Let the Arguing Begin!

September 26, 2022 7:11 AM

The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time

Giving no restrictions on era or genre, we ended up with an eclectic list where the wholesome children’s television institution Sesame Street finished one spot ahead of foulmouthed Western Deadwood, while Eisenhower-era juggernaut I Love Lucy wound up sandwiched in between two shows, Lost and Arrested Development, that debuted during George W. Bush’s first term.

Rolling Stone updates their 2016 list of All Time Best TV Shows.
posted by Frayed Knot (160 comments total)

Manimal still getting snubbed, I see.
posted by Literaryhero at 7:15 AM on September 26, 2022 [44 favorites]

Barney Miller seems to be missing. I know there were a number of 1970s sitcoms, but I really think they could have found room for one more.
posted by sardonyx at 7:23 AM on September 26, 2022 [22 favorites]

Whew, Sopranos is still number one.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:47 AM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Never stopped believin'
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:49 AM on September 26, 2022 [6 favorites]

Someone never watched The Singing Detective.
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:53 AM on September 26, 2022 [13 favorites]

Only halfway through, but good to see the recognition of The Shield as the forerunner of so many of the great shows that followed. Some weirdness so far but that placement is a pretty good sign.
posted by martin q blank at 7:54 AM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

No Adventure Time? Oh my Glob.
posted by gwint at 8:00 AM on September 26, 2022 [14 favorites]

100. ‘What We Do in the Shadows’
99. ‘Oz’
98. ‘The Good Fight’
97. ‘The Odd Couple’
96. ‘Rick and Morty’ 
95. ‘Squid Game’
94. ‘NewsRadio’ 
93. ‘The Rockford Files’ 
92. ‘The Muppet Show’  
91. ‘The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson’  
90. ‘The Wonder Years’ 
89. ‘The Carol Burnett Show’
88. ‘The Crown’ 
87. ‘The Kids in the Hall’  
86. ‘The Bob Newhart Show’ 
85. ‘Orange Is the New Black’
84. ‘Fargo’  
83. ‘I’m Alan Partridge’ 
82. ‘Party Down’ 
81. ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’  
80. ‘Band of Brothers’ 
79. ‘Mr. Show with Bob and David’
78. ‘Sex and the City’
77. ‘The Jeffersons’ 
76. ‘Justified’ 
75. ‘Frasier’
74. ‘The Honeymooners’
73. ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ 
72. ‘Good Times’  
71. ‘Better Things’ 
70. ‘SCTV’  
69. ‘Chappelle’s Show’  
68. ‘Fawlty Towers’
67. ‘NYPD Blue’
66. ‘The Daily Show With Jon Stewart’
65. ‘Girls’
64. ‘The Golden Girls’
63. ‘South Park’ 
62. ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’
61. ‘The Underground Railroad’ 
60. ‘Taxi’
59. ‘Key & Peele’
58. ‘Six Feet Under’
57. ‘Russian Doll’
56. ‘Community’
55. ‘Halt and Catch Fire’
54. ‘ER’
53. ‘The Office’ (U.K.)
52. ‘Barry’
51. ‘The X-Files’
50. ‘Jeopardy!’
49. ‘Friends’
48. ‘The Shield’
47. ‘My So-Called Life’
46. ‘The West Wing’
45. ‘Columbo’
44. ‘Late Night With David Letterman’
43. ‘Insecure’
42. ‘Battlestar Galactica’
41. ‘BoJack Horseman’
40. ‘The Good Place’
39. ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’
38. ‘Hill Street Blues’
37. ‘Arrested Development’
36. ‘I Love Lucy’
35. ‘Lost’
34. ‘The Office’ (U.S.)
33. ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’
32. ‘Better Call Saul’
31. ‘Game of Thrones’
30. ‘Parks and Recreation’
29. ‘Roots’
28. ‘Friday Night Lights’
27. ‘Deadwood’
26. ‘Sesame Street’
25. ‘M*A*S*H’
24. ‘Freaks and Geeks’
23. ‘Watchmen’
22. ‘Star Trek’
21. ‘All in the Family
20. ’30 Rock’
19. ‘I May Destroy You’
18. ‘Saturday Night Live’
17. ‘The Leftovers’
16. ‘Twin Peaks’
15. ‘The Larry Sanders Show’
14. ‘The Americans’
13. ‘Veep’
12. ‘The Twilight Zone’
11. ‘Succession’
10. ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’
9. ‘Atlanta’
8. ‘Cheers’
7. ‘Mad Men’
6. ‘Seinfeld’
5. ‘Fleabag’ 
4. ‘The Wire’
3. ‘Breaking Bad’
2. ‘The Simpsons’
1. ‘The Sopranos’
posted by 1970s Antihero at 8:02 AM on September 26, 2022 [49 favorites]

So, NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues, The Shield, The Wire…but no Homicide? I appreciate that elements of H:LOTS were folded into The Wire, but just the cinematography alone and making Baltimore a major character of the show - I’m probably biased.

However, as I scrolled I did find The Americans and that eased my righteous (I feel) indignation.
posted by sara is disenchanted at 8:04 AM on September 26, 2022 [9 favorites]

Like the old idea that SciFi says more about the present than the future, so to with these Greatest of All Time lists. "Succession" "Atlanta" and "Fleabag"-- these are all terrific shows, but #11, #9, and #5 respectively? Of all time?

To wit, here's the list of shows that were deemed Greatest of All Time in their 2016 list but do not appear on the 2022 one:

24
American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson
American Idol
Beavis and Butt-Head
Broad City
Dallas
Doctor Who
Downton Abbey
Eastbound and Down
Gunsmoke
Happy Days
Homeland
House of Cards
In Living Color
Jeopardy
Late Night With Conan O’Brien
Law & Order
Louie
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Portlandia
Real Time With Bill Maher
Roseanne
The Colbert Report
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Fugitive
The Real World
The Ren & Stimpy Show
The State
The Walking Dead
Thirtysomething
Transparent
Your Show of Shows
posted by gwint at 8:06 AM on September 26, 2022 [38 favorites]

They said there was no restriction on genre, but news and other factual shows seem to be ignored. “60 Minutes” in particular is pretty solidly woven into the fabric of the USA, and (although less of a case could be made for it) “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” was a staple of my youth and many others.
posted by TedW at 8:10 AM on September 26, 2022 [14 favorites]

I am annoyed by the presence of the Korean-made and Korean-language Squid Game but none of the other vastly superior shows from Korea or any other shows not originally filmed in English. Fuck this list.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:11 AM on September 26, 2022 [8 favorites]

The Closer is a great show with women in leadership positions.
Brooklyn 99 is an uncommonly good cop show.

I posted a link to the old version in a reply recently; the lists are really great to mine for comfort watching. This thread should be a great resource for the very many what should I watch ask.me's. Thanks for posting
posted by theora55 at 8:14 AM on September 26, 2022

There are definite recency and English-language biases going on, and Rolling Stone's website is an utter mess—is content actually meant to be consumed there?—but it's a solid way of picking what TV shows to binge next.
posted by vitout at 8:18 AM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

Missing:

Star Blazers
Doctor Who
Babylon 5
Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Cosmos.

Humbug, I'm getting old.
posted by kmartino at 8:19 AM on September 26, 2022 [16 favorites]

I can live with Sopranos at number one as long as Breaking Bad is also in the top five.

I liked Fleabag but top five? And above Mad Men? No. It had only two six-episode seasons (with 30-minute episodes) while Mad Men delivered seven seasons of at least 13 episodes each. This isn't merely about quantity over quality; most of the Mad Men's seasons were relatively strong. Not great, Rolling Stone.

The top ten was generally okay though I would've ranked a few of them differently.

