The Chris Moeller Archives

The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: #s 25-21

Some big TV shows are starting to topple now in our countdown to #1. Watch the sky for falling classics...


#50- "Just Shoot Me"
#49- "L.A. Law"
#48- "The Carol Burnett Show"
#47- "That 70s Show"
#46- "The Rockford Files"
#45- "The Big Bang Theory"
#44- "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour"
#43- "Night Court"
#42- "The Dick Van Dyke Show"
#41- "NYPD Blue"
#40- "Barney Miller"
#39- "Frank's Place"
#38- "The King of Queens"
#37- "The Phil Silvers Show"
#36- "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"
#35- "Frasier"
#34- "Get a Life"
#33- "St. Elsewhere"
#32- "Everybody Loves Raymond"
#31- "Hill Street Blues"
#30- "King of the Hill"
#29- "All in the Family"
#28- "The Larry Sanders Show"
#27- "The Jack Benny Program"
#26- "The Cosby Show"


#25- "THE GOLDEN GIRLS" NBC 1985-1992
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Forty years before "The Golden Girls" and now almost 20 after, there's still no other television show that has focused its attention on the exploits of senior women. HBO's bawdy "Sex and the City" is held up as an innovative depiction of female sexual empowerment, even into middle age, and as I write this summary on Friday, I'm watching the hosts of the daytime talk program "The View" discuss the concept and TV portrayal of "cougars," along with popular daytime actress Susan Lucci. But Susan Harris' sexually-vibrant girls of gold were already buying condoms on network television back during the Reagan administration. When the program debuted, in-depth depictions of female friendship and social groups of any age were rare on television. Episodes of the new series typically featured both tenderhearted moments and laugh-out-loud comedy. All four of the principal actors in the series-- Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty won Emmys for their work, something only two other shows in history ("All in the Family" and "Will & Grace") can claim. White, as the dimwitted Rose, and McClanahan, as the amorous Blanche, switched roles just prior to the series' debut to avoid playing too close to their previous well-known TV roles. "The Golden Girls" is one of 9 shows that appears on the countdown that aired on NBC at least in part during the decade of the '80s, and as part of executive Brandon Tartikoff's famed "Must See TV" campaign that revitalized the network.


#24- "I LOVE LUCY" CBS 1951-1960
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"I Love Lucy" is one of television's iconic series. In fact, a description of Lucille Ball's title character also sounds not unlike that of the medium itself when it's at its best-- what the Museum of Television calls "a tornado in a bottle." Lucy was a blast of energy rebelling against a backdrop of confinement and domestication. It's difficult to comprehend the extraordinary popularity of this series in its time. Nothing today could compare. When Ball's character gave birth on the show in 1953 (in the days before it was even permissable to say the word "pregnant" on television), 72% of all U.S. homes with TVs were tuned in to the episode. That percentage translated to 44 million people. To compare, the top rated show on television last week (Game 2 of the NBA Finals) drew 14 million viewers, this, in an era when having a television in the home is nearly universal, and the country's population has almost doubled (160 million to 305 million) what it was in 1953. Thanks to its star, "I Love Lucy" also helped to establish television, in a sense, as a sort of women's medium, at least relative to film. Lucille Ball remains the television comedy star to whom all others are compared, and as the owner of her own production studio at the time, the show stands testament to her artistic vision as well.

No obscure clips for Lucy. You'll recognize this one from the episode "Job Switching."


#23- "THE BOB NEWHART SHOW" CBS 1972-1978
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"The Bob Newhart Show" was a comedy about adults for adults, with sophisticated comedy favored over broad slapstick. Characters learned from their mistakes and grew as people. Neither husband nor wife was portrayed as baffoonish. Both Newhart, as Bob Hartley, and Suzanne Pleshette, as his wife Emily, were educated, career-oriented, and untraditionally (for television) worthy of each other-- best friends as well as spouses. Almost every one of the series' 142 episodes featured a comedy bit involving Bob in a phone conversation with an unheard voice on the other end, consistent with the signature phone-centered routines of his popular nightclub act. Despite never registering an Emmy win in any category, "The Bob Newhart Show" has shown up, since it wrapped in '78, on nearly all of the lists ever published of the great TV shows in history. That Newhart and his supporting players never garnered industry honors during their time is confirmation of the effortlessness that emanated from nearly every facet of production, from direction to writing to acting. "The Bob Newhart Show" was high-brow and low-key.

The series took place in Chicago and Newhart was a native of nearby Oak Park, Illinois. His likeness as Doctor of Psychology Robert Hartley is memorialized today with a statue in Chicago's Grant Park.


#22- "ROSEANNE" ABC 1988-1997
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In the "Roseanne" universe, love for family was best expressed in the form of sarcastic verbal assault by both parents and children, which made this popular sitcom to appear, on its surface, to be more mean-spirited than most. But over the course of nearly a decade, the series came to reveal perhaps more emotional depth than any other half-hour comedy before or since. Like "All the Family" before it, "Roseanne" demonstrated that a family could be hardened without being disfunctional. The fictional Conner family of fictional Lanford, Illinois was one of TV's first to be clearly matriarchal. As star Roseanne (nee Barr and Arnold) told a collection of former TV mothers during a dream sequence in one episode, her household could have been called "Father Knows Squat." Yet Roseanne's husband Dan (John Goodman) was as fully drawn as any other character and their marriage was depicted as a stable one. In the days before all television characters, employed or otherwise, could afford to hang out all day in shops drinking $5 coffees, the Conners lived in a world in which it was tough to make financial ends meet. Roseanne was forced to leave her job at a plastics factory after standing up to a foreman. The family struggled to make a go of a pair of small businesses, first, a motorcycle repair shop, and later, a diner. Through the entire course of the series' run, the talented Roseanne, as creator, stuck to a singular, uncompromised vision of the show that beared her name, and a parade of writers and producers sent to the unemployment line provided evidence of her drive.

This "Roseanne" clip shows off both the caustic nature of the show's comedy and, I think, the series' emotional resonance as well.


#21- "LOST" ABC 2004-PRESENT
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Science fiction and adventure series are not my preferred genre. To me, the lack of boundaries to realism takes a lot of the fun out of the fiction. But today's blockbuster hit "Lost" blows me away with the complexity of its storytelling. The show would also not be ranked so high if I had not finally come to connect this spring (thanks to the latest string of episodes) with a sort of guarded assurance that all of the puzzle pieces will eventually be set into place. Bill Carter, critic with the New York Times says the series possesses "perhaps the most compelling continuing storyline in television history." The plane crash survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 had lives before they boarded that fateful aircraft in Sydney, Australia, as we learned in a series of flashbacks, and many have lives long after, as we learned through a series of innovative flash-forwards. A new layer of mythology relating to the characters' fates is peeled away nearly every week. From an artistic standpoint, the show deserves immense praise not just for manufacturing such sustained suspense, but for its ambition as the elaborate story structure could be defined as nothing less than "anti-commercial." By this I mean that its impossible for a viewer to start following the plot in mid-series. This is probably the reason that original audience numbers of 16 million per episode on ABC have dwindled down to about 11 million with one season still to be produced. But how can you not respect that?

Media buzz about the show typically leaks over into programming in other TV dayparts. Here, late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel tries to unravel one of the show's many mysteries.

posted by CM @ 3:24 PM