Writers Guild of America - 101 Best Written TV Series

If character is destiny, then character has also long been the backbone of great TV writing. The list of the WGA’s 101 Best Written TV Series is a testament to this, as true for a series on which the main character is ostensibly a version of the star (The Cosby Show, to give but one example) as a show featuring a Vulcan aboard an exploratory space ship or a serial killer flitting across both sides of the thin blue line.

Close to half of the 101 Best Written TV Series aired within the last decade. Not coincidentally, this was a period that coincided with a sharp growth in original programming on both basic and pay cable television when writers were given more latitude to explore the moral complexities of the worlds they created.

From this recent blossoming of TV anti-heroes came characters asking audiences to not so much root for them (though they suggested this too) but to reckon with their actions and beliefs. The Sopranos received the most votes, and no show has been more responsible for TV’s storytelling renaissance, in which writers use character both as engines for commenting on the contemporary world and for teasing out the ways in which action reflects psychology in the troubled inner lives of real people. This deeper pursuit of character is evident everywhere on the list, whether via a chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin or a dashing ad man in the 1960s who has literally stolen the identity of someone else.

And yet, as much as you probably couldn’t have done a show about a mob boss in therapy during TV’s first Golden Age, shows from the medium’s previous epochs are well-represented here. These shows are all the more impressive considering the relative creative constraints under which previous generations of TV writers labored. And maybe that wasn’t exclusively a bad thing, since they now shine a light on what is still possible. How exciting would it be to see a network today attempt a live anthology series of teleplays, featuring prominent writers, directors and actors à la Playhouse 90?

Then, as now, it comes down to character—from Lucy Ricardo and Archie Bunker to Andy Griffith and Andy Sipowicz. There are kinships across generations—from The Honeymooners to Roseanne, say, or from The Twilight Zone to Lost. Regardless of the year, or genre, what emerges is a common dynamic between show and audience, the kind of lasting intimacy that writers telling episodic stories are uniquely able to achieve.

Television came into being as a miraculous mass medium, done live—the miracle was you didn’t have to leave the house to see it, and all of America could watch the same thing at once. Now the miracle involves being able to take the content everywhere, on demand, and in your pocket. The audience is not the community it once was, but many different ones, discovering great shows incrementally, and on a multitude of devices. But on this list, at least, a show like M*A*S*H, for whose finale the nation tuned in en masse, exists in the same conversation as a short-lived, rediscovered gem like Freaks and Geeks. Because both shows represent the same question—not how many watched but how deep did the writing go?

1. The Sopranos
2. Seinfeld
3. The Twilight Zone (1959)
4. All in the Family
5. M*A*S*H
6. The Mary Tyler Moore Show
7. Mad Men
8. Cheers
9. The Wire
10. The West Wing
11. The Simpsons
12. I Love Lucy
13. Breaking Bad
14. The Dick Van Dyke Show
15. Hill Street Blues
16. Arrested Development
17. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
18. Six Feet Under
19. Taxi
20. The Larry Sanders Show
21. 30 Rock
22. Friday Night Lights
23. Frasier
24. Friends
25. Saturday Night Live
26. The X-Files
27. Lost
28. ER
29. The Cosby Show
30. Curb Your Enthusiasm
31. The Honeymooners
32. Deadwood
33. Star Trek
34. Modern Family
35. Twin Peaks
36. NYPD Blue
37. The Carol Burnett Show
38. Battlestar Galactica (2005)
39. Sex & The City
40. Game of Thrones
41. (tie) The Bob Newhart Show; Your Show of Shows
43. (tie) Downton Abbey; Law & Order; Thirtysomething
46. (tie) Homicide: Life on the Street; St. Elsewhere
48. Homeland
49. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
50. (tie) The Colbert Report; The Good Wife; The Office (UK)
53. Northern Exposure
54. The Wonder Years
55. L.A. Law
56. Sesame Street
57. Columbo
58. (tie) Fawlty Towers; The Rockford Files
60. (tie) Freaks and Geeks; Moonlighting
62. Roots
63. (tie) Everybody Loves Raymond; South Park
65. Playhouse 90
66. (tie) Dexter; The Office (US)
68. My So-Called Life
69. Golden Girls
70. The Andy Griffith Show
71. (tie) 24; Roseanne; The Shield
74. (tie) House; Murphy Brown
76. (tie) Barney Miller; I, Claudius
78. The Odd Couple
79. (tie)Alfred Hitchcock Presents; Monty Python's Flying Circus; Star Trek: The Next Generation; Upstairs, Downstairs
83. Get Smart
84. (tie) The Defenders; Gunsmoke
86. (tie) Justified; Sgt. Bilko (The Phil Silvers Show)
88. Band of Brothers
89. Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
90. The Prisoner
91. (tie) Absolutely Fabulous (UK); The Muppet Show
93. Boardwalk Empire
94. Will & Grace
95. Family Ties
96. (tie) Lonesome Dove; Soap
98. (tie) The Fugitive; Late Night with David Letterman; Louie
101. Oz

Source: WGA