To wit, here's the list of shows that were deemed Greatest of All Time in their 2016 list but do not appear on the 2022 one:

Because of some things that have happened in real life since 2016, many of those shows seriously have not stood well the test of time.
posted by fuse theorem at 8:21 AM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

And it is ironic that Rolling Stone of all media outlets couldn’t find a place for “WKRP in Cincinnati”! Of course, given some of the bands that aren’t in Jan Wenner’s museum in Cleveland, I shouldn’t be surprised.
posted by TedW at 8:21 AM on September 26, 2022 [12 favorites]

No Ted Lasso? Where do I queue for arguing?
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 8:31 AM on September 26, 2022 [10 favorites]

No. It had only two six-episode seasons (with 30-minute episodes) while Mad Men delivered seven seasons of at least 13 episodes each.

I'd reject all the limited series, like Squid Games and Band of Brothers (whose sequel The Pacific or whatever it was called wasn't that great). It's not really fair to compare ~10 episodes to 50+.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:32 AM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

Sesame Street taught an entire generation of American kids how to count and even read before entering Kindergarten. It changed the curriculum of many districts that never experienced this before.

No other show before or since has had that kind of impact, IMO.
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:32 AM on September 26, 2022 [34 favorites]

It's not really fair to compare ~10 episodes to 50+.

Why is that? If a show says what it needs to in 10 episodes, why should that count against it? It's also worth pointing out that 10-13 episode seasons are the norm around the world, and have been getting traction here in the US - the 20+ episode season is very much an outlier. Not to mention that there's a value to letting a story come to a natural conclusion, as we have many tales of shows going off the deep end because Executive Meddling pushed the show to continue past where it should.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:39 AM on September 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

Some things I learned from this list: I hadn't known that The Underground Railroad is so visually spectacular, and I had never heard of Better Things.

Many years ago I read Steven Stark's book Glued to the Set: 60 Television Shows and Events That Made Us Who We are Today which included, for instance, the Watergate hearings and the Moon landing. This makes me realize that I think there are no reality shows on Sepinwall's list, and I don't know specifically which one I'd put in there but maybe The Great British Bakeoff?

I believe I remember Stark had an interesting chapter contrasting Seinfeld and Home Improvement and discussing how they were both really popular sitcoms at the same time that appealed differently to audiences. I wonder whether there are a few shows on Sepinwall's list that are amenable to that kind of comparison.
posted by brainwane at 8:39 AM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

It's hard to compare limited series and auteur projects that end when the creators want them to end with the large majority of tv shows that keep getting made until they're no longer profitable.

As often happens with these, I really just want to hear about the part where they argue about what metrics they're using. Because clearly you don't lose points for going on too long (The Simpsons), Saturday Night Live), ending way too soon (Freaks and Geeks, My So-Called Life), having your children outshine you (Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue), or aging terribly (All in the Family, The Honeymooners, The West Wing, Lost).
posted by box at 8:44 AM on September 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

"It's not really fair to compare ~10 episodes to 50+."

This is true. I'm also finding it strange to see some shows with definitely uneven seasons rank higher than shows with little-to-no weak spots. Like Taxi -- started out great, definitely sank over time -- was it that much better than The Muppet Show, which had no stinker episodes (that I remember and please don't shatter my illusions)?

Some weird moments in there.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:45 AM on September 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

maybe The Great British Bakeoff?
Huh, yeah, or Queer Eye.

Or Nailed It. They need something exuberantly brainless to celebrate a thing TV does well, which is be exuberantly brainless. So either Wipeout or Nailed It. God, I love Nailed It so much.
posted by Don Pepino at 8:47 AM on September 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

No "Nathan for You"? Bzzt. Wrongo! That's the top of my list, ok maybe it can go head to head with The Wire and The Sopranos and The Leftovers, but it's the apotheosis of reality television, and one of the funniest shows ever produced. A glaring omission!
posted by dis_integration at 8:55 AM on September 26, 2022 [7 favorites]

Canadian comedy series “Slings and Arrows” not on this list?
Where’s my Molotov cocktail….
posted by BostonTerrier at 8:58 AM on September 26, 2022 [12 favorites]

I haven't watched either, but groundbreaking reality shows like 1971's An American Family or its 1990s successor The Real World (especially the San Francisco season) would be worth considering.
posted by brainwane at 8:59 AM on September 26, 2022

Sometimes I feel like Babylon Berlin only exists in my imagination and no one else has ever seen it, because that’s the only thing that explains its persistent absence from these kinds of lists.
posted by oulipian at 9:03 AM on September 26, 2022 [8 favorites]

I'm going to ding the list for not including "Joe Pera Talks To You". Which, also...had to have a microscopic budget. Still mad about that one getting cancelled.
posted by Ipsifendus at 9:04 AM on September 26, 2022 [6 favorites]

It had only two six-episode seasons

That's what would make it a good show to me, and something I'd want to search out (haven't seen it yet).

For comparison, Fawlty Towers also had two six-episode seasons, which are notable for their intensely concentrated talent and hilarity. Stretching out the concept over many multiple seasons would have diluted it.

(And, Fawlty Towers should have been much, much higher than 68 in the list.)
posted by gimonca at 9:06 AM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

or aging terribly (All in the Family, The Honeymooners, The West Wing, Lost).

Honestly: Lost has actually improved with age, because now the plot twists, un-broaded by the wait imposed by network TV, hit hard and fast and don't feel nearly so haphazard, which let you enjoy the performances (which were always the point of that show anyway) and lets the show's mythology feel more cogent and whole.
posted by mightygodking at 9:07 AM on September 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

No Severance, huh?
posted by snwod at 9:07 AM on September 26, 2022 [6 favorites]

No Venture Bros?
posted by GoblinHoney at 9:08 AM on September 26, 2022 [11 favorites]

"I liked Fleabag but top five?"

Yes!
posted by oddman at 9:12 AM on September 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

ctrl-f "Jonny Quest" gets nothing. This is yet another wrong list.
posted by philip-random at 9:17 AM on September 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

One show that has aged well (and deserves a higher ranking): Roots. I streamed several episodes again just last year. So many little details I missed the first time. So many moments when I went "how did they get this past the network brass?" So worth a re-watch after all these years.
posted by gimonca at 9:19 AM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

Also, The Red Green Show is another big miss by this list. Well, for me, anyway. And the few dozen other people who grew up with the blessed duct tape wisdom from the Possum Lodge.
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 9:20 AM on September 26, 2022 [9 favorites]

> So, NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues, The Shield, The Wire…but no Homicide?

I suspect the fact that Homicide is basically unavailable to watch except through piracy has an impact here, I think it has an impact on the recency as well. Although, when it comes to recency bias for television, TV was just really bad before the mid to late 90s. TV dramas, especially, in the 80s were just really really comically bad. Quantum Leap? Murder She Wrote? So filled with bizarre set pieces and incredibly bad acting and writing choices, randomly different from episode to episode with no coherence beyond a few two to three episode story arcs. There really is a line before / after approximately the Wire and the Sopranos that divides good drama tv from bad.
posted by dis_integration at 9:36 AM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

TV was just really bad before the mid to late 90s.

QFT. Adults weren't just being old farts when they'd say that tv rotted your brain. It was mostly garbage, and considering how you could consume it, there was no way of knowing week to week whether you'd get one of the gems for a particular series or more dross.

Even though the golden age of tv might be over, we're still so much better off now than before Oz/Sopranos/The Shield/etc.
posted by nushustu at 9:44 AM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

"It's not really fair to compare ~10 episodes to 50+."

Yeah, there’s some one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others stuff going on here, with shows that got in and out in ten or a dozen episodes alongside things that ran thousands. I think if you added up all the hours of television broadcast in the list, Johnny Carson is going to be in basically half of them.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:48 AM on September 26, 2022

Adults weren't just being old farts when they'd say that tv rotted your brain.

I am not convinced we fully understand the effect of moving images on the brain over a lifetime.. replace 'rotted' with 'permanently changed your wiring' and I'm onboard with that. I did not raise kids but the change in an 8 year old I've observed, from the time I met him about 3-4 years ago, is startling.
posted by elkevelvet at 9:52 AM on September 26, 2022

No love for "King of Queens"?...
It's almost then only thing I watch.
posted by Czjewel at 9:54 AM on September 26, 2022

I honestly think Letterkenny should be on the list somewhere. Every episode of that show is well-written, not in the sense of over-arching theme or character development (although that's there), but in the certainty that writers sat down and tweaked every word, every pause and gesture to extract 100% of the comedy. Even in a skit as verbally dense as this, you get an excellent sense of who these people are.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 9:54 AM on September 26, 2022 [11 favorites]

However, as I scrolled I did find The Americans and that eased my righteous (I feel) indignation.

