The Sopranos: Amazingness.

Modern day television is a daunting thing. No longer are there 4 or 5 nice little channels you can sit and watch while you cosy up with your family who are all wholesome, smiley, and immaculately groomed… no.

These days there are more television channels than there are numbers, and with the advent of the digital record-y box thing, you may never, ever let yourself miss all those old reruns of El Dorado, Big Brother 3 and When Cars Go Bad.

But, there is hope, and a strong and powerful hope be it. For every 32nd home improvement programme, there is one shiny nugget of honest-to-goodness televisual gold that may well make up for it. Programming where the writers, producers, creators, designers and the crème de le crème of acting talent thought… enough! It’s time for something exquisite!

And lo, these brave souls dared to opt for quality over cheap celebrity fly-on-the-wall nonsense and paved the way for even more challenging and provocative ventures, eventually producing some of the greatest pieces of popular culture we have – sagely making use of the depth of narrative and characterisation that all the best television shows have and cinema could only dream of…

So, without further ado, here are my top 5 entries for the prestigious accolade of ‘Greatest TV Shows Ever!’.

The Top 5 Greatest TV Shows ever!

1. The Sopranos

   

   Pretty much the daddy of all contemporary television shows. While The Sopranos: ‘mobster seeks therapy’ plot seemed a little suspect (Analyze This was released the same year) Tony and co. quickly established themselves as so, so much more…

   In turns deeply philosophical and brutally violent, The Sopranos is a multifaceted, meaningful and extraordinarily elegant piece of popular culture. With an unorthodox approach to casting (several members of the cast had genuine mob ties) series creator David Chase brought us some of the most fascinating, engaging and uncompromising writing and direction in screen history. Luckily for him, the performance of his cast (through 86 hours approx. and particularly in leads James Gandolfini and Eddie Falco) is just about faultless. The Sopranos is the sparkling jewel in the crown of the mighty HBO and as perfect as anything popular culture has to offer.

   Best bit: Season 6: After the constant power-struggles with his nephew Christopher, Tony takes a principally unexplained trip to Vegas, takes peyote, and screams a cathartic and dreamlike: “I get it!” at the desert sunset.

2. The Wire

   

   Series creator David Simon is a former police reporter for The Baltimore Sun, and co-writer Ed Burns is a former Baltimore homicide detective, so when I say that The Wire compromises none on the bleak reality of urban life, I ain’t kidding...

   Through the guise of a police drama, The Wire is actually a powerful communiqué on a modern city being torn apart by drugs, gang violence and police and political corruption. Each of the 5 inconceivably well executed seasons focuses on a new sector of urban life: the drug trade, the port, the city bureaucracy, the school system, and the press – in that order). The most prominent treasure in a show this powerful is its strictly no-niceties approach. Even the most long-established and loved characters can be swiftly locked-away or taken out in a random shooting. The city itself quickly becomes known as ‘Bodymore, Murdaland’ (that’s Baltimore, Maryland to you). Another in a long line of HBO greats, and again, as close to perfect as popular culture gets.

   Best bit: Season 2: After speaking to the FBI in return to save his wayward son, corrupt but likable port union leader Frank Sobotka goes to talk to ‘The Greek’. His body is fished from the harbour the next day.

3. LOST

   

   Mystical, trippy, and undeniably addictive. Current golden boys JJ Abrahams and Damon Lindelof scored one of the biggest hits in television history with this risky and unique project (Head of ABC Lloyd Braun was fired after green-lighting such an expensive programme)…

   LOST has thrilled as many as it has confounded and has given license to more fanatical internet theorists than any other modern show (go and check out the impressive Time-Loop theory). Importantly, it dares to confront its prime-time audience; pairing an ex-Iraqi soldier with a blonde ‘Miss America’ – type, making the ‘monster’ of the island largely indiscernible for the first 3 seasons… but the quality of its production and writing is second only to the upper-echelons of the HBO canon, and yes, it’s still amazing. Approaching season 5 now (of 6), the mysteries of the Island are still becoming larger and more complex, hinting that this enthralling saga may well be one of the most intricate and ambitious stories ever attempted, and it’s unlikely we’ll see a happy ending.

   Best bit: Season 1: After the plane crash, our plucky hero Jack goes into overdrive trying to keep everyone safe. Not sleeping for days, he may (or may not) be hallucinating and starts to see the apparitions of his supposedly dead father standing in the ocean in his trademark suit, staring at him. It’s the boldness of LOST’s writers that such peculiar and potentially significant moments can remain unanswered until years later.

4. The X-Files

   

   Chris Carter’s show was a sprawling, challenging, and incredibly inventive piece of work, and it seems people forget just how good it really was…

   Creatively, there are few shows that managed to sustain so well. Though most episodes tended to fall into either the main alien conspiracy storyline or the ‘monster of the week’ episodes, there were the occasional post-modern ‘tongue-in-cheek’ episodes that poked fun at itself more expertly than even the show’s harshest critic could – and it’s difficult to think of any other drama that could do this and only make its fanbase love it more. The X-Files made an impressive and lasting dent on modern culture, creating such as icons the cigarette-smoking man (or ‘cancer man’ if you preferred it un-PC), Skinner, Tooms, Pusher, Duane Barry, Krycek, The Lone Gunmen… but it was the subtle chemistry between agents Mulder and Scully that secured the show’s lasting appeal. Though it ran too long, even in its final seasons displayed signs of the quality of the first five, not least with introduction of the excellent John Doggett (Robert Patrick).

   Best bit: Series 3: Mulder goes in search of his missing sister and reaches a deserted submarine. His initial, toughened inquiries begin to fail as he is badly beaten, his voice cracks and our hero pleads: “Just tell me where my sister is!”

5. The Simpsons

   

   It’s testament to the strength of The Simpsons that it is arguably the most quoted series of all time. From about series 3 to series 10, The Simpson was untouchable. Employing at once some of the funniest and most talented writers in the free-world…

   What made The Simpsons so well regarded by anyone who’s seen it, is its ageless appeal. There are few shows that can provide prime-time family-friendly morality tales and still have the smarts and wit to crack even the most cynical among us up. People may have been rubbed the wrong way by its shameless plugging of merchandise in its heyday (blame the owners, not the creators) but The Simpsons has provided more wonderful moments than the majority of other comedy programmes combined.

   Best bit: Season 5: It’s unfair to pick ONE best bit in a show littered with them. Yet the Cape Feare episode stays in the mind. Sideshow Bob is looking for payback on Bart after he and Lisa put him (rightfully) behind bars. The fiendishly brilliant mind of Bob may have sweet-talked his way out of prison (“No-one who speaks German could be an evil man…”), but his murderous design is foiled by a set of discarded rakes. All together now: “Uuurghghghhmmm….”, “Uuurghghghhmmm….”,“Uuurghghghhmmm….”.

…So,

Is the list right? wrong? really wrong? almost right? There are plenty of top TV shows left off, but can you name them? And let us know why they deserve a place in the top 5?

It was difficult to leave off Deadwood and Carnivale… but maybe you have other shows that you really think we should all be worshipping? Have your say below…