Top Ten Greatest Television Shows of All Time

I'm basing this off of what I find to be the most enjoyable and important to me. Not necessarily the best quality.

That's the best way to do it. Least pretentious, too.

As such, my list would fluctuate a lot depending on mood. Right now it probably goes something like:

1: Community
2. Parks & Recreation
3. The Office (American version)
4. Arrested Development
5. Seinfeld
6. Lost
7. Chapelle's Show
8. Survivor (I hate reality TV in general but I've always enjoyed Survivor)

That's about it...there are lots of shows that I watched when they were on that I enjoyed but probably wouldn't sit through if they were on re-runs or anything.
 
- Friends

This is probably just a nostalgia thing. I grew up with this show and I still watch it whenever it's on. My favourite character was Ross, who was also probably the main character of the show (most of the main plots of the show revolved around him as the central character). It got really shabby towards the end, and I could have written a lot of the jokes myself, but it is still great to watch.

It's not a nostalgia thing. Seasons 1-4 of Friends are sublime. Chandler Bing is my favourite fictional funnyman and has shaped a vast part of my actual personality.

How I Met Your Mother is superior when it comes to plotting and characterisation, but for sheer joke-power and watchability, Friends still wins.


- Two and a Half Men

It's such a mysognistic, sexist show, but I love it all the same. Charlie Sheen's comic genius.

:lol:

It's funny how no one even bothered to call me out on this. I guess those earlier episodes just didn't really have that gut-wrenching awfulness the newer ones do. There's no good reason that this has been on as long as it has been.

Although it's now given us the magic of Crazy Charlie Sheen and his Warlock Fangs.

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

- Easily the best Superman show ever, especially during the first season (and a lot of the second). It focused more on the characters than the legend and just continued to excel. It got really lovey-dovey and silly in the third and fourth series, not to mention, Superman just became invincible, but it was still great. John Shea was the best Lex Luthor ever.

Still pretty much agree with this. Most of the second season is great and even a fair amount of the third and fourth seasons have their moments of excellence as well. The first season is probably the greatest live action comic book show ever because it took the limitations of a smaller budget and embraced characterisation over action; while still succeeding in making a credible superhero atmosphere (which is something Smallville, for all its explosions and Justice Leagues, has continuously failed to do).
 
Last edited:
My list on the previous page is already wrong because I forgot Spaced.

And Oz. And Freaks and Geeks. I am bad at lists.
 
Last edited:
It's not a nostalgia thing. Seasons 1-4 of Friends are sublime. Chandler Bing is my favourite fictional funnyman and has shaped a vast part of my actual personality.

How I Met Your Mother is superior when it comes to plotting and characterisation, but for sheer joke-power and watchability, Friends still wins.




:lol:

It's funny how no one even bothered to call me out on this. I guess those earlier episodes just didn't really have that gut-wrenching awfulness the newer ones do. There's no good reason that this has been on as long as it has been.

Although it's now given us the magic of Crazy Charlie Sheen and his Warlock Fangs.



Still pretty much agree with this. Most of the second season is great and even a fair amount of the third and fourth seasons have their moments of excellence as well. The first season is probably the greatest live action comic book show ever because it took the limitations of a smaller budget and embraced characterisation over action; while still succeeding in making a credible superhero atmosphere (which is something Smallville, for all its explosions and Justice Leagues, has continuously failed to do).

Well to be perfectly honest, Charlie Sheen has always been funny and Two and a Half Men is still currently the #1 comedy series in the US. If it gets cancelled, it gets cancelled being the title holder along with greats like Seinfeld. Am I the only person who enjoyed 3rd Rock from The Sun?

1. 30 Rock - I got into this series while out on FMLA for 6 weeks and immediately fell in love. I had seen the show before but in small increments. Usually, I caught the back-end of an episode. Since then, I think I've seen each season almost 4 times now. It's that genius and Tina Fey is such a great writer. Other than Angie, it's hard to hate any of the cast; from Liz Lemon to JD Lutz. More of you should be watching this.

