Mystery Manor Adventure Forum

Shall I?

This is a list of my 15 favorite TV series of all time. Everybody loves reading a lengthy list of somebody else's opinions... right?

15. Night Gallery - This was the second series from Master of the Weird Rod Serling. Though Night Gallery didn't draw in the quality writers that The Twilight Zone did, it had two big things going for it: it was in color and it gave you three shorter "quick and dirty" spooks per hour long episode rather than a single half-hour story. Serling helped shape television as a writer, director and producer from the 50's through the early 70's. Watch a few episodes of Night Gallery and you'll begin to see why he is considered a legend in the industry.

14. Star Trek - If you were a kid in the Sixties or early Seventies and if you had any fantasy or science fiction leanings at all, this show was part of your regular diet. I don't really think I need to say much about it, as it's all been said before.

13. Futurama - Yes, I love The Simpsons. Pretty much everybody my age and younger loves The Simpsons. But I prefer this Matt Groening creation a little more. It gives me all the surreality I love in The Simpsons in a smarter and (dare I say it?) sweeter package. For all the laughs Futurama gave me, it was the tenderness and heart of the show's final season and especially its conclusion (Fry's holophone opera and its aftermath) that really made it special and sets it above its longer-lived sister show.

12. Friends - I don't care what you say. Make all the jokes about my masculinity you want. I loved this show. It was one of a few truly hilarious ensemble sitcoms and the way the cast connected with each other made it a joy for me to watch. The humor ran from silly (Monica dancing with a turkey on her head) to pretty smart. And I genuinely liked these people, thus making it easy to care about them and their wacky-but-believable lives.

There's a reason it ruled Thursday nights for so long. And I guess I was one of them.

11. Mystery Science Theater 3000 - One of the few shows on my list that didn't air on the Big Four networks. I discovered MST3K in 1991 when was in its second season on what was then The Comedy Channel. It took seeing half of one episode to hook me. Unlike almost all the other shows on this list, I have NOT seen every episode of MST3K, making it one of the few series that I would actually consider purchasing on DVD. Unfortunately, full-season DVD sets of the show aren't available. (It's sold only as "Best of" collections.)

If you haven't ever seen MST3K, imagine going to a matinee of a really bad science-fiction or biker/exploitation flick every Saturday with a couple of your favorite smartass friends and cracking jokes during the whole movie. That's the idea in a nutshell. Only you'd be hard pressed to find three people as quick-witted and hilarious as Joel, Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot.

True comedy gold.

10. Moonlighting - If Howard Hawks had been a TV director, this might have been what he gave us. Part slapstick, part mystery, part door-slamming farce, Moonlighting followed the antics of a rich, successful model (Cybill Shepard) who has all of her assets stolen by her crooked accountant except for a barely functional detective agency she didn't even know she owned as a tax shelter.

What made this show such a joy was not the rather contrived (and sometimes downright silly) mysteries that Shepard and partner Bruce Willis solved each week. This show was all about the dialogue. It was clever, witty, and delivered at a breakneck pace and overlapping style that evoked (intentionally) His Girl Friday. There was some real chemistry between Shepard and Willis and some real creativity, intelligence and imagination in the writing. (The episode that parodies The Taming of the Shrew is a true classic.) For a few years, Moonlighting was simply the most fun hour on television.

9. Twin Peaks - Twin Peaks is simply the most original and strange and compelling TV show I ever saw. Full of trademark David Lynch weirdness, yet beautiful and fascinating. Its weirdness actually had a purpose and was an essential part of the mystery of "who killed Laura Palmer?" rather than being "weird for weird's sake." At least until the unsatisfying series conclusion.

It is criminal that the pilot episode isn't included with the box set. The series is a must-see for fans not only of Lynch, but also of the TV work of Serling, Hitchcock and Bradbury.

8. Cheers - Cheers really perfected the ensemble sitcom format that The Mary Tyler Moore Show used with such success. It was the highest rated show on NBC for several years, anchoring their "Must See TV" Thursday night lineup. For me, the show really made the step from good to great with the introduction of Kelsey Grammer's "Frasier Crane." Having two smart characters on the show gave the writers the opportunity to add an intelligence to many of the jokes that wasn't available before. When Shelly Long was set to leave Cheers, the character of "Lilith Sternen" was quickly introduced to keep that balance, allowing the humor to run a wide spectrum from fat jokes to jokes about Jung, Sartre and Dickens. And therein lay the success of the show. Regardless of your IQ, education, background or gender, there were at least two jokes per episode that would give you a hearty laugh.

7. Star Trek: The Next Generation - For the first couple of years of this series, if you had told me that I would ever consider it to be better than the original Star Trek, I'd laughed laughed as scornfully and rudely as possible in your face. It seemed that every other episode was a reworking of an episode from the original series. Diana Muldaur off-putting as "Dr. Pulaski." And everybody was so damned earnest all the time.

But then something happened.

For the third season, some new writers were brought in. At the same time, Gates McFadden came back as "Beverly Crusher" and, with her return, the rest of the cast seemed to finally settle into their roles and give them some much-needed humanity.

By season six, ST:TNG had become the best written show on television. And it was a syndicated show! The writers finally managed to successfully blend epic and exotic stories of discovery and galaxy-wide political upheavals with the personal lives of the Enterprise crew. Smart, dramatic, gorgeous to look at and occasionally hilarious, ST:TNG became one of those shows I watched/taped religiously during the late 80's and into the 90's. You can keep your X-Files--as far as I'm concerned, ST:TNG is simply the best sci-fi series ever.

6. Jeopardy! - Quick bit of trivia: Jeopardy! is the second most successful syndicated show of all time... after sister series Wheel of Fortune.

Like most fans, I started watching Jeopardy! as a kid. (It was hosted by Art Fleming back then and gave away a lot less money.) And I still watch it pretty much daily 35+ years later. If you don't already know and love the show, there's nothing I can say here that will make you a convert.

I might leave the Top Five until there's any sign of interest.

My husband and I watch Jeopardy every weeknight. We have a silly thing we do with double jeopardy. As soon as Alex presents the category and goes to the commercial break, we both think of a possible answer based only on the category. For instance, if the category is Sports, I might guess the Stanley Cup, and he might say Willie Mays. For Opera I might say Joan Sutherland, and he'll guess Carmen. About once every two months, one of us gets it right.

Back when I lived on the East Coast (where Jeopardy! is shown in the evenings, and not in the late mornings or 4 pm, as it generally is here in the center of the nation), I'd frequently end up watching it at one of my favorite bars. The ritual was that everybody who was watching/playing all chipped in a buck into the Final Jeopardy pot, and everybody who got it right got a share of the pot. That usually ended up meaning a free drink for yours truly.

5. Law & Order - Last year saw the finale of this show after 20 years. Its run is remarkable not only for its longevity (Gunsmoke is the only drama in TV history with as long a run and only The Simpsons surpasses them amongst "scripted" TV) but for its quality. It was a rare season that L&O didn't get several Emmy nominations, and it has taken home the statuette as Outstanding Drama Series a few times as well.

The success of L&O can't be pinned down to a single factor, but is an amalgam of several elements. For starters, it pioneered a combination of clean cinematography and a cinema verite style that has since been endlessly copied. (Perhaps most notably by ABC's NYPD Blue.) L&O successfully blended the traditional hour long cop show with the hour long courtroom drama into a single format. The writing was always top-notch, frequently giving us stories that were "ripped from the headlines." And the ensemble acting has always been consistently outstanding, despite a revolving door of regular actors.

Law & Order was the crime series against against which all others must measure themselves.