The Best TV shows of the Internet Age!

The ESPN series on OJ is truly excellent. If you like documentaries at all you should check it out.

I’ve only seen the first episode of The People vs OJ Simpson, but it’s also fantastic so far. Both shows are really good, but coming at the same events from different methods.

I will absolutely fight you on Lost (terrible Abrams mystery box nonsense), but Babylon 5 certainly ranks for me.

As Wumpus points out, the rubric here is apparently critical reception by individual season. So it’s certainly interesting/odd that Season 1 of Lost isn’t up there… given that the show was both a critical and popular darling for the first couple seasons (before it crashed pretty hard in both respects).

I’m someone who is of the opinion that the failures were so acute and horrible in later seasons that it taints the early ones. And I watched 3/4 seasons of the show before getting so fed up I dropped it in anger.

That’s the problem with the mystery box style. If you don’t have satisfying answers, or a plan, it retroactively can ruin what came before. Not to say you can’t have mystery or unresolved questions, but it needs to stand on its own without those being the central source of tension/ interest. See: Matrix vs the sequels.

Murder One was actually rather good. It wasnt your “bog standard Lawyer procedural” especially by the TV standards of the day. It was one of the pioneers of telling a singular and complete story over a season. Think of it as the granddaddy of something like True Detective.

No love for B&W classics? The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Great catch on the Twilight Zone! I am constantly amazed whenever I catch a rerun of the Twilight Zone.

I haven’t seen The Outer Limits (except the one hosted by Forest Whitaker, which was terrible), and I didn’t much care for Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The only reason I used to watch Alfred Hitchcock Presents during the 80s is because it was one of the only things on TV, so it was either that or watch nothing. The one I watched was in color though, so maybe you’re talking about older episodes of Alfred Hitchcock than the ones I saw in the 80s.

Decent list, some stuff on there I’d skip, but that’s personal taste for you. To that list I’d add Star Trek: The Next Generation (1989?) and Avatar: The Last Airbender (2009?). Avatar is a truly great show you can watch with your kids or alone, and has whole character arcs, personal growth and development, etc. Very unusual for an animated show.

I’d also put Mythbusters (2003?) on there. Its probably the only good show we got out of the reality TV craze.

At least they put Battlestar Galactica in there for scifi. It’s good unless you’re the type of person that likes endings and coherent plotlines.

OK, that interests me you say it was a pioneer of season long arcing, and I’mma let you finish. But the second best TV series OF ALL TIME!? (or in the Metacritic era; whatevs)

The title of the thread should really be “Best TV Shows of the Internet Age” since Metacritic doesn’t do much if anything for any shows aired before the mid-90s. If you go to the Metacritic pages for Star Trek: TOS or Twilight Zone, they have user ratings, but no Metacritic scores at all.

The original Twilight Zone with Rod Sterling smoking up a storm holds up really well. Its astonishing those are all original stories. So many famous plots and settings and twists that made their way into our collective memory and have been remade, cribbed, referenced or parodied.

I’d also add The Cosby Show.

I’d say “Highest rated shows on Metacritic” but your version is a massive improvement.

Agreed…
The Twilight Zone, Star Trek (both original and TNG), and also Seinfeld… basically every episode of all of them are permanently in my brain.

What’s really amazing, is that despite knowing every episode basically by heart, I also enjoy watching all three of those shows every single time.

Deep Space Nine is better than both of those! That should be on the list too.

I wonder if there used to be print reviews of these types of shows back in those days? Perhaps in newspapers and magazines? And could someone convert those into metacritic scores?

OMG you’re one of those people.

Heh. Proudly so. I used to be sheepish about that admission after the original run. But in the mid-2000s they released all 3 shows on DVD, and a friend of mine bought them all, and we saw all the shows back to back, watching every episode multiple times sometimes. And after watching all 3, I was amazed at how well Deep Space Nine stood up in the issues it addressed in a post 9/11 world where we were in a quagmire in Iraq at the time. On the initial run, I loved the show, but in rewatching it on DVD years later, that’s when I truly became convinced at how brilliant the show really was.

DS9 was fine, it was just a different kind of show.

Star Trek: TOS, TNG- To boldly go.
DS9- To wait around in the same place all the time and hope shit comes to us. Meanwhile here’s an episode about these two kids and the trouble they cause.

:)

Im not defending its position on the list. I find that arguing over list positions is a fools errand and frankly quite silly, in a Monty Python’s Flying Circus kind of way ( another series not on the list! )
All I am saying is that it was a good show and I can understand its inclusion. The first season was very well received both with audiences and critically but it never recaptured the magic of its first season during the rest of its run.