Best Shows in Review
As 2010 winds down it will soon be time to update the “best TV shows list” for yet another year (or maybe even another decade). But before we get to that (and since there’s still a few months left in this year), here’s a look at how Tim Goodman of SFGate rated the decade preceding this one.Following is a list of what was considered to be the “best series of the decade” (2000-2009) with Goodman’s excellent commentary attached:1. “The Wire,” HBO. Ostensibly a cop series with a story to tell about the drug war in America’s inner city (Baltimore, in this case), “The Wire” over five seasons was really an insanely ambitious, intimately detailed historical document about institutional failure on all levels – cops, criminals, courts, politics, schools and newspapers. Dense, novelistic, painful, funny, real and transformative all at once. “The Wire” is the best television series ever made. Period.2. “The Sopranos,” HBO. You can make an argument that “The Sopranos” is the most important television series ever. It made great television a mandatory requirement for any cable channel seeking an audience. It cemented HBO as a must-have pay channel. It fueled the creative renaissance of all dramas – cable and network. And it cleverly fooled people into thinking that they were watching a violent story about the mob when they were really watching a married couple come undone as they dealt with each other and their extended families. A neat trick, that. The writing, acting and directing set a standard still trying to be matched everywhere on the small screen.3. “Mad Men,” AMC. The best series still in production (followed closely by AMC stablemate “Breaking Bad”), this drama about the existential angst of an early 1960s ad man, Don Draper, has exemplary writing and acting that is intimate, reflective, funny and shaded, and it boasts the most memorable premise and look in ages. It carries (more…)