Best TV shows of 2000's

[Emperor]

I found this list and for the most part agree with it, especially the comments for #1.  Do you?  What other shows do you think deserve a mention?

 

SOME UNFAIR AND SWEEPING GENERALIZATIONS NECESSARY FOR THE CREATION OF SOMETHING AS PRESUMPTIVE AND INDEFENSIBLE AS THIS LIST:

 

Going to the theater has become a crapshoot in regards to quality, a succession of trips down the de-evolutionary ladder from Star Wars to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, where thoughtful filmmaking seems to accidentally escapes the studio system, contrary to the wishes of those looking to collect large checks and trade on your relaxed entertainment standards.

 

Your best bet to enjoy quality, character driven long-form storytelling involves wearing boxers, owning a TiVo, and placing aforementioned boxers on a couch in front of your television, and hitting play on a remote control , and has been that way for over a decade now.

 

The 2000’s are the single best creative period the medium of television has ever seen, and the best way to contextualize just how good we had it is in the creation of a completely disposable top 10 list on the internet.

 

THE SOLE RULE:

 

A show can only be eligible if its best season aired in the 2000’s. That single season will represent the show for the purposes of this list.

 

THE HONORABLE MENTIONS:

 

Breaking Bad(S2) Dead Like Me(S2) Deadwood(S2) Friday Night Lights(S3) Scrubs(S5) The Shield(S2) The Sopranos(S5) Sports Night, The Venture Bros(S3) Weeds(S4)

 

THE TOP 10 TELEVISION PROGRAMS OF THE 2000's.

 

10. LOST – SEASON 5: The season it stopped being a Puzzle-Box for the sake of pleasing/confounding people who should probably be playing Tetris. Not that the Russian Nesting Doll nature of the show was suppressed, but the characters finally stopped being clumsy playing pieces to be pushed around by a convoluted mythology. They gained a 3rd dimension, with behavior both consistent and compelling, instead of lapsing into pants-shitting retardation for plotting purposes. Season 5 is like a gifted college student who finally understands why he’s in all this debt, puts the bong down, and decides to make good on the potential before he enters the real world shrugging and chucking cases of ramen into his shopping cart.

 

9. FIREFLY: Joss Whedon’s magnum opus. Season 3 of Angel came close to the heights he hit here, but this show is the culmination of Whedon’s skills as a showrunner, storyteller, director, writer and universe builder. Fox then cut it off at the knees, and the potential of the show, forever to be unrealized, led a group of devoted fans to coalesce around Whedon with the fervor of religious zealots, or Green Bay Packers fans. Some of them are level-headed connoisseurs of quality entertainment with a sharpened critical eye. Some of them just like how Nathan Fillion wears Han Solo’s pants. All of them recognize what a unique gem they were lucky to have seen in its brief 13 episode run.

 

8. MAD MEN – SEASON 3: If I’m going to get a raft of shit for this article, I might as well deserve it. These lists are presumptuous at best, anyway. Why not go Michael Bay with the presumption, huh? Here’s my flimsy reasoning: Season 2 Mad Men was a massive leap from the quality in Season 1, much in the same way Buffy jumped from annoying character tics to engrossing, highly entertaining potboiler, except Mad Men S1 started really good. Season 3 of Mad Men is ALREADY better than the entirety of its 2nd Season. I’ve seen 4 episodes, and I believe this claim completely. Sure, you could argue “Well, what if the remaining 9 suck ass?” but you might as well argue “what if dragons were real and could fart rainbows into my breakfast cereal every morning?” The two premises are roughly equivalent in their plausibility.

 

7. CHAPPELLE’S SHOW – SEASON 2: Now, the reality is that Dave lost his mind, left 50 mil on the table and hung out by himself smoking cigarettes, only to wander out of the desert every few months to do 12 hour sets at the Laugh Factory or something like that. “Dave Chappelle? That wizard’s just a crazy old man.” But I prefer what Season 2 of Chappelle’s Show seems to represent: Dave exceeding the best seasons of Saturday Night Live combined, in 1/3rd the time, making it look effortless, and then dropping the microphone on the floor and exiting stage left like some sort of comedic Maximus Decimus Meridius. Check the stats: The Racial Draft. Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories. When Keeping it Real goes Wrong. The Wayne Brady Show. The problem in looking back is that you have to ignore 3.6 million fratbro’s popping collars and asking each other what 5 fingers said to the face for about 2 straight years.

