TL;DL: No list thread. Make a case for the best dramatic show of all time.

This will probably come down to Breaking Bad vs. The Wire. Given that, I’d like you to pretend those shows don’t exist for a moment and give thought to some others that are arguably just as great. Besides, the poll is there more for ****s and giggles. This is really about having interesting discussions about shows we love.

This isn’t, though, about what you like the best, rather it’s about what IS the best show of all time. Consider that different shows strive for different artistic expressions. This is very much about what those are, and how well they achieve them. Looking at the list it’s obvious that recency bias is playing its part, but I think that’s because shows today are simply better than the older generations in a way unique to TV. A show like Hill Street Blues could make a claim, but much of that is riding off the impact it made in its era within the confines of TV, rather than the work in itself as a piece of dramatic art. So that show, and others, like Twilight Zone, weren’t included in the poll because they’d simply not get much traction, but please feel free to make your case for any show not included in the poll. This list is merely the shows that I think will come up in the discussion most often. Below is a not so brief description of each, except for Lost. Haven’t seen it.

Sopranos

“I’m like King Midas in reverse. Everything I touch turns to ****.”


This show arguably started it all. Before The Sopranos, television was where you rose from to hit the big-screen lime light, or returned to for much needed rehab money after a failed bid in film. Network TV reigned, and the rules they were guided by crippled even cable TV shows from swinging big. So a show like ER was considered edgy, while a show like Breaking Bad would have gotten laughed away from conception. Then came the realization that some of us are big boys and girls, and can handle Goodfellas stretched out on the small screen. The television medium is ripe for a deliberately paced form of storytelling that film cannot do, and The Sopranos said as much in a big way. The show is brilliant on so many levels that it being the “first” to do what it did simply places a rocket on the back of a Babe Ruth homerun. It pulled network TV ratings on a premium cable platform. It had main characters that hack executives would write off as “unrelatable”. It served Americana commentary with thick swabs of malapropisms and slapstick. It let John Turturo’s sister dildo Deputy Marshal Cosmo Renfro to completion. I don’t know if it was the first, but I do know that after The Sopranos it was ok to do 12 episodes in a year, then have a hiatus so you could make sure the next season would be properly kick-ass. I’m positive that such a level of decompression is just as responsible for this current TV Drama Renaissance as is the allowance of great writers writing great fiction. It also has the greatest finale in TV history. To put it another way, I just spent 300 words on this show and didn't even touch it's plot. That's greatness.

Random Trivia:

• Tony’s mother is based on David Chase’s own mother.
• Lorraine Bracco was supposed to play Carmella, but didn’t because of its closeness to her character on Goodfellas.
• Ray Liotta turned down the role of Tony
• Lillo Brancato, who played Matt Bevilaqua (tried to kill Christopher to impress Ralphie), is serving a 10 year prison sentence for an attempted burglary (which resulted in a homicide).
• Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) directed “Cold Cuts”, and on the first day of shooting suggested to James Gandolfini where to start the scene. James responded with “why the **** would Tony do that, that doesn’t make sense.” Mike replied back: “Lets do it your way, and if it doesn’t work, we can try my way.” After a few false starts, James ended up beginning the scene just as Mike suggested. After the take was done, Gandolfini turned to Mike with a giant grin and said: “It’s a ****ing honor to have you on the show. I’m a big fan.” Later, Steve Buscemi told Mike that James will do that from time to time with new directors to **** with them a bit.

The Wire

“Omar comin’!”


It took two coats of primer with Homicide: Life on the Street and The Corner, but by the third run, David Simon, along with Ed Burns, took a herculean **** the “Police Procedural”. Much more than just a cop show, The Wire was able to seemingly shed each prior season’s cast in favor of a new sector of the city, only to bring them all together into a dickensian milieu worthy of blah-blah-blah-blah. The Wire is the bomb because it made hip-hop get behind a peter puffer…no ****. I think it resonates so well with people because it respects it's audience. The cliché is true: the show’s star is Baltimore. There is no main character (Mcnutty sorta is, but just barely). Its plot moves forward without “telling” you. There’s little or no exposition to explain what’s happening. Moves see consequence entire seasons later. Slang and local accents are dominant. These are things TV creators thought you should not do because we are all a collective mush of moron, apparently. Well, Omar came, bitches, all over your TV screen.

Random Trivia:

• Omar was based on a few real life stick-up men. One of them actually survived jumping through a 6th floor window, just like Omar did in season 5. Simon, in response to finding out the set only goes up to the 4th floor, is quoted as saying: “It’s ok, they’re not going to believe it either way.”
• Ed Burns, writer/producer of the show, was both a former detective and public school teacher in Baltimore.
• Clay Davis’ “Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeit” was an improvisation, one that he has done in other works (like 25th Hour)
• Jamie Hector isn’t wearing makeup for his character, Marlo. He actually does look like a serial killer in real life.

