever, as Sarah Jessica Parker and her clique – Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis, Kim Cattrall – date, shop and quip their way through a borough full of rich straight guys, eventually realizing their only true soulmates are one another. And maybe also Manolo Blahnik.
61. 'Your Show of Shows'
1950-57
Sid Caesar perfected the sketch-comedy format in the Fifties, with legends like Carl Reiner and Imogene Coca. When Nanette Fabray replaced Coca in 1954, the title changed to Caesar's Hour, but the spirit remained the same. His writers' room broke in hungry young rookies like Mel Brooks, Neil Simon and Woody Allen. Flights like the 1955 opera Gallipacci still look fresh – especially when the manic Caesar whimpers "Just One of Those Things," in clown drag, blubbering in pure faux-Italian gibberish. Indescribably moving, not to mention seriously fucked up.
60. 'Beavis and Butt-Head'
1993-97, 2011
Mike Judge captured the spirit of American adolescence, epitomized by two cartoon butt-munches who live for metal, nachos and breakin' the law (or at least putting poodles in the washing machine). It was liberating how cheap and crummy the animation looked, compared with the sophisticated rococo of The Simpsons or Ren & Stimpy, but Beavis and Butt-Head spoke their own kind of trash poetry, whether they were heckling MTV ("Stop in the name of all which does not suck!") or looking for wholesome fun: "This sucks. Let's go over to Stewart's house and burn something." And they hung with Daria, who got her own classic show. Kids, do try this at home.
59. 'Hill Street Blues'
1981-87
A police show too adult to ever get much traction in the ratings but cherished at a time when network dramas were the pits. These cops were troubled people dealing with moral conflicts, urban corruption and their messy personal lives. Precinct captain Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti) and public defender Joyce Davenport (Veronica Hamel) were secretly an item after hours – it was racy stuff in the Eighties to show an unmarried couple who liked to share a bathtub. So many landmark dramas came out of this precinct – the writers included everyone from Law & Order's Dick Wolf to Deadwood's David Milch, not to mention producer Steve Bochco.
58. 'Roots'
1977
Roots ran for only eight episodes, but it changed the way America saw its own history – the topic of slavery was an unspeakable taboo in U.S. culture until this miniseries brought the horrifying details to life. Roots set ratings records in January 1977 – a 100 million Americans tuned in live as it followed Alex Haley's family history from Africa to the slave ship to the plantation, without any attempt to water down the violence for mainstream appeal.
57. 'Fawlty Towers'
1975-79
John Cleese based this most horrible of hotel owners on a resort where the Monty Python gang once stayed. Basil Fawlty is the nastiest piece of work Cleese has ever played – one of his most famous scenes features him snarling at a nun. But nobody infuriates him like his customers, especially the one inconsiderate enough to die in his room. "It does actually say 'hotel' outside, you know. Perhaps I should be more specific: 'Hotel for people who have a better than 50 percent chance of making it through the night.'"
56. '24'
2001-10
Can Agent Jack Bauer save our nation? This adrenaline thriller starred Kiefer Sutherland as the Counter Terrorism Unit's most lethal weapon, leaving no principle of civil liberties unviolated in a cloud of ass-kicking and CGI effects. It also had that innovative real-time structure, each season another 24-hour crisis point and each episode another hour of Jack racing the clock.
55. 'Six Feet Under'
2001-05
A California family with a funeral home to run – which means that mortality and grief are never far from anyone's mind. Every episode of Six Feet Under opened with a disturbing (or comic, or both) death scene. Alan Ball's dark yet tender HBO drama explored new terrain, and the closing episodes helped innovate the idea that a series finale should be an artistic epitaph, rather than just a death rattle.
54. 'The Muppet Show'
1976-81
Jim Henson's Muppets became a global phenomenon in the 1970s – a hit only Statler and Waldorf could hate, starring Kermit, the Great Gonzo, the Tom Waits-esque piano dog Rowlf, the Swedish Chef, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and everybody's favorite, Beaker. (Meeeep!) The jokes were nonstop corn – "Fozzie, what are you carrying that fish for?" "Oh, just for the halibut" – with one-shot guests like Marvin Suggs and His All-Food Glee Club. Full of unforgettable music moments too, like Elton John doing "Crocodile Rock" with a choir of gators or Animal mangling the drums to "Wild Thing." Thanks to these characters, the gentle hippie spirit of Henson lives on forever. Play us out, Animal.
53. 'The Bob Newhart Show'
1972-78
Newhart was already a comedy legend for his brilliant 1960s stand-up monologues – his albums routinely topped the charts. His button-down mind seemed too dry and cerebral for TV, but he hit the jackpot as a Chicago psychologist seeing one nut case after another – perfect for Newhart's unflappable deadpan. He could get laughs just clearing his throat. (Nobody ever was a throat-clearing virtuoso like this man.) Suzanne Pleshette was his wife – in one of the Seventies' most enduringly hot TV marriages.