This validates the list.

Canadian comedy series “Slings and Arrows” not on this list?

This invalidates the list.
posted by kingless at 9:56 AM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Outside of some recency bias (I like a lot of the more current shows that were included, but it seems too soon to really gauge where a show like “Barry”, “Russian Doll”, or “Squid Game” belongs in the overall TV pantheon) this seems like a decent enough list. The only glaring omission to me is “Survivor”. In terms of influence, longevity, and a show that has been able to mostly maintain its quality over its run, it seems more deserving than, for example, some of the niche shows that were included that are only a season or two into their runs.
posted by The Gooch at 9:58 AM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

I've approached the problem of putting together this sort of list and came to the conclusion that you have to make separate categories to highlight the different reasons why some shows are on the list. The reason to acknowledge I Love Lucy is very different than the reason to acknowledge The Wire.

There are the pioneers in which case I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, All in the Family, and some other like Your Show of Shows, make perfect sense. Then there are the animation greats which along with The Simpsons, such shows as Rocky & Bullwinkle, The Flintstones, or Scooby Doo should be considered. Some things are juggernauts, so popular for so long that they can't be ignored (Saturday Night Live, Dr. Who). Maybe have a category for recent contenders in which case Succession, Atlanta, and Arcane fit my list.

In terms of quality alone as a judge, I would put in my top ten: The Wire, Breaking Bad, The Twilight Zone, The Sopranos, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Freaks and Geeks, M*A*S*H, BoJack Horseman, Fawlty Towers, and Homicide.

I shake my head when I watch The Wire. The most flawless acting on any show, anytime. I am rewatching Breaking Bad now (my third run-through). So many great monologues, so many brilliant visuals, and so many great dramatic choices. BTW, I am Puerto Rico and my house, after eight days, is still without power. The power went out when just received a one minute warning that two people were coming to kill him.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:02 AM on September 26, 2022 [7 favorites]

All lists are imperfect. They are force multipliers for content producers because most of the engagement occurs through the reader's natural bikeshedding instinct. Nobody reads one and says, “yes, this ordering is a perfect match to my own.” They read it and think, “it’s absolutely ridiculous for Parks & Rec to be ranked higher than either version of The Office” (as I thought while reading this list) — and then tell all their friends about the list so that those friends can fully appreciate how wrong the list really is. And the process repeats itself.

Even without that cynical motive, the best-of-all-time list is a fool's errand because it invites you to ask yourself whether I Love Lucy is a better or worse show than Breaking Bad. I am reminded of the episode of Sports Night where they argue about whether their title of “Athlete of the Century” should be awarded to Muhammad Ali or Secretariat.

And even within genres, shows are products of their time; I don't know how to compare The Dick van Dyke Show to Community even though I love both and they have both made me laugh quite a bit over the years.

And even within eras, shows express themselves in different ways. I do not know how to compare NYPD Blue to Law & Order, even though they won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series in consecutive years, and they're both New York crime shows. The former got most of the critical attention and blockbuster ratings at the time, but the latter was steadier and dedicated to its formula and has had far more staying power. (Even ignoring the spinoffs and the reboot — and I do ignore them, snobbishly and self-righteously.)

I do appreciate the ability of a team-compiled list like this to expose people to shows they weren't aware of before, much like how I wouldn't love Dick van Dyke or Mary Tyler Moore or Taxi unless there had been a Nick at Nite to show them to me. But the precise ordering of a top-100 list is distracting; treat it more like a tier list and then you won't get so hung up on the details.

One final nitpick, though: most of the shows that fell off the previous list are good, and worth watching. We've been doing TV for 70 years now; a top 100 doesn't cut it anymore. The list needs to grow in size over time.
posted by savetheclocktower at 10:08 AM on September 26, 2022 [7 favorites]

Maybe I'm biased as a lover of cartoons, but this feels all-together animation light. I suppose I can understand why a historian of TV might not have their eye on the medium, given the history of shallow merchandising vehicles, but for quality, insight, and influence, I would put Adventure Time over at least some of these shows.

I feel like Loony Tunes deserves space too. I guess the roots as theatrical shorts make that a little weird for this list in particular, but I'm betting anyone currently familiar with the characters and that brand of satire (which is to say, like everyone) was introduced through syndicated TV.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 10:13 AM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

My top would be Deadwood number one and then Friday Night Lights, The Wire, Happy Valley, The original Office, Fleabag, and Survivor.

There are a bunch on their list that I consider absolute unwatchable garbage, Parks and Rec probably being the top of that list, followed by Friends, Buffy, and The Wonder Years.
posted by dobbs at 10:22 AM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Friends, Buffy, and The Wonder Years.

I've don't believe I've ever watched an entire episode of Parks and Rec and never watched enough Buffy to have an opinion (beyond obviously not being impressed enough to keep watching), but I enthusiastically endorse your dismissal of Friends and Wonder Years, both of which I could maybe take more seriously if they presented themselves as being in the fantasy genre.
posted by philip-random at 10:31 AM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

I rarely even glance at these lists, but:

No Detectorists?
posted by kristi at 10:33 AM on September 26, 2022 [7 favorites]

Even accounting for the “of its era” argument, there are a few that I think shouldn’t be on there, with Seinfeld and Friends vying for the top of the list. I feel like all-time greats need to be at least watchable in the present, and there are a few things on that list that… aren’t.

Also the omission of Mr. Rogers was an egregious oversight. That man - quite literally - saved America from its own worst self more than once.
posted by mhoye at 10:35 AM on September 26, 2022 [12 favorites]

7. ‘Mad Men’
6. ‘Seinfeld’
5. ‘Fleabag’
4. ‘The Wire’
3. ‘Breaking Bad’
2. ‘The Simpsons’
1. ‘The Sopranos’


They're at the top of the list now, but I'm so glad we're moving out of the "asshole men are assholes and they learn nothing! Toxic masculinity = great television" period and into the "kind men are kind, less-kind men learn to be kinder! Anti-toxic masculinity = great television" period (Parks and Rec, The Good Place, Schitt'$ Creek, Ted Lasso, Our Flag Means Death, etc.). Now we just need television to stop focusing solely on men as the representation of all of human experience (LOL JK that will never happen)
posted by tzikeh at 10:41 AM on September 26, 2022 [17 favorites]

I sure did like Fleabag. That's a good choice.

I think lists like this are kind of goofy to take seriously -- you can't compare American Horror Story to Yo Gabba Gabba in any meaningful way (I don't remember if either of those are on the list, which my brain immediately began to power wash out of itself upon completion) -- but it's a fun conversation starter. Anyway, it's interesting to see what fell off the last one. Some shows that seem huge in the moment don't really have much of a lasting impact (I had already forgotten the occasionally interesting but very wonky Watchmen, and am surprised to see it here, especially ranked so high above so many better series! I don't think anyone will be watching it five years from now).
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:50 AM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Xena surely has to make the list, clearly the best show ever to start with an "X".
posted by maxwelton at 10:54 AM on September 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

Here to stan Atlanta. Probably not top ten of all time but very good.
posted by hypnogogue at 10:54 AM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Metafilter - we know listicles are flame bait, but we can't help ourselves...
posted by Chuffy at 10:55 AM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

Like every list I've ever read, this list is shit. Game of Thrones shouldn't be below 50, it was complete shit for just about half of it's run time. Watchmen at 23? It's almost interesting but it's not even close to being on this list. I'd put The Boys before Watchmen and I wouldn't put either on this list.
posted by doctor_negative at 10:55 AM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Just one more thing... Columbo should be higher.
posted by fairmettle at 11:01 AM on September 26, 2022 [13 favorites]

Way too few non-English language series. That says quite a bit.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:02 AM on September 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

I can probably think of a few shows I'm surprised to see left off, but mostly the list doesn't surprise me too much (though I admit there are a handful on the list that I've never heard of, and many more that I'm culturally aware of but have never actually seen -- particular, but not exclusively, some of the older ones).

