My Ten Favorite TV Shows

I'm going to start something new with this blog today. I'll be having a series of top ten lists. Who doesn't love a top ten list? Today's list will be my top ten favorite TV shows of all time. Future lists will include my top ten favorite baseball players, my top ten favorite ballparks, my top ten favorite movies, my top ten favorite Phillies seasons, and others as I think of them.

 

So let's get this started. In reverse order from least favorite to most favorite:

 

10. The Sopranos. The show that changed it all for cable television. Every season was a must-see, although some seasons were better than others. Wonderful writing, a terrific cast, authentic north Jersey settings (even the Bada Bing is a real strip club; just not a very good strip club if you want my honest opinion from 2002 when I visited it), and a peak at a lifestyle we can only fantasize about. The Sopranos didn't hold anything back in its depiction of life in the modern day mafia.

 

9. Family Ties. I'm a child of the '80s and this was my show. Idyllic family life, but with an occasional tough issue to tackle. And some fantastic appearances from actors before they were famous like Tom Hanks as the alcoholic Uncle Ned, or Geena Davis as the total screw-up housekeeper. Michael J. Fox was the breakout star as Alex P. Keaton, but the whole family was great. And then Mallory started dating a dirty guy named Nick who claimed to be a struggling artist. And lots of good '80s stuff like Alex idolizing Ronald Reagan except that time where he fell for a girl who was a freak for the Equal Rights Amendment and he ended up in jail where he proclaimed, "I am a woman!" My friend Julio gave me an Alex P. Keaton for President in 2008 t-shirt. True story.

 

8. Homicide: Life on the Street. A gritty, often dreary show. It depicts the lives of a squad of homicide detectives in Baltimore. Real stories, often inspired by true events. Writers were required to live in Baltimore to help them achieve an authentic Baltimore feel in their stories. Fantastic cast, most notably led by the always brilliant Andre Braugher. And Ned Beatty. Ned Beatty makes everything better, even your life. Despite frequent low ratings, the show was so good that it survived for seven seasons and a TV movie. Later seasons weren't quite as good, but the first four seasons or so are as good as anything ever seen on network television.

 

7. The Honeymooners. Jackie Gleason was awesome. Seriously. He could make anything funny, and he did. He was notorious for refusing to do rehearsals, yet he would show up to perform all these live episodes of The Honeymooners and give these hysterically funny performances with impeccable comedic timing. The so-called "Classic 39" episodes which aired in the 1955-56 season, might be the greatest single season of comedic television in the history of the medium. Countless classic moments, and truly hilarious, yet clean. Great stuff for kids (maybe not really little ones).

 

6. Taxi. How could a sit-com about a bunch of taxi cab drivers be great? When the drivers don't really do any driving. Most of the action took place in the garage before and after the drivers' shifts. One of the few truly great workplace comedies, we have a despicable boss in Louie DePalma, a lovable leader in Alex Rieger, a dimwitted wannabe boxer in Tony Banta, a pretty boy wannabe actor in Bobby Wheeler, the '70s sexy female cabbie and wannabe artist in Elaine Nardo, the spaced out guy who had done lots of drugs in the '60s in Jim Ignatowski, and the impish mechanic from a foreign land with the funny voice in Latka Gravas. So many memorable characters.

 

5. Sports Night. It only ran for two seasons from 1998-2000, but writer/creator Aaron Sorkin's first foray into series television was brilliant. A behind-the-scenes look at the production of a sports news show (think ESPN's SportsCenter), you need not be a sports fan at all to appreciate the genius of this show. Great characters and some intriguing storylines, but what really sets Sports Night apart is the quality of its writing. Sorkin's incessently smart dialogue, much as it is in almost all of his work, is a thing of beauty. Smart characters having smart conversations about any and everything. If I had one tenth of Sorkin's ability to write dialogue, I'd also be a successful Hollywood writer.

 

4. The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Oh, Mary Richards, I love you so. The world could use more people like Mary Richards. She was just so loveable. Yet she's really only a fraction of what makes MTM such classic television. From the curmudgeonly Mr. Grant to the clueless Ted Baxter to the good natured Murray Slaughter, MTM was teeming with classic characters. Hell, you can't forget Rhoda. Rhoda Morgenstern, the crazy neighbor we all love. Is it any wonder that MTM won 29 Emmy Awards? That's ridiculous.

 

3. The West Wing. More from Aaron Sorkin, incredibly, it's even better than Sports Night. It's pretty much the same formula as Sports Night, but stretched to an hour and the workplace is a fictional White House instead of a fictional sports news show. But the characters are even better, and with more depth. All of them interesting characters. What's amazing to me about The West Wing is that the show is populated with politicians who lean strongly to the liberal side and I do not, yet the issues are presented in a way that where you side isn't as important as rooting for these people you grow to admire. It's helped me realize that I don't have to agree with someone politically to respect them as a person.

 

2. Band of Brothers. Not a traditional television series, but I'm including it here because it's episodic in nature and it did appear as a series on a television network. Also because it's awesome, a phenomenal piece of visual storytelling that does justice to the horrors of war. Based on the book of the same name by Stephen Ambrose, Band of Brothers is epic in scale, with dozens of important characters, yet it's the individual stories it tells that are truly memorable. Incredible production values, faithful recreations of true events, and outstanding acting make this an unforgettable ten hours of television. I find myself watching the complete series at least once a year, not so much because it's so entertaining, which it is, but because it's inspiring to see how these young men handled such adversity for the sake of our great country.

 

1. Breaking Bad. We've only had three seasons thus far with a fourth premiering in July, but what a three seasons they have been. Quite simply the most gripping hour of television every single week. You have this high school chemistry teacher, Walter White, who upon learning he has less than a year to live, decides to go into business cooking crystal meth with one of his less than stellar former students. You know each week that it's going to get crazier and crazier, more and more messed up. Common sense would tell you the whole premise is ridiculous and that there's no way things would play out the way they do. But you keep watching because it's incredibly compelling and the performances of both Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul are commanding. You're drawn into their world and it all feels so real and intense. The most intense television you'll ever see.

 

Note that this list, and any list I post, is fluid. It can change on a daily basis. This list represents today, but generally these shows will always rate in the top ten somewhere.