52. 'The Colbert Report'
2005-14
"Anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you." With that mission statement, Daily Show correspondent Stephen Colbert set off on a whole new approach to fake news, playing a character named "Stephen Colbert" who happened to be a conservative twit, dedicated to the principle of "truthiness" and pushing the slogan "Blame America Last." "We want people to be in pain and confused," he told Rolling Stone in 2006. "I have no problem making things up, because I have no credibility to lose." The Colbert Report remains sorely missed, especially in an election year like this one.
51. 'Fargo'
2014-Present
Well, this was an obviously terrible idea – turning the Coen brothers' classic true-crime film into an FX series. Anybody could have told FX Fargo would never work. Yet Noah Hawley proved that terrible ideas often hold the seeds of greatness. The first season was a welcome surprise, but the real killer was the next chapter, one of the best seasons any drama has ever had, a small-town gangster tale involving state trooper Patrick Wilson, desperate housewife Kirsten Dunst and Bruce Campbell as the real-life Ronald Reagan.
50. 'ER'
1994-2009
The hospital drama to put all others on the DNR list, ER blew up in the early Nineties, making stars out of Julianna Margulies and the previously obscure George Clooney, until then best known as the big-hair hunk teacher from The Facts of Life. But the real surprise was how ER kept thriving, replacing all its original stars yet remaining itself for 15 years, with hour after hour of life, death and romance amid the scrubs.
49. 'Taxi'
1978-83
It seemed like an unlikely idea for a hit – a bunch of depressive taxi drivers working the night shift, trying not to think about the rotten disappointments that got them stuck at the Sunshine Cab Company. But Taxi hit pay dirt because it had warmth, as these losers bonded together – Andy Kaufman's babbling naif, Christopher Lloyd's wacked-out hippie, Tony Danza's meatball, Judd Hirsch's cynic. And Danny DeVito suddenly became a star playing a larger-than-life monster as the drunken dispatcher Louie De Palma.
48. 'The Office (U.S.)'
2005-13
Nobody expected this to be more than yet another example of a U.S. network trying to rip off an edgy Brit-com and getting it all wrong. Except, with Steve Carell as the world's worst boss, it turned out to be a groundbreaking and original comedy in its own right, with a dream team of eccentric employees lost in the cubicles of Dunder-Mifflin. It was looser, riskier and more ambitious than the U.K. version, not to mention warmer – Carell's Michael Scott wasn't hateful, just a moron – with a cast including Rainn Wilson's Dwight ("Through concentration, I can raise and lower my cholesterol at will"), Mindy Kaling's Kelly and the ever-bilious Creed Bratton. (Let's just pretend those last two post-Carell seasons never happened, OK?)
47. 'The Rockford Files'
1974-80
James Garner was a new breed of TV detective – a small-time P.I. who got stuck with the loser cases nobody else wanted, living in a Malibu trailer with his elderly dad. Rockford didn't exactly live the glamorous life: He was an ex-con wisecrack machine who had done hard time in San Quentin, now scraping by as a freelancer while routinely getting his ass kicked or getting stiffed on his fee. But thanks to Garner, he always got by on a superhuman supply of cocky charm.
46. 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'
1970-77
Hail Mary: the ultimate template for how to make comedy gold out of being a grown-up neurotic making it on your own in the big city. She worked in a Minneapolis TV newsroom full of cranks like Ted Knight's windbag anchorman and Ed Asner's hard-drinking boss, Lou Grant. ("I haven't been this mad at anybody since 1944." "Did anything much happen?" "I captured a town in Germany.") Revolutionary at the time, blasé about sex and birth control, it also pioneered the all-too-rare concept of going out on top – it signed off in 1977, a massive hit to the end. Every sitcom still steals from MTM, but Moore's heart and soul remain one of a kind.
45. 'Battlestar Galactica'
2003-09
The 1970s original was a promising but failed sci-fi franchise, one of many the networks rushed out in the wake of Star Wars. But Ronald D. Moore's version was the rare reboot that topped the original, with a space colony of humans escaping the Cylons and searching for a home somewhere in the universe – maybe this planet they've heard about called Earth. Edward James Olmos is the commander who leads the way; Mary McDonnell is the president with a very different vision of this society. And Katee Sackhoff's Starbuck remains one of the most badass frakking action heroes ever. So say we all.
44. 'Columbo'
1971-78
Peter Falk's cheap detective was the coolest TV cop of the Seventies. With all due respect to Kojak, Baretta, Starsky, Hutch and all six of Charlie's Angels, it was Lt. Columbo who snagged the cover of Rolling Stone. John Cassavetes sidekick Falk hit the streets as a rumpled dirtbag in a trench coat, always mumbling and asking for a pencil, walking away from the bad guy at the end but then turning around with one of his crazy grins to say, "Oh, wait – just one more thing." He's always the underdog, but that's how he plays his mind games on all the smug L.A. high-society types who make the fatal mistake of thinking he's an idiot.
