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