The Shield

”Good cop and bad cop left for the day. I’m a different kind of cop.”


The Shield, with all that happened in its 7 seasons, only spanned 36 months. Let that sink in. If The Wire were a grass-roots State Senator, The Shield is her fraternal twin swimming with Great Whites off the coast of Cape Town because his therapist told him to find a hobby. Most of these shows are difficult to compare against one another because they strive for such different artistic goals, but there is definitely direct competition here between The Shield and Breaking Bad. Visceral is the only way I could describe The Shield, and it wears the word proud across its chest like Bizarro Superman. Playing from the position of an evil cop you want to win, the show elegantly binds atrocious individual acts with strings of events which, in their smooth crescendo, guide the audience into rooting for a maniac. The show is thin on fleshing out its peripheral characters, but when they relate to the man, myth, and legend, Vic Mackey, they can throw heat with the best of them. The Shield also has one of the best finales of any show out there. Open strong, close strong, win big

Random Trivia:

• Michael Chiklis burned his scalp with hair treatments for his title role in The Commish. This ended up making his baldness permanent, so he began shaving his head regularly. Could you even imaging Vic Mackey with hair?
• During the scene where Vic, Shane and Ronny are wrestling with Lem, Chiklis said that the three of them were giving it all they had, while Kenny Johnson was only going at 50%.
• The inspiration for David Aceveda came from Shawn Ryan’s love of Homicide: Life on the Street. In the show the station’s Lieutenant was widely beloved by his subordinates. Ryan though it would be interesting to have a Police Captain who was universally despised by the station.
• Writer/Producer Kurt Sutter would go on to create Sons of Anarchy. Shawn Ryan said of Sutter, “Anytime you saw something on The Shield and thought ‘Whoa, that’s ****ed up’, it was probably Kurt who wrote it.” I believe Sons of Anarchy’s “Drowning by Tub of Piss” further validates this.

The West Wing

“No, no, no. I know my body. I know my muscles aren’t, you know, but my mind is sharp. I can focus. I’m focused. You all know that about me. Here’s what I think we ought to do…was I just saying something?”


Cocaine is a hell of a drug. Especially when you smoke a pile the size of Peru in a luxury Vegas suite banging out an entire 22 episode season of one of the best shows in TV history. Let’s dial it back a bit. Derek Amato doesn’t know how to play the piano. Derek Amato hits his head on the bottom of a pool. Now Derek Amato plays the piano like a boss. Now back to Sorkin. Without any experience with the military, he writes A Few Good Men with such godly conviction that he was often approached by members of the military asking him what connection he had to the Marines. Aaron Sorkin writes dialogue in a way no one else can. You could say it’s like a flowing musical interlude. You could also be an a**hole. It’s more like Aaron Sorkin writing like Aaron Sorkin, and The West Wing is his Olympic achievement. It seems obvious now, but when he debuted the show my first reaction was “Who could have known that the White House staff is more interesting than Papa Bear himself?” The West Wing told you it may not be ok, but it can be. It said this without irony, and against waves of cynicism which invade so much of top tier drama. Leo, Toby, Sam, Josh, CJ, they’re all endearing; their faults both amusing and reflective. It was a warming show. It has no cursing, no sex, no violence, a promise of a smile at the end, and it still stands with the big dogs

Random Trivia

• Aaron Sorkin wrote/has a credit on every episode up until he was fired for causing millions in production delays caused by writing every episode. The crack smokin’ didn’t help, either.
• Sorkin dated Annabeth Schott (short Blonde press secretary to Leo’s VP run), and she was the basis for the lead female character in Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip.
• Eugene Levy was set to play Toby, until Richard Schiff’s late audition (which almost didn’t happen because Schiff was screwed around with by NBC and was pissed they were asking him to come back) changed the producers’ minds.
• Martin Sheen puts his coat on the way he does in the show because of a real life shoulder injury.
• Sidney Poitier was considered for the role of President Bartlett.

Deadwood

“I am a sinner that does not expect forgiveness, but I am not a government official.”