43. 'The Americans'
2013-Present
There's never been a TV marriage like this one: Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys play a pair of deep-cover Russian spies living in the D.C. suburbs in the early 1980s. They pretend to be a nice, normal, happy American couple – except these two do things like kill a hit man to the strains of "Tainted Love." The FX masterwork is both a taut espionage thriller and a bleakly intimate marital drama – as if leading double lives full of deceit and betrayal makes this couple real Americans after all.
42. 'NYPD Blue'
1993-2005
Nearly a decade after Hill Street Blues, Steven Bochco raised the ante for down-and-dirty police realism. The 15th Precinct was home to hard-boiled detectives brought to life by the likes of Jimmy Smits, Amy Brenneman and David Caruso. Dennis Franz's Detective Sipowicz was a foulmouthed alcoholic racist bully – and he was the most sympathetic cop here.
41. 'The Honeymooners'
1955-56
One of the founding Fifties comedies, spun off as a sketch from Jackie Gleason's hit variety show, about Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden and his put-upon wife, Alice, played by Audrey Meadows. No Father Knows Best here – this was brutalist blue-collar city life. It was the template for every sitcom marriage between a boorish slob and a tsk-tsking shrew, with Ralph shouting threats ("To the moon, Alice!") and Art Carney as his dimwitted pal Ed Norton.
40. 'The Shield'
2002-08
The first time we meet Vic Mackey, he's shooting a fellow cop in the face – to stop him from ratting on what a sleazebag Vic is. Like his captain says in the premiere, "He's Al Capone with a badge." Michael Chiklis created one of TV's most fearsome cops in Mackey, a dirty detective with plenty of street smarts but barely any scruples. Shawn Ryan's FX drama followed Vic through seven seasons of murder, drug dealing and torture, with a hell of an endgame.
39. 'Lost'
2004-10
A cosmic mystery trip so complex nobody has ever quite figured it all out – a band of castaways trapped on an island after the crash of Oceanic Flight 815, with a smoke monster and the enigmatic group called the Others, multiple timelines, the Seventies backstory of the Dharma Initiative, each episode crammed with clues to be argued over for years to come. Lost proved there was a broad audience out there who wanted their TV to be more unpredictable and challenging, not less – and TV would never be the same.
38. 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'
1997-2003
Sarah Michelle Gellar created a supernatural feminist avenger in Joss Whedon's saga of Buffy, the California girl who finds herself by kicking vampire ass. On Buffy, surviving adolescence and fighting off the undead forces of evil turn out to be the same thing. And the musical episode – "Once More, With Feeling" – is a classic in itself.
37. 'Orange Is the New Black'
2013-Present
When Jenji Kohan's women's-prison drama started, there was no real way of knowing it would remain great after four years – in fact, the brilliance of the first season looked like a fluke. But it keeps getting better – the recent fourth season is the most intense yet. No other drama can match this ensemble, as actresses like Uzo Aduba, Jessica Pimentel, Danielle Brooks and Samira Wiley go deep on these characters and the heart-shredding stories that brought them here.
36. 'Law & Order'
1990-2010
Dick Wolf's long-, long-, long-running procedural created its own formula – gruesomely violent crimes ripped from the headlines, clock-punching cops, idealistic lawyers, stern judges who bang the gavel and say "I'll allow it," each character a different cog in the crime-solving machine until the trial scene at the end. All of its different incarnations, from Logan and Briscoe to Benson and Stabler, just proved what a rich formula it was, not to mention a chance for countless aspiring NYC actors to get their first real taste of catering.
35. 'My So-Called Life'
"Ignore Angela. She can't help herself – she's the product of a two-parent household." Claire Danes became a teen-angst heroine with this high school classic, so ahead of its time it got axed after one season. The World Happiness Dance episode – where two lost and lonely kids find a moment of disco redemption together – might be the Nineties' most emo hour of TV, which may explain why some of us out here still get a little dusty whenever we hear Haddaway's "What Is Love."
34. '30 Rock'
2006-13
Alec Baldwin said it best: "You are truly the Picasso of loneliness." He has a point. Tina Fey's Liz Lemon is a single gal who spends her evenings playing Monopoly alone, working on her night cheese or watching the Lifetime movie My Stepson Is My Cyber-Husband. But Fey made her a timeless heroine, turning her SNL writers-room experience into the backstage antics at The Girlie Show, with a crazy-deep bench that included Tracy Morgan, Jane Krakowski and Jack McBrayer. And Baldwin chewed up the role of his life, turning what could have been a generic sitcom boss into the only man worthy to stand by Lemon.
33. 'South Park'
1997-Present
Trey Parker and Matt Stone touched America somewhere deep and special, and you must respect their authori-teh. Year after year, this cartoon began, Matt Stone told Rolling Stone, "We would view success as finally getting to the point where we get canceled because no one gets it." So here's to nearly 20 years of failure – and hopefully 20 more.
