Top 10 TV shows

[Esmeralda]

TV Guide's top 10 best ever American TV shows --

Do you agree? What would be your top 10?

Top 10

1. Seinfeld (NBC, July 5, 1989 – May 14, 1998)
2. I Love Lucy (CBS, October 15, 1951 – May 6, 1957)
3. The Honeymooners (CBS, October 1, 1955 – September 22, 1956)
4. All in the Family (CBS, January 12, 1971 – April 8, 1979)
5. The Sopranos (HBO, January 10, 1999 – June 10, 2007)
6. 60 Minutes (CBS, September 24, 1968 – present)
7. Late Show with David Letterman (CBS, August 30, 1993 – present)
8. The Simpsons (Fox, December 17, 1989 – present)
9. The Andy Griffith Show (CBS, October 3, 1960 – April 1, 1968)
10. Saturday Night Live (NBC, October 11, 1975 – present)

 

[Delta4Embassy]

TV Guide's top 10 best ever American TV shows --

Do you agree? What would be your top 10?

Top 10

1. Seinfeld (NBC, July 5, 1989 – May 14, 1998)
2. I Love Lucy (CBS, October 15, 1951 – May 6, 1957)
3. The Honeymooners (CBS, October 1, 1955 – September 22, 1956)
4. All in the Family (CBS, January 12, 1971 – April 8, 1979)
5. The Sopranos (HBO, January 10, 1999 – June 10, 2007)
6. 60 Minutes (CBS, September 24, 1968 – present)
7. Late Show with David Letterman (CBS, August 30, 1993 – present)
8. The Simpsons (Fox, December 17, 1989 – present)
9. The Andy Griffith Show (CBS, October 3, 1960 – April 1, 1968)
10. Saturday Night Live (NBC, October 11, 1975 – present)

Seinfeld and Lucy? What decade is this from?

Disagree.

 

[Esmeralda]

best ever, all time

 

[Treeshepherd]

Agree with Seinfeld, Simpsons. Sopranos spawned an entire ecosystem of quality cable programs.

I'd put Rake in my top 10, the Australian version.

The greatest show, and my overall #1 would be Jeopardy.

 

[Treeshepherd]

I'd list the McLaughlin Group. I'd fill out my top 10 with versions of Star Trek. Can't forget the Twilight Zone.

Honorable mention goes to Tosh.0 and Key and Peele

 

[blastoff]

What, no Little House on the Prairie?

 

[mudwhistle]

Bonanza
Gunsmoke
Rawhide
Combat


WTF?

 

[longknife]

I would say

#1 Lucy
#2 Jeopardy
#3 CHiPs
#4 Emergency!
#5 M*A*S*H - altho about as leftist anti-war as it gets
#6 Magnum PI
#7 Original Hawaii 5-O
#8 Hee Haw
#10 The Glen Campbell Hour
And any of the other great variety shows of the Olden Days

 

[rightwinger]

Not a bad list

I don't think I Love Lucy has aged well though

 

[mudwhistle]

The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson

 

[mudwhistle]

IMDb Top 100 TV Shows of ALL TIME - a list by livingston50074

 

[Moonglow]

I'd list the McLaughlin Group. I'd fill out my top 10 with versions of Star Trek. Can't forget the Twilight Zone.

Honorable mention goes to Tosh.0 and Key and Peele

For what?

 

[Moonglow]

The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson

I was wondering where that was myself...

 

[Treeshepherd]

Barney? Teletubbies?

 

[rightwinger]

The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson

Much more significant than Letterman which was a knockoff

 

[Treeshepherd]

The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson

Much more significant than Letterman which was a knockoff

Jack Benny was better than the Tonight Show.

I liked the original Late Night with Conan O'Brien, back in the '90s.

 

[rightwinger]

The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson

Much more significant than Letterman which was a knockoff

Jack Benny was better than the Tonight Show.

I liked the original Late Night with Conan O'Brien, back in the '90s.

Burns and Allen was better

 

[Rikurzhen]

Not a bad list

I don't think I Love Lucy has aged well though

Really? I'm in my 30s and I found it had good, solid comedy and I understood the plots and cultural references, most of them anyway.

The production values were more basic back then but the comedy/writing talent made up for it. I think modern comedy writers trade too much on being hip. Comedy from the 70s was awful and that's where I think a lot of the art of comedy writing veered onto a new path. What helps the old shows is that they're not mining current events. I don't remember Lucy making fun of Eisenhower, for instance.

 

[Politico]

TV Guide's top 10 best ever American TV shows --

Do you agree? What would be your top 10?

Top 10

1. Seinfeld (NBC, July 5, 1989 – May 14, 1998)
2. I Love Lucy (CBS, October 15, 1951 – May 6, 1957)
3. The Honeymooners (CBS, October 1, 1955 – September 22, 1956)
4. All in the Family (CBS, January 12, 1971 – April 8, 1979)
5. The Sopranos (HBO, January 10, 1999 – June 10, 2007)
6. 60 Minutes (CBS, September 24, 1968 – present)
7. Late Show with David Letterman (CBS, August 30, 1993 – present)
8. The Simpsons (Fox, December 17, 1989 – present)
9. The Andy Griffith Show (CBS, October 3, 1960 – April 1, 1968)
10. Saturday Night Live (NBC, October 11, 1975 – present)

Seinfeld and Lucy? What decade is this from?

Disagree.

The decade of short term memory where everything is written by a 25 year old.

 

[Treeshepherd]

It's all subjective, right? I mean, the generation before me really has a hard time understanding the comedy of Jim Carey, Ben Stiller and Will Ferrell. It's just not as funny to them as it is to a large contingent of my generation (Generation X).

I live in a world of delusion, but what I think is that Hollywood had a supremely vintage year in 1999. Fight Club was the last honest movie ever made in America. Galaxy Quest is in my pantheon of favorite comedies. The Matrix. The Sixth Sense. Magnolia. The Talented Mister Ripley, The Green Mile, South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut, Bowfinger, Office Space, Jesus' Son, Eyes Wide Shut, Sweet and Lowdown, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, The Red Violin, Dogma, Titus, American Pie, Muppets from Space, Mystery Men, Girl Interrupted, The Mummy, Angela's Ashes, Any Given Sunday, The Spy Who Shagged Me...

Spike Lee's The Summer Of Sam. F*@kin A!

These were the movies of 1999, a partial sample of them. Technically, The Big Lebowski came out in theaters during 1998, but it bombed at the box office and was not appreciated until it came out on video tape in 1999.

Since then, feature films are in decline, with a few exceptions, unless you are an addict for comic book movies.

On the rise is the quality of cable television, and on-demand programming. I think that's been obvious since top billing actors starting branching out into television (as opposed to Clooney going from ER to the highest echelons of Hollywood). Never during the history of the universe has it ever been a better time to be a writer for television.