2. King of The Hill - A practical definition of a Texan. A proud propane salesman who struggles to balance his life between family (a self-absorbed, narccisstic wife, a son who shares nothing in common with him and a father whom he desperately struggles to seek approval from), friends ( an overweight, divorced Army barber, a self-employed bachelor and a paranoid bug killer who's wife is cheating on him with a local new-age healer) and work (an alcoholic, womanzing boss and incompetent coworkers who seem to make work harder than it should be). This show is so great and full of memorable quotables on par with Arrested Development. The show is an aquired taste because as redneck as the show can be, it really is high-brow, tongue-in-cheek humor which you see prevalent in shows like Frasier. The show never asks you to laugh on queue. Rather, you find the moment you love best. Comparatively, it's alot like Arrested Development but not nearly as quick and fast paced, and rightfully so as it's based in the sleepy, fictional town of Arlen, Tx and reflects those stereotypes that come with such a town.
3. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - Self-described as a chaotic and vulgar version of Seinfeld. Well they got the vulgar part right. Seinfeld was chaotic in itself, but it's true, Always Sunny is this generation's Seinfeld in that all the basic archetypes are there. Cue scene. Cue situation. Cue a stack of variables. Cue chaos. And just like Jerry, everything seems to break even. What else is great, is that no one person is Jerry. They switch almost erratically from episode to episode and even with one situation, the tables turn and we have a new Jerry. The show mixes sarcastic dialogue with scripted and improvised scenes that turn out tons of laughs. I, myself, can watch 3 season in one sitting. From Alibaba swords to kitten mittens to turning tricks for a pimped called Pepperjack (who apparently shares a love for fraggle rock), it's hard to find anything wrong for this show.

4. The Inbetweeners - If only high school were this absurdly fun. Although I had my fair share of happenings, it's nothing compared to walking down a runway to impress the girl you love, only to find out you wore your speedo on backwards and just revealed your right testicle to the whole student body, faculty and your own parents. Will is my favorite characters, which I find funny since most people find him annoying. He is highly relatable in my eyes as he often tries to stay out of trouble only to get into trouble by often saying the wrong thing, which is usually his honest thought. Story of my life. The show is done though, with a feature film in production and two tv specials left, get your kicks on dvd.

5. Arrested Development
6. Top Gear
7. No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain
8. That Mitchell And Webb Look
9. Ghost In The Shell: SAC/2nd Gig
10.

To be continued....I headed home and some guy is gaming me to go to the hospital.
 
Last edited:
Only two shows on your list, I've not seen yet: SIX FEET UNDER and MAD MEN. The rest are great except LOST. Also, Lindelof and Cuse did not "finish their epic exactly the way they wanted" because they had no plan or pre-plotted arc. Writers on the show have expressed they were making it up as they went along. I don't normally like to disparage what other people enjoy, and if you like LOST, great, but I don't think you should purport the myth that they had it planned out because they didn't and they outright lied in some cases (saying the smoke monster was logically explainable and then it turns out its a 2000 year old time-traveling ghost or whatever) about certain elements of the show. :?

I'm two seasons behind on BREAKING BAD, but I loved the first two, and of course, THE WIRE, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, and THE OFFICE would most likely all be on my top 10 too. Amazing shows all three.
 
Last edited:
I am of the belief that the Lost writers knew the ending of the show but made up everything else on the way there. I am also more referring to the fact that they dictated when and where the show would end to ABC. Maybe that wasn't clear.

Anyway, thanks for reading and commenting.

Now I kind of wish the smoke monster actually had been a 2000 year old time traveling ghost.
 
Last edited:
TOP TEN CURRENTLY RUNNING SERIES
1. Doctor Who
2. Parks and Recreation
3. Breaking Bad
4. Louie
5. Mad Men
6. The Venture Bros.
7. Sherlock
8. Community
9. Skins (UK)
10. An Idiot Abroad


TOP FIFTEEN COMPLETED SERIES
1. Six Feet Under
2. The Wire
3. Freaks and Geeks
4. Avatar: The Last Airbender
5. Twin Peaks
6. Arrested Development
7. Slings & Arrows
8. The West Wing
9. Deadwood
10. Sym-Bionic Titan
11. Buffy: The Vampire Slayer
12. The Larry Sanders Show
13. The Sopranos
14. Dead Like Me
15. Daria
 
I'm happy somebody said something about Freaks & Geeks. That belongs in these lists, for sure.

And The Inbetweeners is one of the most criminally over-rated programmes of all time. It's the most bone-headed, moronic bottom barreled cringe-humour I've ever seen. If it had been made in America, with Americanised dialogue and the exact same plots and exchanges, it would be ranked in the same category as Two and a Half Men. It's appallingly bad. It's almost as though people just praise it because it's a British comedy and British comedies can do no wrong.

And I've watched every episode and own all three seasons on DVD.
 
Last edited:

Latest posts

Back
Top