32. 'I Love Lucy'
1951-57
The adventures of real-life Hollywood couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz – he was Cuban bandleader Ricky Ricardo, and she was the daffy redhead housewife as slapstick queen. They were TV's premier married couple, in an era when the network would only let them sleep in separate beds – and awaited the real-life arrival of Little Ricky without allowing anyone to utter the word "pregnant" on the air.
31. 'Sesame Street'
1969-Present
No kiddie show has ever been as fiercely beloved as this urban utopian fantasy, set in a brownstone neighborhood populated by a multiracial cast of smiling adults, a gigantic yellow bird, a grouch in a garbage can, and math-loving vampires, plus countless talking letters and numbers. It has great songs, but most important, Sesame has soul, which is why the air has stayed sweet for 40 years – or as the Count would say, 45! 46! 47 years!
30. 'The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson'
1962-92
Heeeeeeere's Johnny! There's a reason Carson remains the template for every late-night host, after ruling The Tonight Show for three decades. Like a TV answer to Frank Sinatra, he epitomized Rat Pack cool, and his monologues were a soundtrack to generations of Americans boozing themselves to slumber every night. Nearly 25 years after he signed off (and more than 10 years after he died), Carson's the ghost king who still haunts late night. When he abdicated in 1992, Letterman and Jay Leno began battling for his throne and somehow never quit. (In his final show, Letterman cracked, "It looks like I'm not going to get The Tonight Show.")
29. 'Monty Python's Flying Circus'
1969-74
And now for something completely different. The perfect comedy cocktail – five British intellectuals and a token American clod, Terry Gilliam, running amok on the BBC. Monty Python were the Beatles of comedy, each one an indispensable element in the chemistry, from John Cleese's spluttering rage to Eric Idle's pointed-stick wordplay. The Pythons were godfathers to all ambitious jokers who followed – Lorne Michaels and Chevy Chase met in line for a Holy Grail screening. But these 45 episodes remain the comedic equivalent of Mount Everest: forbidding, aloof, terrifying, the mountain with the biggest tits in the world.
28. 'The X-Files'
1993-2002, 2016
Oh, the Nineties – when our scariest worry about the government was its plot to cover up alien abductions. Chris Carter created a whole sci-fi mythology with The X-Files. All of the sinister conspiracies in the universe aren't as tough as the loyal bond between two FBI agents: David Duchovny's Mulder (he wanted to believe) and Gillian Anderson's Scully (she didn't). X-Files invented a new kind of TV fan for the online-message-board era, alternating between "monster of the week" and the overall arc, but always throwing in geek details for the hardcore devotees. And their archenemy: the Smoking Man, William B. Davis, the marvelously evil bureaucrat lurking in the shadows of every conspiracy from the JFK assassination to rigging the Super Bowl.
27. 'Arrested Development'
2003-06, 2013
Mitch Hurwitz's absurdist tale of the Bluth family seemed too far out to survive in the network wasteland. Yet it managed to last three seasons on Fox (and then a 2013 Netflix reboot) without losing its kinks, thanks to Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, David Cross and Henry Winkler as the family lawyer. It reaches odd emotional heights, as when Jeffrey Tambor hides in the attic to spy on his own funeral while Portia de Rossi honors his memory: "You know what? I'm gonna throw on a skirt, take off my underwear and make your Pop-Pop proud!"
26. 'Friends'
1994-2004
A group of twenty-somethings in New York sit around complaining about their day jobs, their sex lives, their screwed-up families. It's a formula countless sitcoms tried to get right over the years (nice try, Herman's Head), but it took the Central Perk crew to get the right mix of personalities, from Lisa Kudrow's flaky folk singer to the schlub-fox romance of David Schwimmer's Ross and Jennifer Aniston's Rachel. Even at the time, it was ridiculous how huge and luxurious Monica's West Village apartment was, and the story line where she's banging Tom Selleck just gets more stomach-turning the longer Blue Bloods stays on the air.
25. 'Veep'
2012-Present
Julia Louis-Dreyfus presides over the Oval Office in HBO's political satire, still getting more horrifyingly brilliant with each season. Her President Selina Meyer is one of the truly great monsters in TV history, a politician you can count on to say things like "You're gonna cancel this recount like Anne Frank's bat mitzvah." Each episode is a warp-speed blast of insults, many aimed at Timothy Simons' delectably loathsome aide, Jonah. ("How am I doing? Eating so much pussy I'm shitting clits, son.") Veep's peak for sheer gall might be the "Testimony" episode, a frantic half-hour when almost every line of dialogue is perjury. Four more years, please.