I never thought I could smell a show until I first watched Deadwood. It gave my TV pores and permeated through with the mud, the grime, the blood, the whores, and the gunpowder. It famously got cancelled because Rome cost too much and David Milch refused to scale back the set. It was an unfortunate decision, but the correct one. Much like The Wire, its location, as a collection of characters, sets, props and costumes, was a character unto itself. Scaling that back would only draw down the power of the show. The dialogue, though, is what astounds me. It reminds me of reading Blood Meridian for the first time. Deadwood’s dialogue is rich with insight, and damned fun to listen to. Watching it without being prepared for the manner of speech and magnitude of the language actually pulled me out of the show. I had to stop a couple episodes in, ruminate on what I was watching, then restart. Better still, is it’s delivery of Al Swearengen. An all-time great creation. Similar to The Shield, Deadwood opened with Al’s feathers showing their dark nature; in this case, an attempted murder of an innocent child. But unlike The Shield, Deadwood’s opening display of Al actually fit with the manner they unfolded his character through the seasons, whereas Vic’s opening act of villainy was incongruous to the moral constitution they hammered out for him through The Shield’s run. Take that, along with the inevitable “rooting” for Swearengen, and you have an artful execution of a character who’d crumble in lesser hands. Oh yeah, the rest of the show lays furious pipe, too, so there’s that.

Random Trivia:

• David Milch used to make his own LSD in college
• He was also in the same frat as George W. Bush
• Seth Bullock was friends with Teddy Roosevelt, who’d introduce Seth to foreign diplomats as the embodiment of a true American man.
• The Bella Union was an actual building, inside and out, while The Gem’s interior was just a soundstage.
• Jim Beaver’s (Ellsworth) wife passed away during his run on the show, and it was written into his character.
• Garret Dillahunt played two characters on the show: Jack McCall (killed Wild Bill) and Francis Wolcott (Hearst’s advance man)

Friday Night Lights

“Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.”


This is a show with heart. Friday Night Lights’ claim to the throne is similar to The West Wing’s: It rebukes the path of “bleak reality” to acquire its dramatic threads, and always returns to its earnest moral center; and it does so while treading the same high water as darker shows like Deadwood. It’s like a high caliber 7th heaven with a strong gut check. Coach and Ms. Coach are what we all wish parents of the world were like. They come together when each is needed most, and are tested greatest on the mundane “Where the hell are my shoes?!” types of conflicts that serve a release to the battle they united against, even when their egos want strife. Unlike The West Wing, though, this show actually brings you to a dark place and guides you back to a happy ending that tells the little cynic in you to sit the **** down and be happy for once.

Random Trivia:

• Based off a book chronicling a small Texas Town’s run at the Texas State Championship by Buzz Bissinger, cousin to show creator Peter Berg.
• Kyle Chandler, initially thought to be too pretty, was helped in getting the part by showing up for a meeting, on a motorcycle, sporting a beard, and “hung-over as ****”.
• Everybody in the show ended up hating the murder plot.
• Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton got along so well together the producers were worried they’d have an affair.
• For the wrap party the cast and crew got drunk, then played flag football on the Panthers field.

Game of Thrones

“When you play a game of thrones, you win or you die.”


Not sure it should be included, since it has only closed its third season, but I’m sure plenty of you chuckleheads would scream to high heaven if your baby was left on the curb. Game of Thrones is the only show that planted in me a frenzied need to see it all. Now. Everything. I just want to know how it ends! I tend to analyze the hell out of most shows, slowly draining any ounce of “enjoyment” I would normally have if I weren’t in love with the sound of my own voice. It’s different with this show. I’m stuck in this world, wanting to know everything about it. Not just what happens next, but who was the Prince that one dude alluded to when heeding a warning from that strange assassin who just disappeared his ****ing face off before jumping on a Dragon and flying to where again? Tell me about that place, too! I’m so stuck that I think nothing of the show beyond: “Well, hell, I wonder what’s going to happen next?” They say the best way to tell a good story is to understand the world it exists in. I’m pretty sure George R. R. Martin has unheard of architects rotting in a dungeon somewhere under the iron throne because, well, somebody that built that bitch.

Random Trivia:

• Inspired by Historical Fiction, George set to make Game of Thrones the kind of story that didn’t white-wash humanity’s brutality like Lord of the Rings did. A certain main character was specifically killed off to let the reader know anybody is fair game.
• Peter Vaughan, who plays Maester Aemon Targaryen of the Nights Watch, is legally blind.
• 160 baby girls in the US were legally named Khaleesi in 2012.
• 160 Parents in the US are legally ******ed.

Mad Men

“Get out of here and move forward. This never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened.”


