“The Sopranos Is The Best Written TV Show Of All Time, Fuhgeddaboudit”, Says The Writers Guild Of America
And 100 other top TV picks. Looks like we really are living in television's golden age?
Awesomely despairing literary critic, Harold Bloom, has long been the biggest proponent of the importance of canons; that is, the need to organise art (in his case, literature) into universally recognised classics. And so, ‘Best Of’ lists, while always debatable, serve a significant function; we all need to fight for and justify the art we consider indispensably great (even if it’s just Season 5 of Married With Children, which I’ll punch you if you casually insult).
In that spirit (and also to make people yell at them loudly while waving their DVD copies of Strangers With Candy), the Writers Guild Of America (in collaboration with America’s TV Guide), have just released their list of the ‘101 Best Written TV Series’ of all time. Controversially, it’s heavily skewed towards the current; in fact, almost half of the shows included on the list premiered within the last decade.
Kevin Arnold, Winnie Cooper and The Wonder Years: a probably accurate #54 on the WGA’s ‘101 Best Written TV Series’ List.
“Not coincidentally, this was a period that coincided with a sharp growth in original programming on both basic and pay cable television when writers were given more latitude to explore the moral complexities of the worlds they created,” explained TV critic, Paul Brownfield, in a blurb accompanying the announcement, that he probably just made up on the spot to justify the inclusion of Game Of Thrones and its endless boobs.
The list’s top 10, in order, featured:
1. The Sopranos (created by David Chase)
2. Seinfeld (created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld)
3. The Twilight Zone (Season One writers: Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Robert Presnell Jr, Rod Sterling)
4. All In The Family (developed by Norman Lear; created by Johnny Speight)
5. M*A*S*H (developed by Larry Gelbart)
6. The Mary Tyler Moore Show (created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns)
7. Mad Men (created by Matthew Weiner)
8. Cheers (created by Glen Charles and Les Charles and James Burrows)
9. The Wire (created by David Simon)
10. The West Wing (created by Aaron Sorkin)
Other entries included Breaking Bad (#13), Arrested Development (#16), The Cosby Show (#29), and Deadwood (#32, and, somehow, three spots ahead of Twin Peaks).
Read the complete list here and let the furious yelling commence (“I can’t believe Downton Abbey is ranked higher than Buffy, what?!” and so on and so forth).