We could probably argue about the order all day, but mostly I'm not surprised, with the possible except of the Simpons appearing at #2. I kind of feel that many of the latter decades(!) of the Simpsons have tarnished it's early brillance and legacy, but maybe I'm just an old man yelling a cloud.

I am delighted to see CanCon favourites Kids in the Hall is on the list. And I'm reminded of how great NewsRadio was; I don't think it got the attention it deserved when it originally aired and so it never quite had the lasting legacy and fanbase that it probably deserves.

> American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson

Even at the time, I didn't think it was that amazing. I'm surprised they included it in the original 2016 list at all.
posted by asnider at 11:14 AM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Way too few non-English language series. That says quite a bit.

Indeed, that it is Rolling Stone. Playboy magazine asked a number of artists to nominate their choices of the best songs of the millennium in anticipation of the year 2000. Richard Thompson took them at their word and produced his list beginning with “Sumer is icumen in" from the 13th century. Playboy, of course wanted lists that stretched back to maybe 1950, with the occasional daring Leadbelly or Ella Fitzgerald pick in there to represent the other nine and a half centuries. Thompson’s list... did not appear.

Thompson did however use it as the basis for an album, 1000 Years of Popular Music, which begins with the song above and wraps up with, “ Oops!... I Did It Again.”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:17 AM on September 26, 2022 [20 favorites]

> "asshole men are assholes and they learn nothing! Toxic masculinity = great television"

Hey now, Walter White sort of kind of learned something about, I dunno, hubris or whatever. (And, if you believe one interpretation, Don Draper really did acheive some sense of peace and enlightenment at the hippie retreat -- I refuse to accept this, given the obviously cynicism implied by having him create the famous Coca-Cola "Hilltop" ad at the end of the series, but it is an actual interpretation that some people apparently believe.)
posted by asnider at 11:20 AM on September 26, 2022

Suprised to see what I call "paint by number" sitcoms on the list (Friends, Frasier) I feel that Seinfeld rendered them obsolete. Glad Mr. Show made the list, although it should have been much higher. The worst O.G. Mr Show sketch > the best SNL sketch, although I will concede that SNL had a larger cultural impact.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 11:26 AM on September 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

When lists like this come out I always feel out of step because I fundamentally do not understand why The Sopranos is so highly regarded. I watched it, and it’s… fine? Is this a straight person thing?
posted by rhymedirective at 11:29 AM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Some truly great early ground breaking shows that should be here:

The Ernie Kovacs Show
Dave Garroway
The Steve Allen Show (late night tv is hereby invented)
You Are There
posted by charlesminus at 11:31 AM on September 26, 2022 [10 favorites]

I fundamentally do not understand why The Sopranos is so highly regarded. I watched it, and it’s… fine? Is this a straight person thing?

I mean there's no law of the universe that says anyone has to like anything else, but if you go into the Sopranos knowing it's fundamentally a comedy (and a very funny one!), that might change things.
posted by dis_integration at 11:37 AM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Sopranos is some of the most nuanced writing ever done on television. I mean, it's fine if you don't like it but there are literally hundreds of pieces written about why it's so incredible as a show, they would be easier to access then me blathering on about it.
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:37 AM on September 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

Celebrity Deathmatch. Nothing else comes close.
posted by MarioM at 11:37 AM on September 26, 2022 [7 favorites]

I have no idea why Peacock won’t make Homicide available for streaming; I own the first four seasons on DVD and I would pay to rewatch the later seasons, even though they were tripe after Pembleton had a stroke. But what they did with the Bayless character, especially in the tv movie finale, was interesting for the times. I also thought that while they originally showcased the talent of Melissa Leo, she was sidelined in later seasons for less-complex women characters, and I felt that was a loss. I can’t remember why that happened, or if it was a network decision/showrunner decision/or if she just wanted to do something different, but that original cast was amazing and pretty diverse for 1992 network tv.

Anyway, if they’d stream it, I’d pay to watch it all over again. And I like most all of Simon’s output, but Homicide will always be at the top of his products for me.
posted by sara is disenchanted at 11:38 AM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

no Mr Robot?
posted by my-username at 11:40 AM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

Tell your god to ready for blood.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:47 AM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Only 14 short episodes, but Spaced would be on my short list of DVDs I'd have with me if I were stranded on a desert island (with nothing more than a solar-powered DVD viewer).
posted by Ickster at 11:50 AM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Leaving out Mystery Science Theater 3000 this time was a huge omission, although of course I feel that way.
posted by JHarris at 11:52 AM on September 26, 2022 [7 favorites]

Celebrity Deathmatch. Nothing else comes close.

It seems likely that Celebrity Deathmatch was actually a ripoff of the previously-existing WWWF Grudge Match, a popular site of the early web that spawned a book compilation. (I'm amazed that the site still exists, even if it hasn't been updated in around two decades.)
posted by JHarris at 11:59 AM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

I had no idea, JHarris. Thanks for the info.
posted by MarioM at 12:09 PM on September 26, 2022

I think there are two issues with Homicide being available for streaming (I read some articles a while back and can't find them now): 1) the show leaned heavily on music montages and they'd have to renegotiate the rights and 2) there were something like 8 different production companies involved in the course of the show and getting all of those rights sorted out would be a difficult process. If the show were a popular behemoth like Friends, it would be worth it for NBC to work those problems out, but Homicide was always kind of a niche show.

Melissa Leo says she was fired from Homicide: There's a truthfulness in my acting. It gets me fired all the time. I will not betray my character's truth. I was on a show called "The Young Riders" with Stephen Baldwin and they fired me. "Homicide" let me go. I didn't fit with their tight sweater format.

The women characters they added after Leo left were utterly dull (no shade on the actresses, the show wasn't giving them anything interesting to work with) but they definitely upped the glam factor in the last two seasons.

Getting back to the list, one thing that makes these sort of lists hard to gauge is how do you judge shows with very uneven quality? Of course the great shows that maintained quality throughout are going to be at the very top. But how do you judge a show like Homicide that got worse every year, and got more episodes in the worse seasons? The brilliant Season 2 has four episodes. The dire Season 7 has 22. What if some of the early stuff is truly unusual quality and subject matter, even nearly 30 years later?
posted by creepygirl at 12:33 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Sopranos is some of the most nuanced writing ever done on television. I mean, it's fine if you don't like it but there are literally hundreds of pieces written about why it's so incredible as a show, they would be easier to access then me blathering on about it.

I’ve read them and I don’t even necessarily disagree, but there seems to be a first mover principle here with this show specifically. I just think it’s a pretty good show that I find almost completely uninteresting for a variety of reasons.
posted by rhymedirective at 12:40 PM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Lost above Arrested Development?

Either they never watched past season 3 of Lost, or they're taking off points for Arrested Development Netflix seasons. Perhaps both.
posted by milnak at 12:43 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

How about The French Chef and (the original) Iron Chef? Both are still quite watchable, and spawned whole genres people are still watching 60 and 30 years later, respectively.
posted by mubba at 12:51 PM on September 26, 2022 [10 favorites]

No Pee Wee's Playhouse? I so disagree.

So, NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues, The Shield, The Wire…but no Homicide?

I so agree. Homicide was a wonder.

As for SCTV, their CCCP1 episode was their high point. Valery has new shoes! New Soviet Mini-cam! Tibor's Tractor is its own meme. Not to mention Uzbeks! They are the weak link in the chain of socialism!

CCCP1: Truly that is timeless and for the ages.

