The Chris Moeller Archives

The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: Intro & #s 50-46

Welcome to the most ambitious project this blog has ever undertaken.

As part of the year-long 5th Anniversary celebration of the Chris Moeller Archives (studies have found that more than 90% of blogs fail in their first two months), we have ventured to begin counting down, over the course of this summer, the 50 greatest American television shows of all-time. This is similar to the list we did in late 2004 and early '05 of the top 50 American films, except that this time, we have the audacity to not only chronicle the top 50, but rank them as well.

What makes this project all that more remarkable is the preparation that went into it. To insure that the countdown carries adequate historical weight and context, I set out and succeeded, over the course of five months, to watch every episode of every television show ever made. Only one episode has been missed, and that was due to a malfunctioning NBC master tape-- episode #76 of "ALF", best known as "the black-and-white one" during which ALF imagines that he and the Tanners are silent movie stars.

Only prime-time shows were considered for this list, and news programs were excluded. So-called "reality" programs were considered eligible, but they all suck so you'll find none of them on this list. Eight of the 50 shows on the list are still in production, no surprise for such a young medium, but this means that the rankings of these eight shows, in particular, are in flux.

Your top 50 list, if you were to compile it, might include some very different shows. Yours might overlap many of these same shows, but in a radically-different order. Your list is wrong. Mine is definitive. (Definitive and in flux, what an amazing list!)

We'll be publishing the countdown five shows at a time, at least until the very end, and we're "going all the way to number one" as Casey Kasem would say and has. The countdown will culminate with the 8th Annual Moeller TV Festival, to be held this fall, although the countdown will surely wrap up long before that. If I had other blog topics to fill space until the fall, I wouldn't be doing this.

The ranking of the top 50 TV shows hereby commences-- in heart-stopping inverted fashion!


#50- "JUST SHOOT ME" NBC 1997-2003
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Yes, that's how strong this list is. An ensemble comedy starring the versatile George Segal, the sultry Laura San Giacomo, the acidic David Spade, and the limber comedienne Wendie Malick checks in at only 50. In the wake of America's warm acceptance of the narcissistic, backstabbing "Seinfeld" characters of the 1990s, NBC turned over roughly half of its prime-time schedule to similarly-inspired ensembles like this one, created by Steven Levitan. But no TV characters were more narcissistic or backstabbing than those on "Just Shoot Me." Jibes on the show were often mean-spirited and hurtful, but almost always hilarious because they were balanced by the complicated, yet loving father/daughter relationship being portrayed by Segal and San Giacomo. In this memorable workplace comedy, fictitious Blush Magazine was presented as a well-respected and successful magazine of high fashion, and often, a fun place to work. But wear a cup.


#49- "L.A. LAW" NBC 1986-1994
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This show was, for a time, the dramatic anchor of one of the great nights of television in network television history. When Mike Post's theme song (Sound warning!) for the series belted out after the show's cold open at 10pm, 9 o'clock central, each Thursday night, I used to enjoy cranking up the volume on the television, especially during the part when the camera tilts up the side of the office building in downtown Los Angeles. "L.A. Law" was one of Steven Bochco's enduring comedy-tinged dramatic treasures. For my money, it's the least self-conscious, as well as the funniest. It stretched the boundaries of ensemble dramatic television and obsessed over sex in a way that hadn't been seen before in prime-time, but I never believed for a second that a stone fox like Jill Eikenberry would ever marry Michael Tucker.


#48- "THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW" CBS 1967-1978
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When "Carol Burnett" premiered, the variety format ruled prime-time. When the show bowed 286 episodes and 25 Emmys later, it was the last one still standing. Also the first major variety program hosted by a woman, "The Carol Burnett Show" was freewheeling and spontaneous, and it popularized the concept of "parody" sketches that make late-night shows like "Saturday Night Live" and "MadTV" its true descendants. It not only introduced Harvey Korman and Tim Conway to the world as sketch comedians, but it introduced the Harvey Korman/Tim Conway comedy team. Here's a clip of the pair's famous "Dentist" sketch, heavy on the Conway.


#47- "THAT 70'S SHOW" Fox 1998-2006
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This period sitcom goofed simultaneously on modern teen relationships, generational patterns of behavior, and the cultural power of nostalgia. Show creators Bonnie and Terry Turner found a fresh take on today's youth driven marketplace (i.e., a show that television executives find demographically-acceptable) by setting their series chronologically during the bell-bottomed era of their teen experiences, making the show funny and universal enough in its themes to appeal to audiences of every age, even while they were expertly endorsing such wayward social and political concepts as drug legalization. Yes, Eric, Donna, Hyde, Jackie, Fez, and Kelso were actually making a political statement by making their basement pot smoking look like so much fun. May "The Circle" remain unbroken.

Bonus theme song clip!


#46- "THE ROCKFORD FILES" NBC 1974-1980
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The second-greatest private detective series ever, "Rockford" was always more about character than about crimes. James Garner was "Jim Rockford," charming and hard-boiled in the romantic fantasy tradition of Raymond Chandler's "Philip Marlowe," the 1940s-era literary PI upon which Rockford was most closely based, but he was also a "reluctant hero," in step with more contemporary times, and quicker with a wisecrack than with a gun. In fact, Rockford rarely carried a gun. "Because I don't want to shoot anybody," he once explained. He was revolutionary on television in that his private life meshed with his work as a private dick. He enjoyed fishing. He coped with a retired father who disdained the son's profession. He made monthly payments on his beachfront mobile home-slash-office. In April 2008, the Chris Moeller Archives designated Jim Rockford one of the 5 coolest guys in television history.

Here's a network promo for the series from 1978.

posted by CM @ 10:08 AM