So to even further the case for Sopranos is Mad Men. It takes a special kind of show to make a claim for greatness by birthing an heir apparent. Matthew Weiner, best known taking credit for all things Mad Men does well, was a writer on The Sopranos, and parlayed that experience into a show which helped convince the world that AMC doesn’t actually mean American Movie Classics. It does everything well, including a sick pump-fake at the beginning of the series: “Oh, so this will be ‘That 60’s Show’, great…” NOOOOOOPE. After a solid, but somewhat clumsy start, Mad Men quickly gelled all parts into a perfect blend of singular focus on Don Draper and ensemble awareness with the rest of the cast. Unlike most other shows (Sopranos, for one), Mad Men’s characters actually change. They grow through the seasons, and develop like real people in the world outside of TV, changing their interactions respective to the evolution of those characters interacting. Until this show, I hadn’t seen a drama treat its secondary and tertiary characters with the same developmental respect as its star. Peggy, Joan, Roger, et. al. have seen change of mind and spirit, because that’s what happens to people in real life. This is counterbalanced with Don, a man who embraces the superficial; always regressing back to his same self while the world and people around him charge on. Who knows, maybe with this last episode that’s changed, too.

Random Trivia:

• The majority of the show writers are women.
• Accuracy for the show is paramount, such that they even reshot a scene with Don and Sal on a plane (“Out of Town”) because that model plane wasn’t in use by that specific airline the year the episode took place.
• HBO turned down the opportunity to produce Mad Men.
• Elizabeth Moss is a Scientologist.
• Matthew Weiner is credited with writing 61 of the 78 episodes. He claims he only puts his name on somebody else’s script if he re-writes more than 80% of it, but I think it’s easier to assume he’s just a prick like that.

Breaking Bad

”Just because you shot Jesse James, don’t make you Jesse James…bitch.”


It's ok, I guess.

The Wire

Should've made it in alphabetical order, since the first on the list seems to be the one people go for the most. also, when we do these lists we often do it by order of preference.
Anyways, The Wire.

Sopranos GOAT white show

1. Breaking Bad
2. The Wire
3. The Sopranos

I consider The Wire, BB and The Sopranos to be the top, in that order (although I would accept BB and Sopranos switched).

The Wire is almost perfect, except for the rushed final season.

BB had its logic problems strewn throughout the show but had such a great final season.

Sopranos had a few season towards the end that hurt it. I don't hate the final episode as much as others.

Everything else is a solid step down.

Boardwalk Empire will be in the top 5

I've see all shows except the shield, Deadwood and Mad Men and my rankings are:

Breaking Bad is number 1.
I'd go Wire/Sopranos kinda interchangeable at number 2/3.
Friday Night Lights
West Wing
Game of Thrones (might move up the list as we get further along)
Lost (if they just found a way to tie it all together, this would have been top 3 FOR SURE. They ruined it with how it ended).

I'd actually throw NYPD Blue in there somewhere as well. Loved that show.

1. The Wire
2. Breaking Bad
3. The Sopranos
decent sized gap after this

Should have waited for the BB finale to wear off before making this thread.

No Law & Order?

IMO Dexter, but its not on there is it???? still a solid OP tho,The Sopranos was incredible and a close 2nd to dexter


lol @ West Wing being anything close to the greatness of Dexter

lol at Dexter being anywhere near the best tv shows of all time. seasons 1-4 were good, with season 4 being very good. 5-8 were some of the worst tv ive seen.

Very bad troll.

Dexter GOAT, watch season 2 and 4 now if you disagree


too bad soma84 for you, b/c the discussion would be fascinating.

so a show with like 40+ episodes that suck is goat?

Had to go for breaking bad seen as it's just finish.

I think I've got to wait a couple of years, rewatch the whole thing and see if it's as good as the wire and the sopranos.

This pretty much sums up my views on the matter.



Although I do think this list is missing Battlestar Galactica which I would pick as my favourite drama.

Voting for The Wire with the disclaimer that I haven't seen all of them. West Wing could've been a contender if Sorkin had stayed to the end, it fell off a cliff in seasons 5-6.

Kind of unfair to have it the day after the breaking bad finale lol

Twin Peaks

Y'all are sleeping if its not in your top 5-10 at least. Id argue its inspired modern TV more than any other show.

No Battlestar Galactica?

I'm probably in the minority in that while I enjoyed Sopranos, I consider it clearly behind The Wire/BB, potentially even GoT (too early to tell since it still has several seasons to go).

That's more a personal enjoyment vs. artistic/social greatness rating, though. BB might even be better than The Wire, since when The Wire faltered down the stretch (especially with that fake serial killer line), it REALLY faltered, something that BB never did (IMO).

But it's really unfair to the other shows to have this discussion right after BB aired its finale.

I'll be interesting to see how MM and GoT get factored into this discussion once they finish their runs. I think MM gets a bit overlooked at times because it doesn't have the casual violence of many of the other shows. And audiences do love those murders, righteous or not.

Edit: I also enjoyed BSG a ton, but a lot of people are never going to consider it because of the sci-fi thing. Awesome show, though.

lol, you're really going out on a limb here!