Owen Talks TV

The good folks over at the The A.V. Club have compiled a list of the thirty best TV series of the past decade. At the least, I'm pleased to see my taste in TV by and large vindicated. As I've said before, the three best TV series, in my opinion, are Arrested Development, Lost, and Band of Brothers. The first two are in The A.V. Club's top ten (at number three and number eight, respectively); Band of Brothers is nowhere to be found, but my guess is that they were ranking only open-ended series, not mini-series like Band of Brothers. Other favorites that make the cut are Freaks and Geeks (four), Mad Men (five), The Office (both British, at seven, and American, at eleven), 30 Rock (thirteen), Futurama (fourteen), Firefly (seventeen), Tim and Eric (twenty), Curb Your Enthusiasm (twenty-one), Undeclared (twenty-three), The Venture Brothers (twenty-six), Flight of the Conchords (twenty-seven), and Eastbound and Down (twenty-eight).

The number-one series, The Wire, is one I've been meaning to look into for some time now. (When my Netflix queue is in the nineties as it is, it's a bit daunting to add a five-season series to that. It will happen, though.) There are other series on the list that I've given a shot but wasn't able to get that into. Foremost of those is The Sopranos (number two), which is tantamount to heresy among lovers of quality television. I watched every episode of the first two seasons, so I can't be accused of not giving it a try; but I found it a bit contrived, and most of the characters downright caricatural. I watched the first season of Deadwood (nine), thought it was fun (especially Al Swearengen) but never rose to greatness. I watched at least the first season (maybe some of the second, I can't remember) of Six Feet Under (twenty-two), but found it a bit precious and hard to buy into; it didn't help that many of the main characters seemed like tired, broadly drawn stereotypes (the tight-laced housewife, the rebellious teenager, the contrasting obedient "good son" and free-spirited "bad son," etc.).

Something that struck me about the list is the networks that showed them. Half were on cable, and eight were on HBO alone. Among the broadcast networks, NBC and Fox led the pack with five and four shows, respectively. With a few ambitious exceptions (Lost, Firefly, The West Wing), the broadcast networks' quality shows were mostly relatively inexpensive comedies. I think this just goes to show the extent to which cable networks—first HBO, now AMC, FX, and Showtime as well—have come to dominate TV drama. Maybe it has to do with penny-pinching broadcast networks' increasing reliance on cheap reality and game shows, leaving a slack in the realm of high-quality drama that the cable networks have picked up. Not only that, but cable networks are able to focus their resources on a dozen or so episodes per season of a handful of shows, instead of having to produce several hours of programming every day for shows, each of whose seasons are usually at least two dozen episodes long (barring screenwriters' strikes, etc.). (On the other hand, maybe the distinction I've drawn between cable networks and broadcast networks is anachronistic, given that for some time now just about everyone in this country—excepting my parents, stubborn cable-free stalwarts that they are—has cable, and NBC, ABC, and Fox might very well be right next to HBO, AMC, and The Cartoon Network on the dial.)

The main thing that The A.V. Club's list demonstrates is that the past ten years have been a golden age of television. The medium has gone from being cinema's ugly cousin to a (perhaps the) recognized home of legitimate, high-quality acting and storytelling. Previously, a TV star only made it really big when he or she started making films; during the '00s ("the aughts"?), many established film actors (Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Salma Hayek, Keith Carradine, Bill Paxton, Steve Buscemi, just going by the shows on the list) took roles on TV, a move no longer seen as a step down careerwise. I think we should expect this trend only to continue in the future and to increase the quality and ambition of the programming, as more cable networks get in on the game HBO started.

One final thought: According to this list, Jason Segel may be the greatest television actor of the decade, with roles on Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared, and How I Met Your Mother (number eighteen). Just doing the math, he's apparently a mighty TV force to be reckoned with. Who knew?