The Chris Moeller Archives

The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: #s 30-26

We continue our countdown of the 50 greatest American prime-time television shows ever created. Confusion surrounded the previous posting. I received many of your calls and letters congratulating me on the completion of a successful countdown. Evidently, shows 35 through 31 were so outstanding, many of you read past the numbers and assumed they were numbers 5 through 1. Not true. There are actually thirty shows better than those, if you can even believe it.

Today, I dare to reveal five more...

#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" FOX 1997-2009
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One could make a strong case that "King of the Hill" has been television's most underrated show. Unlike the animated Simpsons, Flintstones, and Jetsons families that preceeded them, and the Griffins that followed, the Hills resided in a "slice-of-life" style sitcom, heavy on character development and regional (Texas) ethos, I tell you what. (Their son Bobby even aged.) It never broke the lines of space and time. In fact, it's probably closer in scope and structure to many live-action sitcoms. One of the pleasures of the series is watching the cross-generational but respectful conflict between father and adolescent son, Hank and Bobby. Hank is a conventional, emotionally-constipated son of the Lone Star State, while his son, an aspiring "prop comic," listens to his heart and shuns gender stereotypes, whether he's enrolling in a home economics class or trying out for team mascot instead of the football team. "Why do you hate everything you don't understand?" Bobby asks his father. Hank's reply, "I don't hate you, Bobby."

This is a trailer done in crude pencil sketch for the promotion and selling of the series in 1996.


#29- "ALL IN THE FAMILY" CBS 1971-1979
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"The program you are about to see is 'All in the Family.' It seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices, and concerns. By making them a source of laughter, we hope to show, in a mature fashion, just how absurd they are." Thus began a decade of television anchored by Norman Lear's classic, which led the Nielson Ratings for five consecutive seasons beginning in 1971. Archie Bunker was the angry white man living in the working class burough of Queens. He thought that the "spics," "spades," and "hebes" had all come to claim his fairly-gotten gains. Bunker clashed loudly with his liberal and equally-outspoken live-in son-in-law Mike Stivic, who Bunker referred to alternately as "Meathead" or "that dumb Polack." The depiction of hostile family life on "All in the Family" was so penetrating and resonant that it fostered critics at all points of the political spectrum, either for its crassness and its blunt treatment of traditionally-taboo subjects or because the fullness of its form caused many to believe that the bigot Archie was too lovingly presented. "All in the Family" was responsible for nothing less than introducing social themes and plotlines to television sitcoms and it demonstrated that prejudice was the dirtiest joke of all.

In the new millennium, Archie and Edith Bunker's house in New York looks like this. Like most of today's television programming, it now sports a thin, plastic layer of siding.


#28- "THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW" HBO 1992-1998
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Gary Shandling was one of the comics considered to take over "The Tonight Show" from Johnny Carson in 1992, but Gary had another idea in mind-- to create a fiction series about a "Tonight Show"-style program aping the real thing, with a satiric glimpse behind-the-scenes and celebrities playing parody versions of themselves. Thanks to this decision, Shandling had the luxury of commenting on all the action when the so-called Late Night Wars commenced for real upon Carson's retirement. When David Letterman chose Tom Snyder to host the late night show that followed his, the ficitonal Larry Sanders also chose Tom Snyder. When Sanders' show started slipping in the ratings, his network chose a "permanent guest host" for the show in Jon Stewart, much as NBC had tabbed Jay Leno to be Carson's "permanent guest host." Shandling's Sanders was simultaneously self-satisfied and self-loathing, and Hollywood pettiness and insecurity was sent up in a way not done so expertly since "Sunset Boulevard." Time Magazine reported that "Shandling revealed Hollywood's blemishes like the world's funniest jar of makeup remover."

This video clip of the episode "Hank's Sex Tape" is representative of the tone of series.


#27- "THE JACK BENNY PROGRAM" CBS 1950-1965
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"The Jack Benny Program" had already aired for 18 years on radio when it debuted on CBS in October of 1950, and the format did not change in transition, making this truly television's first sitcom, and also incidentally, one of its funniest. Jack played himself, a successful American comic, not unlike the Jerry Seinfelds and Larry Davids that would eventually follow him on the small screen, and like those of his successors, much of the Benny on-air persona was only that. In real life, he was not pompous or miserly with his money as the show depicted. What he was was someone who was very comfortable being the butt of the joke. His real-life wife, Mary Livingstone, played herself, albeit as a friend to Benny and sometimes-love interest only; announcer Don Wilson read the commercials and also played himself, a frequent visitor to Benny's home in Beverly Hills; Eddie Anderson was Rochester, Benny's African-American driver, who was written in a way that transcended racial stereotypes of the period; and Mel Blanc, the voice of Warner Brothers' Bugs Bunny, portrayed a different character (or inanimate object, such as Benny's old-fashioned car) in each episode, allowing the actor to show off his vocal gifts. Here's Blanc with his boss on Johnny Carson in 1974.


#26- "THE COSBY SHOW" NBC 1984-1992
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The story structure of a "Cosby Show" episode was unlike that of other situation comedies. There were few jokes in the script. Instead, it was a loose outline of interactions between the comedian Cosby and, principally, members of his large, fictional family. It's impossible to talk about "The Cosby Show" without reference to race. Producers employed a black psychiatrist from Harvard as consultant in an effort to "recode blackness" in the series, purposely avoiding what Cosby felt had been the most damaging stereotypes of African-Americans depicted on television. The result was something television had never experienced-- an upper-middle-class, functional black family commanding a large audience of white viewers. The show has often been criticized for not dealing with the issue of class in Black America, or America as a whole, but adversely, it's staggering to consider what was expected, even demanded, of this program, which filled a Grand Canyon-sized void on television for eight years. What the show inarguably did was present a loving, well-educated, and egalitarian African-American family of tremendous dignity in which the family members celebrated the inspiring legacy and contribution of black people to American life. "The Cosby Show" showed that black families could be just as "fictionally" cute, funny, and perfect as white families.

This sequence is from the pilot episode.

posted by CM @ 8:58 PM