This list is much more serious and meaningful as it involves the golden age of TV. Whether it was drama or comedy, the one filmed art form closest to literature finally realized its potential thanks to a a chubby little fat man with a pug nosed face and a convicted wife beater at HBO who happened to nurture the three Davids I spent nearly days with.
1. The Wire - David Simon is a genius who chronicles the seismic changes of our lives through small people and small moments carefully pieced together over years. His DVDs are as likely to be bootlegged on the streets of Baltimore as bought by earnest sociology majors. Something truly revolutionary happened here and a host of incredible crime novelists (Pelecanos, Price, etc.) helped create a new standard for realism that successive generations will struggle to equal.
2. Deadwood - The rare instance in which HBO did not do the right thing this decade. Still, a premature cancellation did not erase the hours of breathtaking theater which came before it. An odd, inspired mix of gritty, neo-Western blood and Shakespearian grandeur, David Milch's masterpiece left us with hundreds of absolutely perfect lines.
3. The Office (UK) - Comedy about a sad man's desperate attempt to use comedy to connect. He fails.
4. Mad Men - It is truly gorgeous not for its set design but the sheer level of talent it takes to achieve cultural relevance without sacrificing artistic vitality. For a generation or generations rather struggling to understand their rapidly changing history, Don Draper was a way to see what allowed America to ascend and ultimately what we sacrificed on the way up.
5. Battlestar Galactica - For everyone who shudders whenever the word science is put before fiction, Ronald D. Moore's series proved that the story of humanity could be artfully evoked with battleships and inordinately sexy robots.
6. The Sopranos - A cultural firestorm that made dream analysis just as fascinating as murder.
7. Arrested Development - The best American comedy series. Perfect for analrapists everywhere.
8. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - Kept me sane in the Bush era. For that I remain forever grateful.
9. Breaking Bad - Bryan Cranston's performance in the darkest series of the decade was and is near perfect.
10. Chapelle's Show - It lived and breathed and gave us all something hilarious to talk about and quote for three short seasons before Dave Chapelle showed the world what true artistic integrity was.
- Vman
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