On the more serious tip: No Unforgotten with Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar? That puts the W, T and F in my next question. But then so does putting The Sopranos over The Simpsons. -- I mean, c'mon....
posted by y2karl at 1:13 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Huh. Never heard anyone say the Sopranos was "completely uninteresting" so you hear something new every day. I kinda roll my eyes though at how everyone has their hot so very unique take on any particular show, and I'm including myself in that eye roll.
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:16 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

I personally don’t like to watch a show if I don’t find any of the characters likeable. Which includes The Sopranos and about a dozen other shows on this list.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 1:27 PM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

gwint: To wit, here's the list of shows that were deemed Greatest of All Time in their 2016 list but do not appear on the 2022 one:

Jeopardy!

I only did a quick skim except for the top ten, but Jeopardy! is #50 on the 2022 list.
posted by tzikeh at 2:02 PM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

> Canadian comedy series “Slings and Arrows” not on this list?

It is notable to me that the only Canadian show on the list is Kids in the Hall, but that actually aired on a major American network (CBS) for part of its run, whereas Americans could only see Slings and Arrows on the Sundance channel. So it kind of makes sense that the latter didn't make the list -- and that the writers of the list may not even be aware of it -- despite it having received critical acclaim in both countries.

It's unsurprising that a US publication is going to produce a US-centric list. It's similarly unsurprising that the one Canadian show to make the list was on a major network for a few seasons and, therefore, had more cultural relevance in the US than other, equally good shows would have had.

And now that you've got me thinking about other Canadian shows that maybe should be on a "greatest TV shows of all time" list, perhaps ReBoot? As far as 3D computer animation goes, it was a pioneer and surely had a huge influence on at least the technical side of the industry. Almost everything on Saturday morning TV is computer animated these days (3D animated, that is; although even a lot of the stuff that appears hand illustrated almost certainly makes liberal use of computer animation techniques, but that's more of a time and cost saving device than a deliberate stylistic choice).
posted by asnider at 2:22 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

One word:

MASH
posted by BlueHorse at 2:27 PM on September 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

No Firefly??
posted by chmmr at 2:50 PM on September 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

After recently rewatching Friends, I agree it's incredibly mediocre. But that's not surprising, as I expect mainstream sitcoms to age badly. What's amazing is the sitcoms that were broadly popular and have held up, most notably the Mary Tyler Moore show, which is now 52 years old.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 2:55 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

By far the best and breeziest example of the whole genre starred the preternaturally relaxed James Garner as Jim Rockford, a low-rent detective living in a trailer on a beach in Malibu, working for anyone who will pay his rate of $200 a day plus expenses, and getting punched in the stomach every 10 minutes or so for his smart mouth.

Best Rockford summary ever.

Count me as another who tried to watch The Sopranos and still don’t get what was supposed to make it interesting. I’ve read reviews that tried to explain it to me, but it was like they were writing about something else altogether.

I was a HUGE fan of NewsRadio when it first aired, but I haven’t been able to make myself rewatch it past a few episodes. Still trying to figure out why.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:24 PM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Offhand, I have to wonder who in the world has the time to watch all that is currently available in order to decide such things. Add to that all the TV that's already come and gone, some of which can't watch now even if you had the time.

I'm more interested in the top 5 or so suggested viewing from assorted quirky, interesting people.

Like, say, MetaFilter.
posted by Ayn Marx at 3:35 PM on September 26, 2022

Still trying to figure out why.

Joe Rogan and Andy Dick?

As great as NewsRadio is, those two really make it hard to watch. And it's a shame because I don't think we'd have Community without NewsRadio and the show really established how unseriously you could take a show's premise.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 3:37 PM on September 26, 2022 [8 favorites]

Community also followed in that tradition by including Chevy Chase as an actor who makes it really hard to watch.
posted by mbrubeck at 3:40 PM on September 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

No Northern Exposure?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 3:41 PM on September 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

It may only be six one-hour episodes but Edge Of Darkness is better than anything on that list.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 3:45 PM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

Joe Rogan and Andy Dick?

Probably a big part of it, and also knowing Phil Hartman won't be around until the end.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:48 PM on September 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

As for SCTV, their CCCP1 episode was their high point.

I'll throw in a mention of the CBC on SCTV episode. "The woodchuck inhabits northern climes..."

And....Uzbeks drank my battery fluid!!
posted by gimonca at 3:51 PM on September 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'm more interested in the top 5 or so suggested viewing from assorted quirky, interesting people.

I don't know that I'm all that quirky or interesting, but in no particular order, and I'll have a different answer five minutes from now:

Six Feet Under
King of the Hill
Veep
Fargo
The Planet series of nature documentaries
posted by box at 3:55 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Old TV is terrible, but there's always a pro-recent bias on these lists as well. A lot of the shows of the last fifteen or so years will roll off the next iteration I'm guessing.

Personally not a fan of Friends or Honeymooners, but I never actually watched enough of either to articulate why they shouldn't be on this list. Breaking Bad is one of those shows that only works because of the last couple episodes, which makes me feel like it should maybe not be so high on the list. I kind of wish the UK version of Cracker had made it, but I think any non-US show that wasn't wildly popular doesn't even make it onto the long list for consideration.

I really liked Bron/Broen but it seems like English language is a requirement.

Scott & Bailey would've been fun for a procedural without being a sausage fest, but it's not markedly better than any other procedural other than that.

It's interesting that pure horror is not usually on the table on these lists. Can't say I disagree. If In The Flesh had been just a little better...
posted by BrotherCaine at 4:12 PM on September 26, 2022

Don’t you people have homes?
posted by MorgansAmoebas at 4:33 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

This list is too many apples, oranges and pineapples. I have a hard time comparing sitcoms from the 50s to Crime shows of the 80s, much less to talk shows and game shows. Or random selected British shows.

I guess I'd organize it by decade, and then you'd make allowances for things. I'm happier comparing the impact of Dick Van Dyke and Star Trek on the 60s, of Mary Tyler Moore and Columbo to the 70s, and so on.
posted by acrasis at 4:36 PM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

Top five for myself and my partner:

Fargo
Better Call Saul
Last Tango in Halifax
Happy Valley
True Detective, season one
posted by Agave at 4:43 PM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

If the list is genre-free, how can there be no modern reality television? Surely one of the dominant forms of the medium of the last twenty years.

Big Brother and Survivor and say American Idol have had an immense impact on television production and programming, not to say society as a whole. Squid Game for example works as a drama because of these milder competitions.

The absence of a soap opera or two (Dallas or Dynasty or Days of Our Lives), and a documentary, and whatever is the peak shopping show also shows a narrow view of what television does and is and its impacts on everyone.
posted by jjderooy at 4:55 PM on September 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

TV dramas, especially, in the 80s were just really really comically bad. Quantum Leap? Murder She Wrote?

Pistols at dawn. Angela Lansbury should have gotten an Emmy for Murder, She Wrote.

This list is a fine assortment of shows, some good, some meh, many I never watched. Currently, you should watch Los Espookys, please and thank you. I went to the future, and the future ranks it very highly.
posted by the primroses were over at 5:21 PM on September 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
The Prisoner
posted by neuron at 5:26 PM on September 26, 2022 [9 favorites]

Dark Shadows introduced new tropes to the vampire genre that have become standards since then.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:28 PM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Pistols at dawn. Angela Lansbury should have gotten an Emmy for Murder, She Wrote.

don’t get it twisted! i’m currently watching all of Murder She Wrote, and it’s often delightful (amos tupper? i light up whenever he says “cabot cove”) but it’s often a very very bad show, with some ridiculous plots and comical performances (including angela lansbury when she plays her own lookalike south london showgirl cousin with an accent made even worse by the fact that lansbury was herself english, and an episode where a sri lankan actor plays an algonquin because it’s the 80s). it’s basically a B movie show
posted by dis_integration at 5:38 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Homicide was a wonder.

It’s easy to forget, but Homicide took a downturn when what the characters were doing started taking a back seat to their relationships. The shift was palpable.
posted by mhoye at 5:40 PM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Sandbaggers. Not for the faint of heart.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 6:29 PM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Agree that The Prisoner should be on any best TV list

Also never got into The Sopranos. Tried to watch it recently for the first time and it seemed incredibly dated. Also, bad, wooden acting.

