A Television List

The Writers Guild of America has produced a list of the top 101 best written television shows. Lists like this are great conversation starters.

What first struck me about the list is how it reinforces my previous blog post that centered around The-Best-Night-In-Television-Ever, the prime time Saturday night slate of shows on CBS in the 1973-1974 season.

• M*A*S*H
• All in the Family
• The Mary Tyler Moore Show
• The Bob Newhart Show
• The Carol Burnett Show

Three of these shows--three!--are in the top ten of the WGA list:

#4 All in the Family
#5 M*A*S*H
#6 The Mary Tyler Moore Show

Don't feel too bad about the remaining two. The Carol Burnett Show and the Bob Newhart Show came in at #37 and #41, respectively.

This is an almost unbelievable accomplishment. Never in the history of the medium has so much quality been so tightly packed into a single evening by a single network. I am stunned that there has not been any discussion of this in the entertainment media, at least none that I have seen.

A few other aspects of the list struck me.

• I was pleased that Seinfeld came in as the highest-rated comedy ever and the #2 best written show overall. This choice seems to validate a controversial TV Guide article that was published in 2002 announcing that Seinfeld was the greatest television show of all time.
• I was pleased that The Wire made the top ten, though I thought that it should have been #1. The Sopranos won that prize. One television critic I like explained this by pointing out that purely in terms of writing quality, The Wire should have been #1, but that The Sopranos was accorded that slot because of its overall cultural impact. However, he went on to explain that if cultural impact was a valid criteria then it was insane that Seinfeld was rated higher than All in the Family. I go back and forth on this myself. The difficulty in comparing the two shows is that they are almost mirror opposites: the show about issues and the show about nothing. This is not apples and oranges. It is apples and plutonium.
• I was pleased that the two most memorable shows from my childhood--The Andy Griffith Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show--both made the list. However, I think it was wrongheaded to rate Van Dyke at #15 and Griffith at #70. Oddly, The Andy Griffith Show has stood the test of time better Van Dyke's groundbreaking show, which can seem rather dated by contemporary standards. Morey Amsterdam's jokes and put-downs seemed hilarious to me in 1965. Now they seem like a lot of stale vaudeville schtick. However, Don Knots' brilliantly realized character of Barney Fife still makes me laugh forty-five years later.
• I was doubly pleased--as all right-thinking people would be--that Star Trek was ranked #33 way ahead of The Next Generation at #79.
• Disappointments? I never warmed up to Mad Men, so I certainly would not have placed it at #7. So too, Six Feet Under was little more than a warmed-over soap opera that had one or two decent seasons. Placing it at #19 is just silly. Dexter is a much better show, if Michael C. Hall premium cable shows is what you are looking for. I also thought that it was just plain weird that The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Late Night with David Letterman all made the list (The Daily Show made the top 20), but The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson wasn't on the list at all. This underscores a criticism I have heard about this this, namely that it is biased in favor of more contemporary shows that are fresher in memory.
• I was pleased that Law & Order (the original) made the top fifty. I have always been a big fan, especially seasons 3-10, for the way it managed to shoehorn original material into an incredibly inflexible format: 

1. the story begins when a crime is discovered and Jerry Orbach's Lenny Briscoe makes some wry quip at the scene
2. the crime is investigated and an arrest is made
3. the defendants are tried for the crime
4. after the verdict comes in and Steven Hill's Adam Schiff ends the show with a wry quip.

• Finally, I was pleased that Breaking Bad made the list at #13. People have been telling me to watch that show for years, and I got around to it only in the past couple of weeks (the wonder of Netflix makes this possible). Boy, were the advocates of that show right. It is very, very good. The Shield is another show like this that I will get around to once I have finished with Breaking Bad. It is #71.

Here's the entire list.

1. "The Sopranos"

2. "Seinfeld"

3. "The Twilight Zone"

4. "All in the Family"

5. "MASH"

6. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show"

7. "Mad Men"

8. "Cheers"

9. "The Wire"

10. "The West Wing"

11. "The Simpsons"

12. "I Love Lucy"

13. "Breaking Bad"

14. "The Dick Van Dyke Show"

15. "Hill Street Blues"

16. "Arrested Development"

17. "The Daily Show"

18. "Six Feet Under"

19. "Taxi"

20. "The Larry Sanders Show"

21. "30 Rock"

22. "Friday Night Lights"

23. "Frasier"

24. "Friends"

25. "Saturday Night Live"

26. "The X-Files"

27. "Lost"

28. "ER"

29. "The Cosby Show"

30. "Curb Your Enthusiasm"

31. "The Honeymooners"

32. "Deadwood"

33. "Star Trek"

34. "Modern Family"

35. "Twin Peaks"

36. "NYPD Blue"

37. "The Carol Burnett Show"

38. "Battlestar Galactica"

39. "Sex and the City"

40. "Game of Thrones"

41. "The Bob Newhart Show"

42. "Your Show of Shows"

43. "Downton Abbey"

44. "Law & Order"

45. "Thirtysomething"

46. "St. Elsewhere"

47. "Homicide: Life on the Street"

48. "Homeland"

49. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

50. "The Good Wife"

51. "The Colbert Report"

52. "The Office" (British version)

53. "Northern Exposure"

54. "The Wonder Years"

55. "L.A. Law"

56. "Sesame Street"

57. "Columbo"

58. "The Rockford Files"

59. "Fawlty Towers"

60. "Moonlighting"

61. "Freaks and Geeks"

62. "Roots"

63. "Everybody Loves Raymond"

64. "South Park"

65. "Playhouse 90"

66. "The Office" (U.S. version)

67. "Dexter"

68. "My So-Called Life"

69. "Golden Girls"

70. "The Andy Griffith Show"

71. "The Shield"

72. "Roseanne"

73. "24"

74. "Murphy Brown"

75. "House"

76. "Barney Miller"

77. "I, Claudius"

78. "The Odd Couple"

79. "Star Trek: The Next Generation"

80. "Alfred Hitchcock Presents"

81. "Upstairs Downstairs"

82. "Monty Python's Flying Circus"

83. "Get Smart"

84. "Gunsmoke"

85. "The Defenders"

86. "Sergeant Bilko"

87. "Justified"

88. "Band of Brothers"

89. "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In"

90. "The Prisoner"

91. "The Muppet Show"

92. "Absolutely Fabulous"

93. "Boardwalk Empire"

94. "Will and Grace"

95. "Family Ties"

96. "Lonesome Dove"

97. "Soap"

98. "The Fugitive"

99. "Louie"

100. "Late Night With David Letterman"

101. "Oz"