Back in December, ‘Variety’ magazine posted its list of the 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. How many of the 100 would you have ranked?
If I were going to make a list of the nation’s greatest TV shows, there are a few titles that would come to mind immediately. But my list probably would not be identical to yours. I find it interesting to see what Variety came up with. Back in December, the magazine published its picks.
I have a confession to make: I skipped down to the top 25 because I wanted to see how many of their top 25 would make my list. There were only nine shows in their top 25 picks that would have been in my top 25.
In fact, years ago, I gave you my top 10 greatest TV shows of all time. My first pick in the list, The Andy Griffith Show, didn’t even rank on their list. The show, which premiered in 1960, entered syndication in 1964 and has been there ever since. That’s 60 years! The fact that multiple generations still love the show all these years later might just suggest that it should topple some of the dubious choices on Variety’s list.
To be fair, my list wasn’t in any particular order
So my #1 show was just one of 10, not necessarily the greatest.
But Variety’s list was ranked in order. Its number one pick, I Love Lucy, was on my list. But their second through fifth picks are head-scratchers to me. Its second choice was Mad Men, followed by The Sopranos, The Simpsons and Breaking Bad.
For one thing, I have a hard time ranking shows this (relatively) new as the “greatest TV shows of all time.” That’s not a comment on their quality, although I’ll fess up that I never got into any of those four shows. In fact, there were several of their top picks that made a different list for me: 10 popular TV shows I could never get into.
It’s just that shows that have been done within the past 20 years haven’t had a chance to build any kind of legacy that would come close to Lucy or shows like The Twilight Zone or Playhouse 90.
In fact, I’m quite disappointed in some of their choices.