24. 'Friday Night Lights'
2006-11
"Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose" is the golden rule in a dusty Texas town where everyone lives and dies for the high school football team. But Friday Night Lights isn't really about football so much as family, work, class, the bitter taste of dashed dreams, with Kyle Chandler as Coach Taylor, Connie Britton as wife Tami and Taylor Kitsch as Tim Riggins – the most memorable of the many vulnerable kids who pass through the Panthers' locker room. Riggins' story becomes especially moving after his gridiron glory fades and real life beats him down.
23. 'Deadwood'
2004-06
Al Swearengen's moral philosophy: "You can't cut the throat of every cocksucker whose character it would improve." Spoken like a true Founding Father. He's the villain of David Milch's epic Western set in the mud and slime of an 1870s South Dakota gold-mining camp. At the center of it all (i.e., the saloon), Ian McShane's Al glowers, pours drinks, counts money and slices jugulars, in a frontier hellhole full of prospectors, whores, drunks and lost freaks looking for one last fatal fight to get into (and often finding it at Al's place). It was like McCabe & Mrs. Miller with more depressing sex scenes. The first two seasons are solid gold, the third, flimsier, but Deadwood is about how communities get built – and all the dirty work that involves.
22. 'Louie'
2010-Present
Louis C.K.'s stubbornly auteurist FX sitcom doesn't look or feel like anything else on TV – he writes, directs and stars as himself, a single-dad stand-up comic in New York. If Louie wants to show himself in the car air-drumming to "Who Are You?" and mortifying his daughters, he goes for it. If he wants to abandon the half-hour comedy format entirely for an extended indie-film vibe with Charles Grodin and Ellen Burstyn, he does that too. Louis C.K. may disappear into his own head for entire seasons, but he also hits totally original emotional peaks like the one when he travels to Miami and accidentally makes a male friend. (No, it doesn't last.)
21. 'The Office (U.K.)'
2001-03
Ricky Gervais created one of TV's most agonizing comic tyrants in David Brent – a bitter, awkward, pompous ball of vanities terrorizing his employees at a London paper company. He fidgets, fondles his tie, cracks awful jokes, plays guitar ("Free Love Freeway"!), invisible to anyone except the long-suffering office drones who have to put up with him. This mockumentary raised the cringe level of sitcoms everywhere, spawning the surprisingly great U.S. version (also on this list) while paving the way for the glories of Parks & Recreation and Peep Show.
20. 'Cheers'
1982-93
You need a place where everybody knows your name – even if it's just a dive bar in Boston full of regulars with no place else to go. Cheers started with a focus on the mismatched romantic banter between Ted Danson's washed-up Red Sox pitcher Sam and Shelley Long's uptight bookworm Diane. ("Over my dead body!" "Hey, don't bring last night into this.") But it regularly renewed itself by bringing in new blood like Woody Harrelson, Kirstie Alley and Kelsey Grammer. Cheers was like that bar, to the point where you could tune in just to see which regulars would hang with you tonight.
19. 'Curb Your Enthusiasm'
2000-Present
The master misanthrope behind Seinfeld goes to L.A., where all the sunshine on his bald pate just makes him more miserable. We thought we already knew Larry David via his Seinfeld be the most painful-to-witness tryst of Larry's abysmal career as a single guy. Who can forget Larry cringing under his Palestinian sex goddess as she snarls, "I'm going to fuck the Jew out of you"? From religion to race, from the mock Seinfeld reunion to the burning ethical dilemma of whether men should wear shorts on airplanes, Larry is always there to make every awkward situation worse.
18. 'Star Trek'
1966-69
The Starship Enterprise took off with a five-year mission: "To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations," and it succeeded in creating the most beloved of sci-fi franchises, not just inspiring countless spinoffs but also codifying fan fiction as an art form. Gene Roddenberry's original series remains the foundation, with William Shatner's awesomely pulpy Capt. Kirk, Leonard Nimoy's logical Mr. Spock, Bones, Sulu, Uhura and Scotty. They make contact with bizarre and inexplicable life-forms – Romulans, Gorns, Joan Collins. During its three years, Star Trek suffered from low ratings until NBC pulled the plug, but thanks to the most doggedly loyal of TV cults (remember when "Trekkie" was an insult?), Roddenberry's vision lives long and prospers to this day.
17. 'Twin Peaks'
1990-91
"These girls are authentically dreamy," Twin Peaks auteur David Lynch told Rolling Stone in 1990. "They're all just boss chicks. And they're just jampacked with secrets." The small town of Twin Peaks is full of these women and their deadly secrets, from murdered high school homecoming queen Laura Palmer to alive-and-how seductress Audrey Horne. A few years after Blue Velvet, Lynch's surreal Pacific Northwest mystery followed Kyle MacLachlan as FBI agent Dale Cooper, on a quest for damn-good coffee as well as the solution to the murder of Palmer.
