Fifty Greatest Television Shows of All Time<\/a> — at least as produced and broadcast in the US.<\/p>\nThe list (and my inevitable thoughts):<\/p>\n
1. Seinfeld <\/b>(Never have figured out the attraction.)<\/p>\n
2. I Love Lucy<\/b> (This, on the other hand, was a true classic.)<\/p>\n
3. The Honeymooners<\/b> (See #1. Gleason just never did it for me.)<\/p>\n
4. All in the Family<\/b> (Groundbreaking, I guess.)<\/p>\n
5. The Sopranos<\/b> (Any show less than five years old — or even any show still in production — should be excluded from such a list, sez I. That having been said, badda-bing, I’ve enjoyed all two episodes I’ve watched on business trips.)<\/p>\n
6. 60 Minutes<\/b> (Groundbreaking news show. Hell, I remember watching this when I was still living with my parents!)<\/p>\n
7. The Late Show with David Letterman<\/b> (I’d rather give the nod to Johnny (#12). Or even Steve.)<\/p>\n
8. The Simpsons<\/b> (Yup.)<\/p>\n
9. The Andy Griffith Show<\/b> (Never have cared for it.)<\/p>\n
10. Saturday Night Live<\/b> (Certainly wins the “This Show Will Be Cancelled After This Season” Anti-Prediction Award.)<\/p>\n
11. The Mary Tyler Moore Show<\/b> (Triffic stuff.)<\/p>\n
12. The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson<\/b> (Never watched it much, but it was a seminal show in its influence both on talk shows, on comedy, and on late-night TV.)<\/p>\n
13. The Dick Van Dyke Show<\/b> (Probably one of the most brilliant comedies ever.)<\/p>\n
14. Hill Street Blues<\/b> (As a trend-setter for grim-n-gritty, sure.)<\/p>\n
15. The Ed Sullivan Show<\/b> (No comment.)<\/p>\n
16. The Carol Burnett Show<\/b> (Was to the Variety Show what Dick Van Dyke was to the sitcom.)<\/p>\n
17. Today Show<\/b> (No comment.)<\/p>\n
18. Cheers<\/b> (Never much cared for it. The characters spent way too much time being mean to each other.)<\/p>\n
19. thirtysomething<\/b> (No comment.)<\/p>\n
20. St. Elsewhere<\/b> (Was to doctor shows what HSB was to cop shows. Great, great stuff.)<\/p>\n
21. Friends<\/b> (Another show I have never “gotten.”)<\/p>\n
22. ER<\/b> (At least they had the decency to rank it below St. E.)<\/p>\n
23. Nightline<\/b> (No comment.)<\/p>\n
24. Law & Order<\/b> (Entertaining, yes. Long-lived, absolutely. One of the greatest? Feh.)<\/p>\n
25. M*A*S*H<\/b> (The Tragicomedy. Good, solid stuff, even if it got preachy as time went on.)<\/p>\n
26. The Twilight Zone<\/b> (Give me the Outer Limits any day. But I’ll take the nod to sf\/fantasy.)<\/p>\n
27. Sesame Street<\/b> (No comment.)<\/p>\n
28. The Cosby Show<\/b> (Entertaining, but I liked Bill on a number of other shows he did a lot better. I, Spy, anyone?)<\/p>\n
29. Donahue<\/b> (No comment, except to note that his successors in the talk show arena make Donahue look like Einstein.)<\/p>\n
30. Your Show of Shows<\/b> (No comment.)<\/p>\n
31. The Defenders<\/b> (No comment.)<\/p>\n
32. American Family<\/b> (No comment.)<\/p>\n
33. Playhouse 90<\/b> (No comment.)<\/p>\n
34. Frasier<\/b> (See #18.)<\/p>\n
35. Roseanne<\/b> (See #18.)<\/p>\n
36. The Fugitive<\/b> (Probably the best of the QM herd. Great, audience-gripping action, formulaic as all hell, and a marvelous herd of guest stars. This one deserves to rank higher.)<\/p>\n
37. The X-Files<\/b> (Another show I never got into. Given that folks have said it’s sucked for the past few seasons, I’m not sure how it ranks here, except as a cult classic.)<\/p>\n
38. The Larry Sanders Show<\/b> (Funny.)<\/p>\n
39. The Rockford Files<\/b> (I’d prefer Maverick, but they’re basically both the James Garner Show, so I’ll take it. But the greatest?)<\/p>\n
40. Gunsmoke<\/b> (No comment.)<\/p>\n
41. Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/b> (Damned sight better than a lot of the ones ranked above it.)<\/p>\n
42. Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In<\/b> (Okay.)<\/p>\n
43. Bonanza<\/b> (One of the better westerns, which is not saying much.)<\/p>\n
44. The Bob Newhart Show<\/b> (I can’t believe this one ranks below Cheers, Frazier, Roseanne … It’s another MTM classic.)<\/p>\n
45. Twin Peaks<\/b> (Cult classic. Yawn.)<\/p>\n
46. Star Trek: The Next Generation<\/b> (I’d rate the first three seasons of DS9 as better than any season of TNG … but I’d probably have to rate TOS as the best of the franchise, all told. And Farscape beats any of them, hands down.)<\/p>\n
47. Rocky and His Friends<\/b> (This should be in the Top 20.)<\/p>\n
48. Taxi<\/b> (Another show I never understood. If you want dark, urban comedy, how about Night Court?)<\/p>\n
49. The Oprah Winfrey Show<\/b> (No comment.)<\/p>\n