Rewatched all of The Wire recently and it's a lot more uneven than I remembered it. Season 5 in particular is tedious.

Currently slogging my way through Breaking Bad for the first time and a lot of it is... Really, really boring. Entire episodes about domestic strife. Yawn.

"Friends," really? Wow, because of what, imperialism?

The Shield is great. Best cartoon cop drama ever. Hell of a story arc.
posted by SystematicAbuse at 6:33 PM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

I personally don’t like to watch a show if I don’t find any of the characters likeable. Which includes The Sopranos and about a dozen other shows on this list.

When Tom Fontana started Oz, the ancestor of a lot of shows on the list here, he said HBO gave him the best imaginable note: “We don’t care if the characters are likeable, but make sure they are interesting.”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:38 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

There isn't one western on the list. Given how dominant the genre was, I think there should be. Which one is up for argument--I've got my favourites, including one mentioned in passing on the list--but I think it is an overlooked category.
posted by sardonyx at 6:39 PM on September 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

Patriot should be on here.
posted by Catblack at 6:45 PM on September 26, 2022 [6 favorites]

There isn't one western on the list.

Deadwood is 27 on the list.
posted by carrienation at 6:48 PM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

Okay, but I wasn't thinking modern western--I meant the stuff that laid the foundation for Deadwood and that filled the airwaves for decades.
posted by sardonyx at 6:52 PM on September 26, 2022

Huh. Never heard anyone say the Sopranos was "completely uninteresting" so you hear something new every day. I kinda roll my eyes though at how everyone has their hot so very unique take on any particular show, and I'm including myself in that eye roll.

God save me from people who think questioning the anointed Best Art Ever is having a “hot take”. You know what I don’t see any of? An actual defense of The Sopranos as deserving of being considered the best television show of all time.
posted by rhymedirective at 7:07 PM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

Metafilter's discussion of the 2016 list.
posted by jjderooy at 7:22 PM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

I guessed number 1 and yes, once again, Rolling Stone has to include withering mediocrities like Friends primarily because they were popular.

A way out of left field choice is may personal favourite, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, even though I know it was wildly uneven. I would love to be as scared again from a movie as I was when I was 9 years old watching the zombie episode, which was co-written by David Case. Italian Mobsters! Being murdered by a zombie! What's not to love?

The show wasn't actually that good, but it had amazing moments, and became extremely influential over time, perfecting a tone in it's best episodes that so many shows aspire to now.

Also, I second the SCTV CBC episode which was pretty much perfect satire.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 7:29 PM on September 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Without Kolchak, no X-Files.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:32 PM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

Get Smart
Wild, Wild West
Earthworm Jim
I Love Lucy
Star Trek TNG
Animaniacs
Police Squad!

Lots of shows didn't make the cut, and maybe should have...
posted by Chuffy at 7:42 PM on September 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

Ozark didn’t make it?
posted by gt2 at 8:33 PM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

Gunsmoke, didn't make it? The quintessential moralty play? James Arness, squinting out from under his cowboy hat, Festus Hagen "Matthew. tell him to shut his tater trap!" Miss Kitty's amazing presence.
posted by Oyéah at 8:46 PM on September 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

Okay, but I wasn't thinking modern western--I meant the stuff that laid the foundation for Deadwood and that filled the airwaves for decades.

Good catch - - I would have cast my vote for The Rifleman.
posted by fairmettle at 9:10 PM on September 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

While The Prisoner is excellent, it’s prequel Secret Agent aka Danger Man is better and incredibly influential.

I also think The IT Crowd, Father Ted and Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace deserve attention.

I just watched Bust Down and enjoyed it immensely.

I think The Great British Bake-Off is a super suggestion, though I love The Great British Sewing Bee with all my heart.

When I was a kid I watched LA Law with my mom, I’m sure it has aged badly but it really felt relevant at the time, and there weren’t any other law office soap operas of note.

Likewise I think Oprah should be on there.

I’d like to see a list of the best single seasons of shows, I think it would be really different. So many narrative shows had a great first season, so many reality shows have just one season that everybody agrees was the best because of format changes or a good group of contestants. Then there’s stuff that didn’t get picked up for a second season for whatever reason but it was so good at first.

I liked Small Axe. I liked The Bear a lot. Do I watch a lot of TV? I don’t even think so but I have opinions.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 9:13 PM on September 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

It does seem kind of weird that they've apparently opened up the eligibility to shows made all over the world and in any language, but only a few non-US shows made the cut. Basically, the ones that got a lot of play and became well-known in the US. I mean, even if you stick to English-language shows there are going to be a bunch of great candidates that don't even get considered because they mainly only aired in the UK or Australia or Canada or wherever. And only one non-Anglophone show is up to par?

I get it that any list is going to be highly subjective, but I enjoy complaining, and that's the really important thing to consider here.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:45 PM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

I mean, even if you stick to English-language shows there are going to be a bunch of great candidates that don't even get considered because they mainly only aired in the UK or Australia or Canada or wherever.

As far as Australian TV goes Bluey should definitely be on the list.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 10:18 PM on September 26, 2022 [4 favorites]

I said this last time, but no Peep Show is a travesty. I also rewatched Chernobyl a few nights ago, which really deserves to be somewhere pretty high up.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 10:38 PM on September 26, 2022 [5 favorites]

Calling any one show a "best" show is... silly / complex. What's the metric? Ad dollars earned? Influence on subsequent generations/ series ? How much they moved me at the time? How much they moved my peer group at the time? How much they moved 'people' at the time?

"The Sopranos" was great because I'm a guy who worked in the construction industry in the tribal-state area in the 90's-early2000's and those guys were true to life to a shocking degree. If I didn't have the same connection to that place and time would I feel the same way about it? I'm not sure. I haven't gone back to re-watch it because ... I kinda don't know if I have time/brain space.

The first season of "Better call Saul" was fantastic drama and storytelling with often heartbreaking characters.
And "Homicide" was - the first couple seasons - a fantastic warm-up for "The Wire" but I know my appreciation of it is because of the characters (Pembleton! Bayliss!) and though it was often terrific it was never as concise and intense and _focused_ as "Better call Saul" or the episode of "The Sopranos" when Tony and Carmella 'break up' people I knew talked about that for months as the most true-to-life and harrowing representation of parents arguing pre-divorce...

And "Atlanta" is a revelation as well - from all sides, the writing, the stories that are being told, the acting(! sooooooo good.)

But I still go back and watch Seinfeld and 30Rock and Arrested Development and the IT Crowd and...

In summation, television is a land of contrasts.

This list is stupid. ("OZ" in 99th place? Not that I remember much of it but that is some seminal fucking 'big drama' tv.)
posted by From Bklyn at 5:25 AM on September 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

Veep is the same joke over and over again. I found the X-Files unwatchable thanks to the stars’ acting chops, which run the gamut from A to B. In conclusion, I disagree with certain aspects of this list.
posted by scratch at 6:14 AM on September 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

Ozark didn’t make it?

Ozark had one good season (#1), one ok season (#2) and one terrible season where they just threw stuff at the wall (#3). I guess it's the canonical 'should have stopped at season 1' show.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:28 AM on September 27, 2022

> Andy Dick

I forgot he was in that show. Even as a character in the show he's pretty grating.

Rogan's character is fine and I could probably look past the fact that he's played by Joe Rogan if I were to give the series a re-watch.

> it seems like English language is a requirement.

Unless a show is an extreme breakout hit and cultural phenomenon (within the US/English-speaking world), apparently, since Squid Game made the list.
posted by asnider at 8:22 AM on September 27, 2022

I guess it's the canonical 'should have stopped at season 1' show.

I'll raise you one and say, in way too many cases even Season 1 is too far ... if the season lasts longer than two, three, four episodes. That is, way too many shows in these waning days of Television's Golden Age (TM) are really just excellent mini-series or extra long movies which, because the market is hungry for it, get expanded into season long series, which themselves tend not to resolve because why close the door on a Season 2, a Season 3 ... ? And so on down the line.

