Time magazines list of the best TV shows EVAR. What do you think they missed? What doesn’t belong?
Here’s the list for those who don’t want to click!
A - F
24
60 Minutes
The Abbott and Costello Show
ABC’s Wide World of Sports
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
All in the Family
An American Family
American Idol
Arrested Development
Battlestar Galactica
The Beavis and Butt-Head Show
The Bob Newhart Show
Brideshead Revisited
Buffalo Bill
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The Carol Burnett Show
The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite
A Charlie Brown Christmas
Cheers
The Cosby Show
The Daily Show
Dallas
The Day After
Deadwood
The Dick Van Dyke Show
Dragnet
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ernie Kovacs Show
Felicity
Freaks and Geeks
The French Chef
Friends
G - M
General Hospital
The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show
Gilmore Girls
Gunsmoke
Hill Street Blues
Homicide: Life on the Street
The Honeymooners
I, Claudius
I Love Lucy
King of the Hill
The Larry Sanders Show
Late Night with David Letterman (NBC)
Leave It to Beaver
Lost
Married… With Children
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
MAS*H
The Monkees
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
Moonlighting
MTV 1981-1992
My So-Called Life
Mystery Science Theater 3000
N - S
The Odd Couple
The Office [American]
The Office [British]
The Oprah Winfrey Show
Pee Wee’s Playhouse
Playhouse 90
The Price Is Right
Prime Suspect
The Prisoner
The Real World
Rocky and His Friends
Roots
Roseanne
Sanford and Son
Saturday Night Live
Second City Television
See It Now
Seinfeld
Sesame Street
Sex and the City
The Shield
The Simpsons
The Singing Detective
Six Feet Under
Soap
The Sopranos
South Park
SpongeBob SquarePants
SportsCenter
Star Trek
St. Elsewhere
The Super Bowl (and the Ads)
Survivor
T - Z
Taxi
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
The Twilight Zone
Twin Peaks
The West Wing
What’s My Line?
WKRP in Cincinnati
The Wire
Wiseguy
The X-Files
Your Show of Shows
Well, they got The Wire, Arrested Development and The Larry Sanders Show in there so it’s not terrible, but the list is very US-centric. There is a metric fuck ton of great British stuff missing: Yes Minister, The Day Today, Brass Eye, The Thick of It, Knowing Me Knowing You With Alan Partridge…
Yeah its a US centric list, but thats OK its a US magazine
Here is a UK centric one.
OK here is my question for both lists, what on earth is the attraction of “The Singing Detective”? Seriously, anybody here love it enough to promote it? I enjoy seeing Potter interviewed but never got into his work.
While that is definitely a problem, the list has Homicide: Life on the Streets, so overall I am pretty satisfied (better quality to quantity ratio than Law & Order).
Including Super Bowl, two-parters, news shows and talkshows just makes it ‘100 things the author liked on tv’ instead.
A few there I don’t know. I miss:
Not Only, But Also…
Chef
Blackadder
Bottom
The Young Ones
The New Statesman
Das Boot
Heimat
(Germany is as big as Britain - I won’t include anything Danish or Swedish, allthough a few shows would make the top 10 as well… but all countries probably have a few)
The Drew Carey Show
Parker Lewis Can’t Lose
Eerie Indiana
Lars von Trier’s “The Kingdom” should be on that list, too. As well as the full version of Bergman’s “Fanny & Alexander”, which I believe was done for television, and the phenomenal Berlin Alexanderplatz.
Also, no Kids In The Hall or SCTV? This list is dead to me.
The British list interested me because IIRC its top show (at least, the top show on one of their lists) was “Only Fools and Horses,” which I had never even heard of prior to reading that list.
As for the American list. Well, it’s got Star Trek, Simpsons, Twilight Zone, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which are probably my favorite shows, so I can’t complain particularly.
Yep, you’re right Fanny & Alexander was developed for television and cinema at the same time, which is pretty common with some of these expensive but short series (to ensure more investors).
And I agree with your picks.
What a mess: why would you mix British and American shows, cartoons with news programming with mini-series with traditional entertainment fare, etc?
That being said though, its not a bad list overall. I do think he missed with not having Parker Lewis on there–that was some genuinely cutting edge material at the time that was also quite funny. I’m sure there are other misses, and some on the list that I think are quite dreadful, but at least I didn’t just scream when I read it.
Great picks. I saw The Kingdom at the sadly now-defunct UC Theater in Berkeley–it was amazing.
And I watched Berlin Alexanderplatz on PBS with my dad way back in the day (before cable, kids!), and it has stayed in my memory in the 7 decades since.
Thank GOD Homicide is on there.
But, hi, Fawlty Towers?! And yeah, Columbo should be there too.