 

6. ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT – SEASON 2: I like to imagine Chuck Jones watching this show on loop in heaven. Arrested Development has been compared to a lot of things over the course of it’s too-short run on FOX, but I’ve always thought it was the natural progression from those old Warner’s shorts. Everything about the show and its characters can be traced back to the wickedly perfect comic timing, convoluted plotting and creative gag-writing that a psychotic duck and a wiseass wabbit basically invented back in the late 40’s/early 50’s. Mitchell Hurwitz, his writers, and an ensemble cast that rivals Cheers, did the impossible in season 2: improved on a comedic aesthetic I thought was perfected with “Rabbit Seasoning,” and improved on it for 18 straight episodes.

 

5. SPACED – SEASON 2: It’s strange to think that the most cinematic television show in the last 10 years is a slacker/stoner comedy on Channel 4. Usually when discussing TV, the phrase “cinematic” means they didn’t light the set and brown things happened.  But Edgar Wright hit the set of Spaced like Sam Raimi snorting rails of the same medicine that made Charley a turtlenecked pimp in Flowers for Algernon. Now marry that manically intelligent energy to characterization that gives truth to the lie of confectionary sitcom bullshit like Friends and Coupling. Apply the of Gervais/Merchant Comedy Theory of “Say what you need to say, shut the f up and get out of the way,” and you get the silly, succinct, and sublime “Spaced.”

 

4. SOUTH PARK – SEASON 8: Before Parker/Stone got lost up their asses being professional libertarians, perpetually playing the “too cool to actually pick a side” game, they began to regularly stir in celebrity satire and social commentary to measured perfection. That they nailed the recipe at the same time the evolution of their characters hit its zenith makes Season 8 the best season of the best animated series ever. Good Times With Weapons is a perfect encapsulation: It might be a smart send-up of misplaced parental concern after Janet Jackson’s titty fell out for 0.3 seconds during a pointless song and dance routine at a football game. But it’s also a hilariously accurate representation of what happens when kids and their imaginations are set free, and it’s joyously dangerous.

 

3. THE OFFICE – SEASON 2: There are people who enjoy the US version of The Office. I don’t begrudge them their watered down, ham-filled, increasingly contrived television program. It’s funny, sure. Some people need to have their entertainment with the crusts cut off. Some people can’t handle knocking back a slug of everclear, they’re afraid they’ll end up like Bushwick Bill on the cover of “We Can’t Be Stopped.” I get that, and I’m glad they like that show. But Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant believe in serving up single shots of schadenfreude with no ice, and no chaser, and the experience is all the more rewarding for it. There is nothing easy about this comedy, to the point where I laughed not only at the exemplary writing, but the fact a tv show was making me physically uncomfortable just being in the same room with it.

 

2. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA – SEASON 1: This is the best single season of any sci-fi show ever aired. Many pretenders have made their run at that particular Captain’s Chair, shows full of unnecessary apostrophes, latex head-bumps, shifty effects and earnest ambition always about a thousand yards beyond ability. Babylon 5, Farscape, the 30,000 versions of Stargate: MacGyver-And-That-Funky-Looking-Black-Guy-With-The-Massive-F-in-Head or whatever. And then there was this claustrophobic, gritty, pissed off little show holding a mirror up to post-9/11 America, and then breaking the mirror, and stabbing the f out of your heart with the shards. From the opening seconds of “33” until a solitary Taiko drum blinked a bleeding Eddie Olmos into the void 13 episodes later, Ronald Moore and David Eick made a brutal, relentless, emotionally honest investigation of the humanity of man, and made it kick more ass than “Aliens.”

 

1. THE WIRE – SEASON 4: This is the best season of anything that’s been broadcast on television. It’s also the reason for this list’s only rule. You need the previous seasons to build to this point, but if I could include those seasons, this list would be “The Wire and 5 other shows that could concievably carry its jock if they asked The Wire very politely, didn’t make eye contact, and wore that cherry wig the Wire just bought them.” Season 4 is probably the closest thing to Literature that television has ever achieved. If Dostoyevsky had HBO, and you walked into his living room just as this season ended, there’d be a single tear resting on his beard. His will to live, along with his balls; powdered, dusting the carpet beneath him like so much cigar ash and dreams of Baltimore.