Sometimes it works, sometimes a show really does have the depth (and the legs) to go on and on, but even here they all too often go on too long. Because it's the money people that make the "let's wind this up" call, not the creative team. And even when it's the creative team, you've got to wonder whether they'd have ended things sooner if ongoing healthy pay checks etc were not a factor in their thinking.

And yes, in my not always humble opinion, this problem applies to any number of selections on the list in question, including at least two of the top five (maybe more, I haven't seen them all).

I don't really view this a bad thing by the way, just a thing one should come to expect from a realm where market forces wield so much power. Which leads to some hard earned wisdom I've picked up over the years. Don't be afraid to bail on some show you were once completely enraptured with if, for whatever reason, it's just not doing it for you anymore. Chances are, if you do some digging, you'll find the same is true for some/all of the key creative team. It's like one of those marriages that starts out as true love but over time ends up being more of a remunerative business arrangement.
posted by philip-random at 8:37 AM on September 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

What no Beverly Hills Buntz this is bullshit
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:54 AM on September 27, 2022

God save me from people who think questioning the anointed Best Art Ever is having a “hot take”. You know what I don’t see any of? An actual defense of The Sopranos as deserving of being considered the best television show of all time.

I’m never quite sure what people are looking for when they ask for this kind of defense. There are a number of “classic” things that most people like that aren’t my cup of tea. For example, I’ve never been the biggest fan of The Eagles. No amount of writing someone does on their musicianship, lyricism, or influence will make their music sound different in my ears, so asking someone to “defend” their enjoyment of their music would be disingenuous.

With something like The Sopranos, there have literally been books written on why the show is considered a classic, so it’s not like that information is in short supply. This of course doesn’t invalidate not enjoying the show, but if you are confused as to why many people do it’s not as if that information is hard to find. (My personal belief is that the show gets rated as high as it does for ushering in the era of “Prestige” TV as much as it does for the quality of the show itself. I prefer Mad Men, but it wouldn’t have existed without The Sopranos).

The one thing that does get under my skin a little bit is when someone seems to view their take on a show as their being the kid from The Emperor’s New Clothes. It’s not just that a show isn’t to their taste, but that they alone have been able to see the flaws in a classic that everyone else just loves mindlessly.
posted by The Gooch at 8:57 AM on September 27, 2022 [4 favorites]

Mod note: Archer
Bunheads
Deutschland 83
Giri/Haji
Life on Mars British
Pushing Daisies
Rubicon
Terriers
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 9:18 AM on September 27, 2022 [3 favorites]

My personal belief is that the show gets rated as high as it does for ushering in the era of “Prestige” TV as much as it does for the quality of the show itself.

The Sopranos is like Citizen Kane in that respect: a great, historically-significant work in telling stories on film.

I really liked The Sopranos watching it as it was aired (except for Season 7). I started rewatching it, but since one of the major themes is that nobody changes and Meadows and AJ are annoying from the beginning and get more and more annoying over the course of the show I said nah.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:22 AM on September 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

I guess it's the canonical 'should have stopped at season 1' show.

I thought that was Heroes.
posted by asnider at 9:41 AM on September 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

I started rewatching it, but since one of the major themes is that nobody changes and Meadows and AJ are annoying from the beginning and get more and more annoying over the course of the show I said nah.

I rewatched Breaking Bad again, in preparation for the ending of Better Call Saul this year.
Breakfast (let's be honest, just about every scene) with Flynn/Walt Jr.? Skip!
Marie's in the scene? Skiiip!
Waiter, there's a fly in my meth lab...sssssskkkiiiiiiiiiiiiiip!

Might work for Meadow and AJ...you don't have to watch the parts you don't like!
posted by Chuffy at 10:09 AM on September 27, 2022

I've approached the problem of putting together this sort of list and came to the conclusion that you have to make separate categories to highlight the different reasons why some shows are on the list.

I do think that’s the only way this could work. I understand Oz being on here because it’s the real beginning of the HBO drama era but I’m not sure it’s even scraping the bottom of the top 100 shows of all time for quality watching it now. Maybe a couple seasons are. Or, like, is Bojack a better-written show than South Park? Probably, but face it - the latter is far more influential (or if you’re not going to credit Parker and Stone you have to credit Judge for Beavis and Butt-Head).
posted by atoxyl at 10:23 AM on September 27, 2022

I mean, even if you stick to English-language shows there are going to be a bunch of great candidates that don't even get considered because they mainly only aired in the UK or Australia or Canada or wherever.

Yep, totally agree with Underpants Monster there- just to go with an anglosphere one that I thought of off the top of my head, I think dinnerladies is damn near the perfect sitcom, but it didn't make it to America so it had no chance of being on this list. This is a list of Shows That People In A New York Office Think Are Good (which is fine and worth a good internet argument), not Best Of All Time Ever.
posted by Shark Hat at 10:30 AM on September 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

You know what I don’t see any of? An actual defense of The Sopranos as deserving of being considered the best television show of all time.

Weird challenge given how many people outside of this forum have written extensively about it but I’m actually in the middle of watching it in full for the first time (so no nostalgia here really) and it’s still one of the best character-oriented TV dramas I’ve seen. Great acting, a lot of good writing - with a few weak points but combined with the bonus credit it gets for being first in its category (besides things like Oz which again were way more uneven and less popular) it’s no mystery why it’s the default for number one.

Rewatched all of The Wire recently and it's a lot more uneven than I remembered it. Season 5 in particular is tedious.

Season 5 is well-known to be weak, redeemed by wrapping everything up nicely. The rest, though?
posted by atoxyl at 10:32 AM on September 27, 2022

UK stuff that absolutely should be on the list:

Blackadder
Life on Mars
Great British Bakeoff
The Thick of It
House of Cards
Upstairs, Downstairs
Chernobyl (SkyUK & HBO co-production) -- CHERNOBYL CHERNOBYL FUCKING CHERNOBYL. I will *always always* recommend Chernobyl - it's brutal but it's possibly one of the best television series ever made. Everything about it is perfect.

No Firefly??

I have never understood the desire for a down-vote option on Metafilter until today.
posted by tzikeh at 10:36 AM on September 27, 2022 [6 favorites]

...you don't have to watch the parts you don't like!

when I started re-watching Mad Men a while back, I quickly got annoyed by certain currents. After a few episodes, I realized it was quite simple. I only really cared about the work stuff, the office stuff, the world of the ad agency, its politics and passions, its battles and whatnot. Everything else (most of it anyway) felt like padding, soap opera stuff.

So I started scanning. Every time it sidetracked to suburbia or somebody's failing marriage, I'd skip to the next office scene. And I loved it. It was brilliant. Obviously, there was plot and character stuff in those sidetracks that mattered toward my understanding of what was going on ... but I'd already seen all that on my first viewing, I didn't need it this time.

Long story short (and it was still pretty long) -- it didn't so much diminish my love for Mad Men as reinforce my impression that even the best TV (however golden it may seem) is always greedy, it always wants more of you than is really necessary, it's not good for you, it's not good for the art in question. But it probably benefits some shareholder somewhere ...
posted by philip-random at 10:36 AM on September 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

Consider me baited. Mr. Robot, along with others already mentioned (Ted Lasso, Adventure Time, Sesame Street).
posted by punchee at 12:01 PM on September 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

Waiter, there's a fly in my meth lab...sssssskkkiiiiiiiiiiiiiip!

If you're skipping the "Fly" episode in season 3, you're skipping out on one of TV's best bottle episodes.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 12:04 PM on September 27, 2022 [3 favorites]

Rewatched all of The Wire recently and it's a lot more uneven than I remembered it. Season 5 in particular is tedious.

Season 5 is well-known to be weak, redeemed by wrapping everything up nicely. The rest, though?

I'll say in advance that, most days, The Wire is my favorite tv show of all time.