16. 'M*A*S*H'
1972-83
The Korean War show that lasted three times as long as the Korean War, taking off from the revolutionary 1970 Robert Altman comedy, as the doctors and nurses of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital wait for the next chopper with the next crop of wounded grunts requiring "meatball surgery." M*A*S*H began as a gritty comedy, with Alan Alda's Hawkeye and the rest of the staff trying to keep their sense of humor alive amid the daily carnage with booze, sex and hijinks. It evolved into a solemn (if sometimes preachy) meditation on the futility of war. The finale was seen by more than 120 million and remains one of the most-watched TV events of all time.
15. 'The West Wing'
1999-2006
Aaron Sorkin gave America the leader we didn't quite deserve in Martin Sheen's benevolent President Jed Bartlet, a high-toned Catholic professor from New Hampshire. Premiering in the fall of 1999, The West Wing played like a Bubba-era fantasy of how the political future would look (like if the Democrats had a little more courage, or if the Republicans had a principle or two) that soon turned out to be utterly out of step with the Bush-Cheney years. But Sorkin's trademark rapid-fire dialogue and the Bartlet administration's idealism made this a welcome parallel universe.
14. 'The Larry Sanders Show'
1992-98
The late, great Garry Shandling could have taken over as host of The Tonight Show – but instead he starred in his own nightmare fictional version. As Larry Sanders, he played a showbiz monster whose loathing for all forms of humanity (especially himself) left him no choice but to make small talk with strangers behind the desk of his late-night chatfest. Larry Sanders debuted on HBO in 1992 with a whole new look – single camera, no laugh track, a constant stream of bile and abuse – and became a word-of-mouth hit. Larry always had the biggest ego in the room, but he had competition from Rip Torn's producer Artie and Jeffrey Tambor's pitiful sidekick, Hank. Countless comedy legends cut their teeth here – Judd Apatow, Sarah Silverman, Bob Odenkirk, Janeane Garofalo and Dave Chappelle for starters.
13. 'Late Night With David Letterman'
1982-2015
A failed Indiana weatherman takes over the graveyard shift after Johnny Carson and completely changes the way America sees itself. Letterman brought weirdos to the tube like we'd never seen before – from Larry "Bud" Melman to Harvey Pekar, from Peewee Herman to Sandra Bernhard, from R.E.M. to Andy Kaufman. Not to mention Paul Shaffer, the indispensable piano man. Letterman was a connoisseur of American eccentrics without ever pretending to be one himself, and a master interviewer, especially when he was up against a fellow curmudgeon, like when Cher called him an "asshole." (She was right, and thank God for that.) When Letterman made the move to CBS' Late Show in 1993, he changed titles and time slots, but kept that same acerbic spirit alive – especially in his magnificent final weeks, as he broke down the statistics: "33 years, 6,028 shows, eight minutes of laughter." We'll never see his like again.
12. 'Game of Thrones'
2011-Present
The night is dark and full of terrors, especially on Sundays when Game of Thrones is on. With its premise of "The Sopranos in Middle-earth," it's the HBO fantasy series that broke through genre boundaries to stake its claim as one of the most compellingly realistic dramas on the air, going beyond George R.R. Martin's books. It might grab attention with the nudity, the dragons and severed heads, but at heart it's a political thriller. As Martin told Rolling Stone, "History is written in blood, a gold mine – the kings, the princes, the generals and the whores, and all the betrayals and wars and confidences. It's better than 90 percent of what the fantasists do make up."
11. 'Freaks and Geeks'
1999-2000
A typically brilliant Freaks and Geeks moment: High school mathlete Lindsay takes her first puff of weed but gets busted by one of her fellow nerds, who tells her, "I know what high people look like. I went to a Seals and Crofts concert last summer!" Paul Feig and Judd Apatow truly captured the agonies of American adolescence in this intensely compassionate comedy, set in a Michigan town in 1980. It tragically lasted only one season, but all 18 episodes hit home, with a rock soundtrack and a cast of future legends. Martin Starr's Bill, Jason Segel's Nick, most of all Linda Cardellini's Lindsay – these are kids who don't fit in, craving a place they might belong, whether that's a Dungeons & Dragons game or a van following the Grateful Dead tour.
10. 'The Daily Show'
1996-Present
The fake news show that became more credible than the real news. Comedy Central began The Daily Show in 1996, but it hit its stride when Jon Stewart took over in 1999. The Daily Show got more politically abrasive as the news got progressively worse. Stewart had the rage of a man who'd signed on at the end of the Bill Clinton years, only to end up with an America much scarier and uglier than the one he bargained for, and the anger showed. "It's a comic box lined with sadness," he told Rolling Stone in 2006. While the franchise struggles on without him, Daily alumni John Oliver and Samantha Bee keep that hard-hitting spirit alive on their own shows.
