2000s: Television

The Naughts were, without a doubt in our mind, the best decade ever for television. The cost of production dropped and thus, the production value went up. Way up. WAY UP. The best shows now looked like the best movies. Great shows from the 90s like Homicide: Life on the Street, The X-Files and My So-Called Life, while undeniable great, no longer seemed like the best shows ever.  

With shows like The Office, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Survivor and pretty much all of HBO’s programming, TV also got much more diverse and creative in the Naughts. Stale variety shows like SNL and Mad TV (not to mention late night talk shows) bombed while reality shows like Survivor and Big Brother set new standards for human study on TV. (Likewise, it must be said, shows like American Idol, America’s Got Talent, Dancing With the Stars, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, TMZ, The Simple Life, America’s Top Model, etc., brought down the artistic standards of mainstream American life.)

While putting together a list of our favorite shows from the last decade, we realized that there’s still quite a bit we need to check out. Deadwood, for one. Damages and maybe even The West Wing as well. All that said, we did see most everything else - or, I should day, we gave almost everything else its proper chance. Here are the shows we liked enough to include on our list, the Top 15 ranking easily as 15 of our all-time favorite television shows. Incredible …

COULDN’T LEAVE THESE FIVE OUT

35. Weeds

34. The Chris Isaak Show

33. Mind of the Married Man

32. Family Guy

31. King of the Hill

GREAT, BUT NOT CLASSIC, TELEVISION

30. Gilmore Girls

29. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

28. Monk

27. Breaking Bad

26. The Daily Show

25. Party Down

24. 30 Rock

23. Mad Men

22. Big Brother

21. Flight of the Conchords

STILL MAYBE BETTER THAN ANYTHING IN THE 90S

20. The Office (UK)

19. The Simpsons

18. South Park

17. Veronica Mars

16. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

15. The Big Bang Theory

14. Lost

13. Curb Your Enthusiasm

12. Dexter

11. Arrested Development

THE DROP-DEAD CLASSICS

10. Survivor

9. Entourage

8. Friday Night Lights

7. The Office (US)

6. Sex & the City

5. Six Feet Under

4. Freaks and Geeks

3. The Wire

2. Sopranos

1. Peep Show

For the most part the Naughts were all about HBO for the Ze Catalist crew. Sopranos and The Wire are the shows we watched the most and maybe even loved the most. But it was a tiny little UK comedy called Peep Show that stole our hearts. The entire series clocking in at just 12 hours over six seasons, we found it hard to find a single second of the lean, mean, POV comedy that we didn’t eat up, relate to and laugh about for weeks to come. The Top 7 shows on this list are very likely Ze Catalist's Top 7 shows ever. Amazing!

Written by G. William Locke