50. Bewitched<\/b> (What?!)<\/p>\n
You can also go vote for the Best Single Series of All Time at the site. Dick Van Dyke <\/i>got my vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TV Guide learned a long time ago that “List” issues are big sellers. The Top Ten Comedies. The Top Twenty Dramas. The Twenty-Five Best TV Actors. The list goes on,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15,360,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-media-tv-star-trek","category-media-tv"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":128343,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/17\/the-50-greatest-sci-fi-tv-shows-kinda-sorta-more-or-less.html","url_meta":{"origin":1767,"position":0},"title":"The 50 Greatest Sci-Fi TV Shows (kinda-sorta more-or-less)","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 17-Oct-15 7:13pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A few caveats on the Popular Mechanics list:1. I suspect this list would look a lot different in, say, five years. We are currently going through a rich time in SF genre TV, and what will turn out to be great and what will turn out to be a flash\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128344,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/18\/the-50-greatest-sci-fi-tv-shows-kinda-sorta-more-or-less-redux.html","url_meta":{"origin":1767,"position":1},"title":"The 50 Greatest Sci-Fi TV Shows (kinda-sorta more-or-less) (Redux)","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 18-Oct-15 11:20am","format":false,"excerpt":"So this is based on an article from a Popular Mechanics (!) article on \"The 50 Greatest Sci-Fi Shows Ever\" [http:\/\/www.popularmechanics.com\/culture\/movies\/g156\/the-50-greatest-sci-fi-tv-shows]. See here [https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/17\/the-50-greatest-sci-fi-tv-shows-kinda-sorta-more-or-less.html] for caveats and comments on that list. I've decided to do my own force ranking (thanks +Stan Pedzick), working within the same list (to do otherwise\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/TV%2BGuide%2BSF.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":51766,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/16\/the-greatest-non-holmes-detectives.html","url_meta":{"origin":1767,"position":2},"title":"The Greatest (non-Holmes) Detectives","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 16-Jul-15 11:19pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Pretty decent list, depending on how you're defining the genre and what values of \"great\" you allow for. Still, it has some of my favorites, so it must be a good list, right?(h\/t +J. Steven York) The 12 Greatest Fictional Detectives (Who Aren't Sherlock Holmes) We all love Sherlock Holmes,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":27603,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/04\/26\/eberts-greatest-films.html","url_meta":{"origin":1767,"position":3},"title":"Ebert's greatest films","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 26-Apr-12 1:18pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I am by no means pretentious enough to come up with my own list of the \"greatest films of all time.\" It's hard enough for me to come up with a list of \"my favorite films of all time,\" even if we can decide whether favorite means judged aesthetic merit\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10564,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/12\/22\/cartoony_goodness.html","url_meta":{"origin":1767,"position":4},"title":"Cartoony goodness","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 22-Dec-06 10:55am","format":false,"excerpt":"The Fifty Greatest Cartoons of All Time -- the list was from the animation industry in 1994, but the YouTube links are from 2006, baby! Excellent....","rel":"","context":"In "Animation \/ Cartoons"","block_context":{"text":"Animation \/ Cartoons","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-cartoons"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/bugs_bunny-whats_opera-doc.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6846,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/12\/20\/2004_lists_firs.html","url_meta":{"origin":1767,"position":5},"title":"2004 Lists, First of What Will No Doubt Be a Series","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 20-Dec-04 2:16pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The end of the year is always a time for Lists of the Greatest\/Worst\/Most\/Etc. in various categories. 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