9. 'All in the Family'
1971-79
What a shocker to see this hit TV in 1971, in the middle of the Nixon years – loudmouth bigot Archie Bunker, wife Edith, feminist daughter Gloria and her hippie husband, Mike, all under one roof in Queens, having the arguments real families had at the time. And it was Number One in the ratings every year because it didn't belittle its characters – as creator Norman Lear told Rolling Stone, "People were interested in seeing themselves very correctly." Carroll O'Connor gave Archie dignity and decency, even as he expressed opinions like "England is a fag country." All in the Family went where TV never dared before (racism, homophobia, abortions, gun control, premarital sex, religion) – everything was fair game. Those were the days.
8. 'Saturday Night Live'
1975-Present
Live from New York, it's Saturday night – more than 40 years after the Not Ready for Prime Time Players first reinvented comedy as rock & roll. As Lorne Michaels likes to say, "We don't go on because we're ready. We go on because it's 11:30." SNL keeps that electric-edge energy running, even if that means flopping for episodes or even entire seasons at a time. Everybody thought the classic 1970s cast – John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd – was too wild and crazy to replace. But noooo: SNL gave the world Eddie Murphy in the 1980s, Mike Myers and Chris Rock in the 1990s, Will Ferrell and Tina Fey in the 2000s, Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant today. People keep deciding this time it's really Saturday Night Dead, yet time after time it surges back. No other show has unleashed so many beautifully demented performers on the world.
7. 'The Twilight Zone'
1959-64
"This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone." Rod Serling's sci-fi anthology series is the opposite of a period piece – it can still blow your mind today, with Serling's gritty staccato introductions and a host of supernatural scenarios. The best Twilight Zone episodes looked for freakdom in the everyday: space invaders posing as hotrod greasers, suburban neighborhoods turning into hysterical mobs, grotesque death masks, talking dolls. Countless vignettes remain classics, from William Shatner staring out the airplane window and seeing a gremlin on the wing to Richard Kiel as the gigantic, smiling alien who arrives with the solutions to all Earth's problems – simply because he wants to serve man.
6. 'The Simpsons'
1989-Present
How has America's favorite cartoon family lasted this long? Because they're also America's realest family. Especially Homer, the doofus dad everybody fears turning into, nature's cruelest mistake: "And to think I turned to a cult for mindless happiness, when I had beer all along!" Or maybe especially Lisa, the sax-tooting voice of wisdom. Not to mention Apu, Krusty, Flanders, Monty Burns, Amanda Hugginkiss or any of the other unforgettable kooks who make Springfield just like your town, except funnier. As creator Matt Groening boasted to Rolling Stone in 2002, "Characters on our show drink, smoke, don't wear their seat belts, litter and fire guns. In this season's Halloween episode, there's probably more gunfire than in the entire history of The Sopranos."
5. 'Seinfeld'
1989-98
The show about nothing that blew up into the great American comedy. Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer: four friends who happen to be horrible people, in a New York full of soup Nazis, close talkers, anti-dentites, sponge baths, astronaut pens and lobster bisque. Even at the time, everybody could tell Seinfeld was the funniest sitcom we'd ever witness, a week-to-week miracle. But no matter how many times you've double-dipped into all 180 episodes, they keep luring you back like pretzels making you thirsty. Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David set the rules from the start – "No hugging, no learning." As Julia Louis-Dreyfus told Rolling Stone in 1998, "The reality is that these four characters are a pathetic group, and they should disassemble promptly. I mean, if you stand back from it and look at what happens every week, they do terrible things to one another. And yet they continue to hang out. It's sociopathic." Not that there's anything wrong with that.
4. 'Mad Men'
2007-15
The American dream and how to sell it – except for Don Draper and the hustlers of Sterling Cooper, selling is the American dream. Mad Men became a sensation as soon as it appeared, partly because of its glam surface – a New York ad agency in the JFK era, all sex and money and liquor and cigarettes – but mostly because it was an audaciously adult drama that wasn't about cops or robbers (or doctors or lawyers), staking out new storytelling territory. Jon Hamm's womanizing adman, Don, is a genius at shaping other people's dreams and fantasies, but he can't escape his own loneliness – he's a con man who stole the identity of a dead Korean War officer and built a new life out of lies. "A good advertising person is like an artist, channeling the culture," creator Matthew Weiner told Rolling Stone. "They're holding up a mirror saying, 'This is the way you wish you were. This is the thing you're afraid of.'" Don can reduce a room to tears pitching the Kodak Carousel, even though the happy family memories he's selling are a fraud. There was nothing on TV as seductive as Mad Men before – and years later, there still isn't.