But there are certainly people who thought that it's hard to figure out what's happening in the first couple episodes, the focus on Jimmy McNulty is misplaced given that he is by far the least-interesting character, the second season had too many white people, the criminals tended increasingly toward the cartoonish (the Greek, Brother Mouzone, late-period Omar), some of those locals and kids and people somehow connected to David Simon (I think Steve Earle would want us to be honest) weren't always the most talented actors (or Tom Waits interpreters, sheesh), and the serial killer plot is ridiculous.

All of that said, they sure did stick the landing.
posted by box at 12:09 PM on September 27, 2022 [4 favorites]

I liked Small Axe.

Oh! Small Axe is great! I think I am going to listen to the Lovers Rock Playlist right now.
posted by eckeric at 12:56 PM on September 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

the focus on Jimmy McNulty is misplaced given that he is by far the least-interesting character

McNulty is kinda meant to be the hook, I think - he’s more of a traditional cop show character, he has some funny moments, and then they put him out of the way when we’ve seen enough. It’s just that for some reason they bring him back as a centerpiece in Season 5 which, again, is by far the weakest part of the show.

Season 2 is one of the strongest, though. A lot of people didn’t like it the first time, were thrown off by the shift in focus but they were wrong (and the S1 cast actually have a lot of significant stuff still going on in the background of S2).
posted by atoxyl at 3:05 PM on September 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

FWIW some brand new TV, "The Expanse." I have friends who can't stop watching this, and listening to the books. It is beloved and it is gone. Wonderful ideas, skillfully executed.

"Amos, (spoken in British English,) someday you and I will end up bloody." -McMurtry
"How 'bout now? I'm free right now!" (Balitmore street English) -Amos
posted by Oyéah at 4:10 PM on September 27, 2022 [6 favorites]

FWIW some brand new TV, "The Expanse." I have friends who can't stop watching this, and listening to the books. It is beloved and it is gone. Wonderful ideas, skillfully executed.

"Amos, (spoken in British English,) someday you and I will end up bloody." -McMurtry
"How 'bout now? I'm free right now!" (Balitmore street English) -Amos

Yes! And arguably the best Amos being Amos of all:

"Does this mean we're not fucking any more?"

(His co-worker and occasional bedmate had just chewed him out after a mission which almost went sideways.)
posted by fuse theorem at 7:25 AM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

I deeply enjoyed watching The Expanse and I am sad that they ended it when there is still more material to draw on (but at least they ended at a logical break in the story, rather than just cancelling it unfinished). But it has a lot of flaws. Sometimes it's great *because* of those flaws, but I'm not sure it should be a on "best TV shows of all time" list.
posted by asnider at 8:59 AM on September 28, 2022

I feel like it'd be fun if we had a rating poll for MeFi members, although that'd also fall to popularity bias. A list like this has the purpose of both introducing a bunch of people to things they've never heard of, but also, to confirm to people who already know them about the validity of their opinions, and I feel like those uses are at odds with each other.

For the first purpose, MeFi's diverse userbase obviously has more breadth and depth of knowledge and opinion than the makers of this list had. For the second, there's only so many top 100/50/25/10/5/1 slots to go around.
posted by JHarris at 11:19 AM on September 28, 2022

For the first purpose, MeFi's diverse userbase obviously has more breadth and depth of knowledge and opinion than the makers of this list had. For the second, there's only so many top 100/50/25/10/5/1 slots to go around.

I imagine that age factors into the article, too. Gen Xers like myself lived in front of the boob tube for a large portion of our day. We were exposed to new syndicated shows as well as reruns of old 50's shows...so we have a different relationship with the TV than anyone born in the 2000's. VHS, DVD, TiVo, DVRs...even color TVs were all non-existent at some point until they evolved to where we are now. I imagine this has a lot to do with what people have actually watched, can remember, and what remains relevant to the newest generations.

I Love Lucy was 30 years old in the 80's. Friends is 30 years old today. The Addams Family is an old-ass movie to the kids today...if they even know what that is...or that it was based on a TV show. I imagine none of the kids today know anything about The Munsters, no reboot of that in the 90's...
posted by Chuffy at 2:11 PM on September 28, 2022 [4 favorites]

I imagine none of the kids today know anything about The Munsters, no reboot of that in the 90's...

Are you kidding? The Munsters, The Addams Family and The Adventures of Dobie Gillis are all alive and well on YouTube not to mention the H&I network.

And forget Gilligan's Island, Bob Denver's greatest role was Maynard G. Krebs.

One thing kids today probably do not remember is My Living Doll. Wherein, long before becoming the original Cat Woman of Batman, Julie Newmar invented the role of an android robot becoming a human being with emotions -- long before Data of Star Trek: The Next Generation, not to mention Seven of Nine of Star Trek: Voyager.

Something else I found out today is that Seven of Nine's name on Voyager is a trope on Rhoda the Robot's original name of AF709.

But My Living Doll was only 26 episodes on for one season and up against Bonanza and The Virginian at that. And of those 26 episodes only 11 survived. All the original 35 mm episodes perished in the 1994 Northrup Earthquake and the surviving eleven were reconstructed from 16 mm dubs made for collectors.

Today I also learned Bob Cummings was a megalomaniacal methamphetamine addict who was supplied by the same Dr. Feelgood who prescribed for JFK. So, he must not have been much fun to be around as far as Newmar was concerned.

And TIL also the phrase Does not compute is yet another legacy of My Living Doll.

Man, what a long twisted rabbit hole into which this turned out to be.
posted by y2karl at 7:32 PM on September 28, 2022 [6 favorites]

Also, WKRP.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:56 PM on September 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Oyéah's snippet of dialogue from The Expanse may well stand up as an encapsulation of the show; I'd point out that something else on the list had a great summary of the show's mission statement in the dialogue. I think it was happenstance rather than by design, but I like it.

Oz had a reputation for grim ends to characters, with some new arrivals not lasting out their first episode. For those who did survive, it was often a constant struggle.

[SPOILERS for the first episode of a show from 25 years ago]

Our viewpoint character at the beginning is Tobias Beecher, a softish lawyer who is in prison on a three-strikes situation. Alone and panicked, he is taken under the wing of a friendly-seeming older fellow named Vern Schillinger who soon turns out to be the head of the white supremacists. Schillinger abuses and humiliates Beecher for a considerable stretch of time until Beecher finally fights back and lures Schillinger to the gym after spreading some damning info. Beecher waits, with a ten-pound dumbbell hidden behind his back.

A furious Schillinger storms in and marches toward Beecher: "You're gonna die!"

Beecher: "Not today!" [clocks Schillinger, knocking him out]

That five words is the best summary I can imagine of the entire show.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 12:03 PM on September 30, 2022

Alan Sepinwall tweets:

When Rolling Stone polled dozens of showrunners, actors, and critics for our 100 best shows ever list, we got a very unusual ballot from BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg. I had many, many questions, and he was gracious enough to answer...

posted by Etrigan at 6:38 PM on September 30, 2022 [6 favorites]

we got a very unusual ballot from BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg

one of those offshoot links that could easily be its own post. That's a great bloody list. Not that I agree with it all -- more the angle it takes:

11. I Love Lucy - the week Lucy got pregnant AND got accused of being a communist AND she found out Desi was cheating on her

12. SNL when you were in high school

17. annual airing of It's A Wonderful Life

The sort of thing that captures for me what TV's really all about. Context is huge.
posted by philip-random at 7:28 PM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Where is the love for Yes Minister (and Yes, Prime Minister)? Have Americans not seen it? Do they not appreciate the humour or the politics? Easily in the top 10 all time.
posted by bigZLiLk at 5:40 AM on October 2, 2022

One thing about The Expanse -- at least it had a realistic albeit rather horrific take on what I hated about any iteration of Star Trek: starships exchanging broadsides ai point-blank range. Someone online has tagged Captain Janeway for commiting genocide against Species 8472 but that was every battle on every episode of any Star Trek -- tens of thousands are dying on every exploding ship with zero zip nada an onscreen acknowledgement of this fact.
posted by y2karl at 10:44 AM on October 4, 2022 [1 favorite]