On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 11:18 AM, Ron Casalotti <[email protected]>wrote:
> Or so says the Writers Guild of America: - > > *Top Ten* > Rank Series Title Network Writer(s)* > 1 The Sopranos HBO Created by David Chase > 2 Seinfeld NBC Created by Larry David & Jerry Seinfeld > 3 The Twilight Zone (1959) CBS Season One writers: Charles Beaumont, > Richard Matheson, Robert Presnell, Jr., Rod Serling > 4 All in the Family CBS Developed for Television by Norman Lear, Based on > Till Death Do Us Part, Created by Johnny Speight > 5 M*A*S*H CBS Developed for Television by Larry Gelbart > 6 The Mary Tyler Moore Show CBS Created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns > 7 Mad Men AMC Created by Matthew Weiner > 8 Cheers NBC Created by Glen Charles & Les Charles and James Burrows > 9 The Wire HBO Created by David Simon > 10 The West Wing NBC Created by Aaron Sorkin > > Link to PDF: > http://www.wga.org/uploadedfiles/news_and_events/101_TV_Series/tv101list-press.pdf > I don't hate this list. A friend and I are hot off of an extended online argument about this a few weeks ago. The first thing we agreed on (after our initial clashing of swords) was to separated dramas from comedies; doing that here gives us: Dramas: Sopranos, Twilight Zone, Mad Men, The Wire and The West Wing Comedies: Seinfeld, All in the Family, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Cheers My friend and I had an argument similar to the recent thread here about The Zone, and I will skip over that here (except to say that any argument that results in Twilight Zone staying on this list must also result in the Dick Van Dyke Show making the comedy list). For the record, my drama list was: Sopranos, Mad Men, West Wing, Deadwood, Breaking Bad, with The Wire at #6. But my main objection to this list (and the main source of conflict with my friend) is the inclusion of Cheers. For my money, Cheers holds up less well over time than any other quality sitcom I can think of (Barney Miller, Taxi, Newhart, Bob Newhart, etc). I think Frazier holds up far, far better than Cheers does. I am interested to see the "season 1" specifier on Twilight Zone - if that is really intended to limit that honor just to the first season, then I might be willing to include Cheers in the top 5 if we limited it to maybe the first 3 seasons. But I find most of the Kirstie Alley seasons just about unwatchable these days. I don't say this as some kind of sitcom hipster who only digs the early stuff; I was a big Cheers fan during its run, and watched most of the original episodes live, and I doubt I missed more than 2 or 3 episodes a year the last 5 seasons. If you had asked me a year after Cheers ended to rank it I would have easily made it a top 3 show. But in recent years I find that while if I happen upon a late night Frazier rerun, or a MASH, and certainly a Seinfeld, I will watch the whole thing was affection and often delight, if I stumble upon a Cheers I almost always turn the channel within a couple of minutes. I tried to watch extended sessions on Netflix a while back and gave up. I had the same feeling as I did when, in my senior year in college, I found myself stuck on a 2 hour car ride with a group of people I had spent a lot of time with as a Freshman. After 15 minutes I was trying to figure out what it ever was about these people that made me want to spend any time with them at all. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