3. 'Breaking Bad'
2008-13
Bryan Cranston, previously the dentist on Seinfeld and the lovable dad from Malcolm in the Middle, became a villain for the ages in Vince Gilligan's AMC noir. Walter White, a bitter high school chemistry teacher, gets terminal lung cancer and decides to provide for his kids by turning into New Mexico's premier crystal-meth chef. Unfortunately for his family, his victims and practically everyone he meets, he loves his new secret life as the killer drug lord Heisenberg. "I am not in danger, Skyler," he tells his wife. "I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks!" Yet he's so frightening because he's so ordinary – any American loser who gets a chance to act on his most criminal fantasies, which in Walter's case is just the chance to finally be good at something. That's what makes Breaking Bad as addictive as the Blue Sky that Walter cooks. The more Walt transforms into Heisenberg, the deeper he digs into the grim side of the American dream. After one spectacular killing involving a kamikaze wheelchair bomb, he calls his wife to report, "It's over. We're safe. I won." The tragic part is he believes it – but he's lost her as well as himself.
2. 'The Wire'
2002-08
You come at the king, you best not miss. Former reporter David Simon aimed high with his epic HBO tale of the drug game in Baltimore – building an entire city full of corrupt politicians, corner boys and cops who keep learning the biggest crime is "giving a fuck when it ain't your turn to give a fuck." Each season told a different story – the Barksdale gang in Season Three, the doomed school kids in Season Four. "After the first season, I thought, 'There's no way I'm being renewed,'" Simon told Rolling Stone. "But no one has told us to stop. I mean, any schmuck making over 50 hours of TV on what ails the American city and expecting people to watch it deserves what he gets."
The Wire gave us characters no one had seen before, from Idris Elba's menacing Stringer Bell to Robert F. Chew's endlessly quotable Proposition Joe. But Michael K. Williams created the ultimate badass with Omar, the shotgun-toting trench-coat avenger. As Joe told Omar, "A businessman such as myself does not believe in bad blood with a man such as yourself. Disturbs the sleep." So many unforgettable moments all over The Wire – Bunk and McNulty canvassing a murder scene with one word of dialogue; Omar explaining his grief to bow-tied hit man Brother Mouzone ("See, that boy was beautiful"); Avon and Stringer on a balcony toasting a future they know will never come; Slim Charles holding the church hat of "a bona fide colored lady." Yet there's a sense of heartbreak all through The Wire. The game wins – they all lose.
1. 'The Sopranos'
1999-2007
The crime saga that cut the history of TV in two, kicking off a golden age when suddenly anything seemed possible. With The Sopranos, David Chase smashed all the rules about how much you could get away with on the small screen. And he created an immortal American antihero in James Gandolfini's New Jersey Mob boss, Tony Soprano, presiding over a crew of gangsters who also double as damaged husbands and dads, men trying to live with their murderous secrets and dark memories. As the late, great Gandolfini told Rolling Stone in 2001, "I heard David Chase say one time that it's about people who lie to themselves, as we all do. Lying to ourselves on a daily basis and the mess it creates."
What an inspiring, terrifying mess it is. The Sopranos ran away with this poll because it changed the world. Chase showed how much storytelling ambition you could bring to television, and it didn't take long for everybody else to rise to his challenge. The breakthroughs of the next few years – The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad – couldn't have happened without The Sopranos kicking the door down. But Chase had a tough time convincing any network to take on a story about a guilt-crazed gangster who goes to therapy, while his mom plots to kill him. "We had no idea this show would appeal to people," he told Rolling Stone. "The show quite unexpectedly made such a splash that it screwed us all up." Somehow The Sopranos kept going for the long bomb over six masterful seasons on HBO with a wild mix of bloodshed and humor. When FBI agents tell Uncle Junior which mobsters they want him to finger, he says with a shrug, "I want to fuck Angie Dickinson – let's see who gets lucky first."
The Sopranos is full of broken characters who linger on in the long-term parking of our national imagination – Edie Falco's Carmela, Dominic Chianese's Junior, Michael Imperioli's Christopher, Tony Sirico's Paulie Walnuts. E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt became Tony's lieutenant Silvio – Chase spotted him on early Bruce Springsteen album covers. (As Chase told Rolling Stone, "There was something about the E Street Band that looked like a crew.") It wouldn't have been possible without Gandolfini's slow-burning intensity – he was the only actor who could bring Tony's angst to life. But all the writing, acting and directing went places TV had never reached before.
The Sopranos arguably hit its creative peak with the famous Pine Barrens episode, where Paulie Walnuts and Christopher get lost in the woods, knowing the Russian gangster they tried to whack is still out there in the darkness. They shiver in the cold. ("It's the fuckin' Yukon out there!") They wait. And worry. The Sopranos never solved this mystery – for all we know, the Russian is still at large, yet another secret these guys can't shake off. On The Sopranos, family loyalties flip, both in the streets and at home. Beloved characters can get whacked at any moment. It kept that sense of danger alive right up to the final seconds. And nearly a decade after it faded to black in a Jersey diner with the jukebox playing "Don't Stop Believin'," The Sopranos remains the standard all ambitious TV aspires to meet.
www.rollingstone.com/tv/lists/100-greatest-tv-shows-of-all-time-w439520/law-order-w439602?utm_source=aol&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=feb2017