Time Magazines List of the 100 Tops TV Shows of All Time
 

Another day, another list ... but then this one -- Time's 100 Top TV Shows of All Time -- does have the good sense to include, Mystery Science Theater 3000.

I love All in the Family & The Monkees, but I do not need to ever watch them again. Twin Peaks was good TV but a little goes a long way. Ed Sullivan is best forgotten ... for all times.

Missing in action --- The Beverly Hillbillies, The Brady Bunch, Police Squad, Fawlty Towers, Alan Partridge & You Bet Your Life

I. 24
II. 60 Minutes
III. The Abbott and Costello Show
IV. ABC's Wide World of Sports
V. Alfred Hitchcock Presents
VI. All in the Family
VII. An American Family
VIII. American Idol
IX. Arrested Development
X. Battlestar Galactica
XI. The Beavis and Butt-Head Show
XII. The Bob Newhart Show
XIII. Brideshead Revisited
XIV. Buffalo Bill
XV. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
XVI. The Carol Burnett Show
XVII. The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite
XVIII. A Charlie Brown Christmas
XIX. Cheers
XX. The Cosby Show
XXI. The Daily Show
XXII. Dallas
XXIII. The Day After
XXIV. Deadwood
XXV. The Dick Van Dyke Show
XXVI. Dragnet
XXVII. The Ed Sullivan Show
XXVIII. The Ernie Kovacs Show
XXIX. Felicity
XXX. Freaks and Geeks
XXXI. The French Chef
XXXII. Friends
XXXIII. General Hospital
XXXIV. The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show
XXXV. Gilmore Girls
XXXVI. Gunsmoke
XXXVII. Hill Street Blues
XXXVIII. Homicide: Life on the Street
XXXIX. The Honeymooners
XL. I, Claudius
XLI. I Love Lucy
XLII. King of the Hill
XLIII. The Larry Sanders Show
XLIV. Late Night with David Letterman (NBC)
XLV. Leave It to Beaver
XLVI. Lost
XLVII. Married... With Children
XLVIII. Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
XLIX. The Mary Tyler Moore Show
L. M*A*S*H
LI. The Monkees
LII. Monty Python's Flying Circus
LIII. Moonlighting
LIV. MTV 1981-1992
LV. My So-Called Life
LVI. Mystery Science Theater 3000
LVII. The Odd Couple
LVIII. The Office [American]
LIX. The Office[British]
LX. The Oprah Winfrey Show
LXI. Pee Wee's Playhouse
LXII. Playhouse 90
LXIII. The Price Is Right
LXIV. Prime Suspect
LXV. The Prisoner
LXVI. The Real World
LXVII. Rocky and His Friends
LXVIII. Roots
LXIX. Roseanne
LXX. Sanford and Son
LXXI. Saturday Night Live
LXXII. Second City Television
LXXIII. See It Now
LXXIV. Seinfeld
LXXV. Sesame Street
LXXVI. Sex and the City
LXXVII. The Shield
LXXVIII. The Simpsons
LXXIX. The Singing Detective
LXXX. Six Feet Under
LXXXI. Soap
LXXXII. The Sopranos
LXXXIII. South Park
LXXXIV. SpongeBob SquarePants
LXXXV. SportsCenter
LXXXVI. Star Trek
LXXXVII. St. Elsewhere
LXXXVIII. The Super Bowl (and the Ads)
LXXXIX. Survivor
XC. Taxi
XCI. The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
XCII. The Twilight Zone
XCIII. Twin Peaks
XCIV. The West Wing
XCV. What's My Line?
XCVI. WKRP in Cincinnati
XCVII. The Wire
XCVIII. Wiseguy
XCIX. The X-Files
C. Your Show of Shows

I think All in the Family holds up beautifully. For yokel comedy, give me Green Acres over The Beverly Hillbillies. And give me a Get Smart marathon any day of the week. I'd put Frasier up there over Cheers, and I'd knock off shows like Ernie Kovacs and Soap, which, while envelope pushing, were not particularly funny.

There are shows I love but never need to watch again, All in the Family and The Monkees, among them. I think you're right about Ernie Kovacs. The Time editors often confuse revolutionary with greatness, which do not always go hand in hand.

I love The Prisoner but it can get dull and the ending is one of the most vastly over-rated of all time. But Green Acres over The Beverly Hillbillies? No sir. Not at all. Green Acres was good but The Beverly Hillbillies was a work of art. Mr. Drysdale is one of TV's great unsung characters.

Nothing against The Beverly Hillbillies (except that Granny frightened me as a child) but I'll take Mr. Douglas vs. Mr. Haney over Uncle Jed vs. Mr. Drysdale. If Mr. Drysdale is one of TV's great unsung characters, then Green Acres featured one of TV's greatest ironies: that Lisa Douglas, who never wanted to go there in the first place, fit in perfectly in Hooterville.

The Greatest TV Character of All Time
 

He saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw money and tried to keep it in his bank.

Where is Batman? Wild, Wild West? Bewitched? Six Million Dollar Man?
Love Boat?

The list must be expanded.

Where's Battle of the Network Stars?
Where's Chico and the Man?
Where's Small Wonder?
:D

Where's Waldo?

Freaks and Geeks, I Claudius, The Price is Right, awesome. :snap:

I had to go to the site to notice that it was in alphabetical order, not ranked. You misled me, Tref! :shakes fist: I could not figure out how Beavis and Butthead got 11th (though I loved that show). :p

Of the shows and movies listed I've only ever seen at least one complete episode of 46 of them so I'm certainly not well positioned to judge it.

However, since Perry Mason is not near the top of the list (and isn't even on the list) I am forced to consider it lacking nearly to the point of fraud.

Like I said, there is no ranking in the list, it's merely alphabetical.

Yes, but it isn't even on the list meaning it definitely isn't near the top of it.

And Perry Mason is so much my favorite TV show of all time that even on an alphabetical list it would be in the top five.

The best of them all: I Love Lucy.
:)

I just noticed that Charlie Brown Christmas is on the list. I don't see any other one-time shows (though I, Claudius is a miniseries, so that counts as well).

MTV 1981-1992
Just as I thought - after 1992 (the year I turned 15) pop culture started to go downhill. ;)

The Day After was a made-for-TV movie, wasn't it? Or was it a miniseries too? (I wasn't allowed to watch it when it was on since I was going through the second of my two short lived near-phobic phases at the time.)

It was. I believe it was a two-parter. I watched it at the time, and it was a big event. The vaporization scenes were effective. Beyond that, it was basically a disaster film. I'm not sure that it was better than the Rock Hudson miniseries World War III or the Amerika miniseries, which featured the machine gunning of Congress as the members shook their fists and shouted points of order.

I loved the Amerika miniseries, it was like a week of Red Dawn from the point of view of the old people still in town. I've always wanted to rewatch it as an adult to see just how idiotic my younger self was.


Just looked it up, according to IMDb The Day After was a single three hour show (126 minutes) and aired on November 20, 1983.