Loved freaks and geeks as a kid, linda cardellini was my teenage crush.
Television Hollywood Reporter's top 50 shows of the century
- Thread starter Rooney in Paris
- Start date
Shocked to see Peep Show top 20 on a (presumably) American list.
Absolutely shite list, much like all such lists generally are.
It’s a travesty that Justified only gets an honorable mention. It’s one of the greatest shows ever.
Nope so in my view a totally irrelevant list
.They even have Succession in front of it which i loved but it's in no way better than The Wire
Oh wow was it? I tuned out after succession being higher than The Wire and aimed it would be Breaking Bad at number 1
Seems like recency bias for a lot of the chart. I'm rewatching The Wire right now and it's just confirming to me that it's the greatest show ever made, period. Second place for me is Breaking Bad. Third place is Bluey but that's because I have to watch it for an hour every day otherwise mini Pigeon files a complaint with Mrs Pigeon.
I can't understand anyone having BCS above BB. They're both great shows but BB is clearly better, and should really be number 1 on the list. It’s seminal and it’s success, storytelling and impact on tv was unprecedented. Also so much of BCS as a show and concept is dependent on what BB covered in terms of world building, tone, aesthetic, storytelling. It’s pretty much the same show with a different lead - both WW and Saul have the same / similar arc (sorry going on a rant here).
Mr Robot, Lost, Justified should also all be on the list (I’d have them in the top 10 personally).
Lost had a massive impact on storytelling and shows with large cast lists. It was a watershed moment in television when Lost dropped.
I’d also have Oz in the list somewhere, maybe top 25 for the same reason. It changed the landscape of what shows were capable of.
Other glaring omissions - Life on Mars, Dexter, Narcos.
Where is friends in the list?
Not even having Mr Robot in the honorable mentions is a travesty.
You need more Hey Duggee in your life.
Definitely top five!
The Expanse pisses all over BSG and I liked that show, especially the first season.
It did one of the dumbest things I have seen in TV with preview of major plot moments in the intro though.
It is a list, it is definitely that. Crazy Ex Girlfriend ahead of Band of Brothers is listing.
I agree that The Expanse is better than BG. When I watched BG I thought it is the best show ever, but now rewatched it after almost 15 years, and it is really quite crap.
Saying that, it was revolutionary for its time considering that the best sci-fi TV shows were the likes of Stargate or Star Trek which are braindead.
This automatically renders the list bunkum.
This list is very different to the RedCafe's Favourite TV Shows top 30 that we did a few weeks ago. For example, we had Band Of Brothers in the top 5 whereas it's barely a footnote on this list.
It's interesting to see 30 for 30 in there because I don't necessarily think of it as a series, though I guess it is. Some of the documentaries in that initial 30 episode run are brilliant, The Band that wouldn't Die, The U, Pony Excess, Run Ricky Run and The Best That Never Waz are all great documentaries about American football, the greed within both the college and professional games and the strength of the bond with local communities, and the latter two show the hold and the punishment on the players so brilliantly.
As for Into The Wind and Once Brothers... made me bawl like a baby. I'd never heard of Terry Fox before seeing the former, but an absolutely heart warming and heart breaking episode and I still think about what he achieved years after seeing it.
As for Into The Wind and Once Brothers... made me bawl like a baby. I'd never heard of Terry Fox before seeing the former, but an absolutely heart warming and heart breaking episode and I still think about what he achieved years after seeing it.
Oh, and got about one and a half seasons into Succession, I don't think it was that good.
The Wire is far superior.
The Wire is far superior.
Station Eleven is such an odd pick too. The book is great, but the TV series is very mediocre.
It received stellar reviews across the board. Been meaning to watch it for a while now.
I suspect a lot of Americans have only just discovered it following the success of Succession, and so in that way it’s benefiting from recency bias, which is always a big factor in these lists.
I'd never heard about Reservation Dogs, they explain their rationale for including it. Watchmen is one of those that gets an honorable mention, but I agree it's a really great show.
But the Caf in general has terrible taste, so...
I'm not quite sure I understand the obsession with Breaking Bad, I mean it's a great show with some great highs but it's not The Wire level either. I really don't get it. It really had no "unprecedented impact on TV", it very much slots into the golden age of TV and was great, but that's about it (which is already excellent).
Agree with the cultural relevance of Lost - I also don't think it's a very good show, so I'm not gonna cry about it not being included. Justified gets an honorable mention.
Oz started airing in 1997 and the seasons that would have been considered, post 2000, were the weaker ones.
I agree with this, also rewatching The Wire right now and it's extraordinary. I also don't think there's an issue with people having different personal preference and not having it at #1 in every list.
I guess no one read the intro (I also assume that pretty much no one even read the paragraphs below certain rankings that go to explain their rationale for some of the picks), it's just a summary of loads of various people's lists and they themselves caveat it by saying that the consolidated one looks nothing like every single one submitted. I also find it funny how people get so caught up in the rankings in this list - you're talking about 23/24 years of TV shows, they highlight last year alone there were 600 scripted shows airing, so trying to summarize such a massive wealth of TV is always gonna be tricky - whether you're at #44 or at #7 doesn't really make any difference.