 

 

[Majsju]

HIMYM and 24, the worst season of both beats the best season of several of the listed shows. Oz of course, season 4-6 aired in the 00s.

[Emperor]

The only shows I MIGHT take off the list would be Southpark and The Office.... maybe Lost.

 

Oz would get an honorable mention... well.. I am on season 3 so it could move up when I get to later seasons.

 

 

[ironcross]

i havent even seen several of those, is it bad that i dont even know what the wire was about? i would like to add house and pushing dasies, they should at least have gotten honerable mentions.

[Emperor]

Rent the Wire... I beg everyone.

 

If this isn't my favorite TV show ever, it is up there.

[reyler]

I can't speak to most of that list, but I will interject that if South Park has any business on it, it wouldn't be for season eight. Less than half of that season was watchable.

[bad company]

What about dexter?

[Mendorah]

Yeah, being that I don't have cable and The Wire precluded the glories of TV on the internet, I only got to see seasons 1 & 2 when I was dating someone who had HBO.  All seasons of this show are on my Amazon wish list to buy.  I kind of don't want to ruin it with watching a crappy quality stream on Sidereel, or waste my money on renting.  I need to own them!

[SinisterDeath]

Yeah, being that I don't have cable and The Wire precluded the glories of TV on the internet, I only got to see seasons 1 & 2 when I was dating someone who had HBO.  All seasons of this show are on my Amazon wish list to buy.  I kind of don't want to ruin it with watching a crappy quality stream on Sidereel, or waste my money on renting.  I need to own them!

 

I know some sites, but I wouldn't say 'sidreel' or others is 'crappy' quality. In all reality its probably just the equivolent of 480p, which was stardard tv screen size. ;)

+ PC's scale up and assuming the quality isn't horrible (cause there are some truelly horrendous quality ones out there). Main thing about streaming though is after the 480p mark, streaming can get 'choppy' and take along time to watch a single episode if the server sucks... I'm reminded of Yideo which has alot of different sources with varying Quality... Megavideo has fairly good quality but unless you pay your looking at 1.5 hours every 2 hours. :P

[Mendorah]

Most of the new stuff on Sidereel is from Megavideo now.  So that's really where I'm watching from.  And yes, the quality is crap.  It's not equivalent to my standard TV at all.  I mean, it's watchable.  But the video is not as good quality.  At first I thought it was because I was blowing up to full screen, but even when I watch on their standard screen with my macbook, the video isn't that clear.  I mean, it's certainly watchable, but if a show is good enough for me to buy, I'd rather see it on at least my standard TV than on Sidereel/Megavideo.  I would make the exception to Hulu or Fancast (which is the same service almost identically) if it was available there.  I'm actually catching up on a Lot of TV that I never saw on Hulu right now.  Hulu's quality is great!  I didn't realize that it was basically HD quality until you pointed it out and I believe you are right as Defying Gravity and Fringe look Amazing even on my little macbook screen.

[SinisterDeath]

Most of the new stuff on Sidereel is from Megavideo now.  So that's really where I'm watching from.  And yes, the quality is crap.  It's not equivalent to my standard TV at all.  I mean, it's watchable.  But the video is not as good quality.  At first I thought it was because I was blowing up to full screen, but even when I watch on their standard screen with my macbook, the video isn't that clear.  I mean, it's certainly watchable, but if a show is good enough for me to buy, I'd rather see it on at least my standard TV than on Sidereel/Megavideo.  I would make the exception to Hulu or Fancast (which is the same service almost identically) if it was available there.  I'm actually catching up on a Lot of TV that I never saw on Hulu right now.  Hulu's quality is great!  I didn't realize that it was basically HD quality until you pointed it out and I believe you are right as Defying Gravity and Fringe look Amazing even on my little macbook screen.

 

Hmm, just looked up some of my sources...

Man that quality does suck.

Episodes of True-blood, Hung, Dexter aren't that bad...

