My Favourite Television Shows Of All Time

TV is awesome, correction - TV CAN BE AWESOME - and often do things films can't, because they can spend hours upon hours with characters (where a film can only spends a few hours). A note - animated TV series' will get it's own section at a later time.

I'll start with what is my absolute favourite of all time and that's MASH, which was originally a book by Richard Hooker and then a rather excellent 1970 film directed by Robert Altman. The mostly recast series (besides Gary Burghoff as Radar and G. Wood, who appeared in a few episodes early in the series run as General Hammond) began in 1972 and ran over 200 episodes. MASH, if moments are (unsuprisngly) outdated the majority of it still stand the test of time, a show in the 70s mixing comedy and drama so well in a half hour format is still actually not that common on a regular basis.

Next up is Buffy The Vampire Slayer, maybe what I consider my second favourite series of all time, and also one that orginiated from a movie (the 1992 movie is pretty much unrelated, and any mentions in the pilot or earl Buffy episodes are closer to the movie script then the finished movie itself). I will also include it's spin-off Angel.

Freaks and Geeks, just never found a big audience when it was on.

Arrested Development, is another show that never found an audience, but the audience that found it tended to absolutely love it.

Everybody of a certain age seems to love Spaced now, but that is not without reason - it is a brilliantly written, directed and performed series. I also think it's a good example for the makers and writers of Family Guy that movie and TV references can be organic to the episode.

Only Fools and Horses

Homicide - Life On The Street, is to me the finest cop show ever put on television.

Veronica Mars, blinded by the love of KB aside was such a wonderful show in it's own right.

St. Elsewhere and ER, whilst two very different shows set in hospitals.

Q.I., is probably king of the mountain for me as far as comedy quiz shows go, the amount of new stuff I learn or find out I was completely wrong about. Q.I. is the sort of a show what makes you extremely happy when you know a right answer (probably totals to less then 10 throughout the series run so far that I've known)

Treating each incarnation as different shows I'm picking Blackadder Goes Forth above and beyond any other Blackadder incarnation.

On the sketch show front, Monty Python's Flying Circus continues to stand the test of time, even when sketch shows made as late as the 90s shockingly didn't.

Cheers, it's spin-off Frasier

Band Of Brothers

mentioning Cheers and Frasier earlier put me in the mind of Taxi

the reimagining of Battlestar Galactica, took a fun if corny original series and built on it's premise

If there was any justice in the world they would exist more Brass Eye episodes.

Going back to the 50s - The Phil Silvers Show (sometimes known as Sgt. Bilko) and the 60s - The Addams Family -

I'm Alan Partridge

The original incarnation of The Twilight Zone just can't be beat as far as genre anthology series go.

I realise this list is very dominated by US programmes, which considering I'm a British lad should have more British stuff but it was just the stuff I was brought up on and found myself most drawn to.