The only thing that matters is that Mad Men is the GOAT.
I wanna post their top 50 films since 2000 now, that should anger a few of the regulars of the film thread
I personally preferred the final list on here. Although, their list has Friday Night Lights, which is a really fun show!
No UK office. What the absolute feck.
I just had a quick look at it - of course there's great shows there, but it's also a very cis-male driven list that fits perfectly into the overall vibe of the Caf. It's a little bit boring, if anything. I'd argue the list you guys compiled says more about the Caf than it does about TV. But that's fine, lists don't really matter at the end of the day apart from serving as a conduit for discussion.
That is rather insane - the mockumentary style that would become so big in sitcom pretty much peaked with it. They give The Office US an honourable mention, but as much as I love it and have laughed hard watching it, Gervais and Merchant's masterpiece is incredible.
If you showed me the list and asked me to make a profile based on it, then I would say: 40 year old normie-dude who can appreciate high quality but rarely ventures out of their comfort zone. If you showed the list to a bunch of middle schoolers then they would probably say "did my dad make this list?"
Nothing wrong with that though.
Yeah pretty much and indeed nothing wrong with it.
The list is complete bullshit.
Just been through the list in more detail. Some thoughts:
- Beef should be nowhere near a top 50 list. Decent show... recency bias.
- Band Of Brothers at 38... what the feck.
- Chernobyl at 35... seriously... suck my ass.
- The first few seasons alone should elevate GOT higher than 30.
- Friday Night Lights at 18, great shout.
- Breaking Bad at only 16? Hipster bullshit.
- Better Call Saul at 7? Higher than Breaking Bad? Really?
- Succession is at 3... recency bias.
- Mad Men is good but not the best show.
- Where the feck are Lost, The Office (UK) and The Simpsons?
- Beef should be nowhere near a top 50 list. Decent show... recency bias.
- Band Of Brothers at 38... what the feck.
- Chernobyl at 35... seriously... suck my ass.
- The first few seasons alone should elevate GOT higher than 30.
- Friday Night Lights at 18, great shout.
- Breaking Bad at only 16? Hipster bullshit.
- Better Call Saul at 7? Higher than Breaking Bad? Really?
- Succession is at 3... recency bias.
- Mad Men is good but not the best show.
- Where the feck are Lost, The Office (UK) and The Simpsons?
Yep.
No Medium on that list either.
The West Wing is eligible - it states that any show that started before 2000 would be judged by the episodes that aired after 2000 (explains no Simpsons). For the West Wing that is season 2 onwards - for it to not make the list or even their honorary mentions makes this list a big steaming pile of shite.
If you prefer books over films: read the book and skip the series.
In any case don't read the book before watching the series. You will probably be disappointed. They make a lot of crazy changes and almost none of them are for the better.
I hadn't thought about this, but Season 2 of The West Wing is probably my favourite season of TV ever, and Two Churches is the best episode of anything ever, IMHO of course. Plus you have the brilliant Noel.
I suppose the problem is you have to then factor in Seasons 4, 5 and 6, which have some very middling quality in there and there is one absolutely terrible episode (Ninety Miles Away) as well as the awful 9/11 one.
That said there's some good story lines, I quite liked the Mark Harmon episodes, and I really enjoyed season 7.
I wonder if it doesn’t hit as hard in the US because the mockumentary style was sort of done first with the likes of Spinal Tap(Where Gervais and Merchant got the idea for the office)Waiting for Guffman and the Larry Sanders Show.
Although imo The Office UK is the best the mockumentary.
I thought they avoided sitcoms intentionally (Peep Show being an exception).
Parks & Rec is in there!
Meh, just a bunch of personal preference comments. You'd make your list, submit it with 15/20 others (no idea what the panel was or how big it was) and it would be collapsed into a mix of other people's preferences. And would come out as a collaborative list.
Yeah a little bit more surprising then, but I can perfectly understand The West Wing not appealing to a certain demographic
Could be! I also feel that the approach to it is very different - The UK Office has an almost naturalistic approach and the mockumentary style is used as a narrative device, whereas the US version, or other mockumentaries, just forget it's being filmed as a documentary as soon as it serves the narrative. There is something much more earnest and blunt in the way it's used in Merchant and Gervais's version.
Fair point but don't agree with regards to Lost, The Simpsons and The Office. The fact that they didn't make the top 50 makes that list a joke.
Yeah the UK office is an actual Mockumentary. Shows like Parks and the US Office are basically sitcoms labelled as them purely so they can have talking head bits/camera looks as jokes (which isn't a bad thing).
While i like Parks and 30 Rock i would have put Parks as the higher one.
30 Rock stuns very highly rated on that list.
Still i suppose it's better than Rolling Stones best hip hop albums in history list.
Illmatic at 24 with Future and Drake albums ranked higher
30 Rock stuns very highly rated on that list.
Still i suppose it's better than Rolling Stones best hip hop albums in history list.
Illmatic at 24 with Future and Drake albums ranked higher
Have to agree with this. I took a loooong break from Robot midway through season 2. Boy was I glad I went back and finished it