 

Well, at least it is a Series WORTH owning. ;)

[WWWwombat]

I stopped watching Lost in Season 4.  The show lost its edge somewhere in season 2 or 3.  I saw a little of Arrested development and it was some pretty good stuff.  Fox is kinda dumb.  Which brings me to Firefly.  Loved it.  Firefly and BSG season 1 are two of my favorite seasons of anything ever.  The commentary on those two was spot on.  BSG seasons 1 and 2 were so good.  Really good characters, tons of action, and some pretty cazy moral dilemmas made it so exciting.

[Far Dareis Mai]

I agree with the Office. I would put Buffy on there. I could never get into the Chappelle Show.

[Werthead]

The list is surprisingly decent, though there are some issues.

 

Battlestar Galactica will forever be tainted by how it ended, to the extent that sitting down and watching the earlier episodes that were just sublime brilliance at the time is now extremely hard. When you know the writers just did not give a toss about the audience and spent the last three hours of the show actively taking the mick out of them, that does tend to taint everything that came before it.

 

Buffy's best days were in the 1990s. Seasons 4-7 aired in the noughties and only really The Body stands up to the quality of Seasons 2-3.

 

Despite being a Brit, the American Office is actually pretty good, and the list seems overtly dismissive of it just for being a different take on the same idea. It's not even a remake, it's just set in a similar mileu (and in fact at one point a crossover with some of the British characters visiting the US office and it being revealed the success of the British documentary in the show inspired the American one was considered, but ultimately dismissed as the two shows had deviated so much from their common origin).

 

Spaced is unvarnished genius from start to finish (for those not in the know, it's the TV series made by the makers of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz and featuring some of the same cast). The American DVD is out now with people like Quentin Tarantino doing commentaries.

 

The Wire is the greatest TV series of all time. There isn't really much else to be said about it other than that.

 

The only shows missing for me from the list are State of Play, which is just unvarnished brilliance from start to finish; Life on Mars (the UK version) which is almost as good; and Rome, which is the single finest depiction of the Roman Empire since the I, Claudius mini-series of thirty years earlier.

 

is it bad that i dont even know what the wire was about

 

Okay, or maybe not ;)

 

The Wire is a five-season series set in Baltimore. The idea behind the show is to depict the life of the modern American city, in particular a city wrecked by a lack of investment. The series is obstinately a cop show, with each season revolving around a different investigation using wiretaps and surveillence (hence the name), but that's a simplistic reading.

 

Each season also shows a different facet of the city. Season 1 is a straight-up (except it isn't that straight-up) battle of wits between the police and the biggest drug-dealing gang in the city. Season 2 brings in the port labour unions as the police investigate a series of dead bodies found on a container ship. Season 3 sees the drug-dealer storyline re-emerge, but at the same time we also follow a young, hotshop white councilman as he tries to get elected mayor in a city with a huge black population. Season 4 brings in the school system and education. Season 5 is about the press. The police characters remain the focus of the show, but with these other elements introduced in each successive season, the cast becomes pretty huge by the end (although the fairly high death rate ensures it doesn't get too massive).

 

It's a hard-hitting story that basically states that human beings create institutions and hierarchies (even the illegal drug-dealers) designed to keep people down and under control and under surveillence, and that instutions gradually destroy those who seek to reform them. It's also a quasi-documentary, as most of the characters, crimes and situations show in the series are based on real stories or composites of real situations (the main writers are an ex-homicide detective and a former journalist who accompanied the homicide unit on its work for several years).

 

If it sounds a bit heavy-going, it's also one of the funniest TV shows I've ever seen, despite being a drama. There's some brilliant gags and stories that emerge out of the situations and again they are mostly true.

(lots of swearing, btw, so you might not want to listen to it at work).

 

It's a show that just gets everything right. On another board we were trying to find 5 things that were wrong with the show and were reduced to things like a character's name getting misspelled at one point and the last season being a little too short. That's about it. There's a great assessment on the show

as well.

[WWWwombat]

BSG's ending wasn't very strong but it doesn't taint the rest of the show for me.

 

I should get around to checking out The Wire sometime.

[Ayyad Azryelle]

I agree with Werthead about Life on Mars (UK version), it definitely deserves to be on the list.

 

And Doctor Who (series 1 to series 4, 2009 specials included), I don't understand why it is not even mentioned, it's the best show EVER !

If Doctor Who deserves to be number One, then Torchwood should be number 2, for its 3rd series Children of Earth.

then of course Number 3 would be Life on Mars - John Simm and Philip Glenister are just brilliant in it :D

and number 4 The Big Bang Theory, because gotta love those geeks ;)

 

well that's just my own list though, and I have to admit that I don't watch that many series, I haven't seen Lost or many others that made it to the list so...I might change my mind someday - though definitely not about Doctor Who being the best ;) I'm a Whovian at heart ^^

[Ozhammer]

I would have to add HBO's Deadwood to the list as well. Great cast, good plot, and some of the best dialogue ever written.

[Werthead]

I would have to add HBO's Deadwood to the list as well. Great cast, good plot, and some of the best dialogue ever written.

 

Although a lot of it would be unprintable on a family board like this ;)

[SinisterDeath]

I would have to add HBO's Deadwood to the list as well. Great cast, good plot, and some of the best dialogue ever written.

 

Although a lot of it would be unprintable on a family board like this ;)

 

To be fair, they were going to use period approriate cussing... But they couldn't stop laughing long enough to finish a scene..

[Ozhammer]

Apparently they put contemporary swearwords in to illustrate the profanity used, as back in the day it was more blasphemous based than sexual based when it came to swearing.

[SinisterDeath]

Apparently they put contemporary swearwords in to illustrate the profanity used, as back in the day it was more blasphemous based than sexual based when it came to swearing.

 

Alot of Dang Nabbits were used to...

Hell the fact that the prostitutes showed more than an ankle has got to show how non-time-true it is. :P

[Lavinya]

Doctor Who for sure, and Family Guy! And Big Bang Theory, and Two and a Half Men...they're the kind of shows I keep going back for. I had heard of maybe half of the shows in that list and watched only the office and south park. Maybe it's because in Australia they don't show a lot of this stuff, but I really didn't agree with that list. Maybe my tv preferences aren't particularly cool ;)

[Zashara]

For the most part, I agree.

 

House, Big Bang Theory, and HIMYM do *NOT* deserve to be on that list. I love all three of them but they absolutely do not make that list.

 

House is formulaic. At first it is creative but then, bam, formula show. No one Season particularly stands out. Maybe a couple of episodes are brilliant, but thats its. There is no message to people with the show like the others, no commentary really on life.

 

And that is why BBT and HIMYM do not make the list, there is no commentary. They are funny sure, but they just show life in a humorous way. They are in no way as powerful as any of the shows on that list. Just because they are good and funny does not mean they are the best of the best. And there is no Season that stands out, the whole thing is just good and funny.

 

Rome I agree should be on the list, or given a mention. It was a brilliantly executed and highly engaging.

 

Battlestar Galactica's place on the list I totally agree with. Perhaps it changed with later Seasons, but S1 was bloody brilliant.

 

The Wire. I haven't seen it yet, but I've been told by 34589243752 people to watch it. Its based on a true story about a reporter who went undercover (with an ex-Cop) I think in Baltimore and observed everything that was going on. The show is a result of that. So many of these events and people are REAL just with names changed and the like.

The incredibly sad part is that the Baltimore of "The Wire" is probably very close to the truth (I used to live there). While it may be about the decaying American City in general, in particular it is a shockingly good representation of current day Baltimore which I think should make it more powerful.

[OptimusPrime]

Big Bang Theory is hilarious, Sheldon makes that program, as well as Bridget from 8 Simple Rules. Mmmm

 

Anyway, what do you guys reckon to Heroes? I thought it was brilliant, but it does dither at some points. That program brought out the critic in me, it was flawless for a long time.

 

Lost, gotta agree with that. I watched all the series on DVD, so I could catch some of the hints easier. Jacob... Roll on the last series!

 

Dexter is good as well. Just on series 2 at the mo, and just when I was getting bored of the near-misses and narrow escapes it gripped me again. What a program! Michael Hall, who plays Dexter, is a brilliant actor.

[bad company]

I love dexter even if it did go completely off the books after the first season