It also surrounds Vic with a worthy group of allies (Walton Goggins’ reckless Shane), wary colleagues (CCH Pounder’s tenacious detective Claudette Glenn Close for a season as Vic’s new boss), and outright enemies (most notably Forest Whitaker’s erratic internal-affairs cop Jon Kavanaugh, but eventually even Shane himself). But even beyond historical importance, the show (created by Shawn Ryan) is pretty great, blending network cop-drama tropes with Sopranos’ antihero framing and mature content. Michael Chiklis was so instantly magnetic as brazenly corrupt LAPD detective Vic Mackey that it kicked off a rush of other cable channels and, eventually, streaming services, finding their own signature series. The creative revolution kicked off by The Sopranos and Sex and the City might have stayed limited to HBO if not for the quick success of The Shield on a barely noticed stop on the basic-cable channel guide. But voters couldn’t resist many standouts of the past few years, including a tragicomedy with a guinea-pig-themed café, an unpredictable comedy set in the world of hip-hop, and a racially charged adaptation of an unadaptable comic book. Many favorites returned, and the top show retained its crown. (See the full list of voters here.) Giving no restrictions on era or genre, we ended up with an eclectic list where the wholesome children’s television institution Sesame Street finished one spot ahead of foulmouthed Western Deadwood, while Eisenhower-era juggernaut I Love Lucy wound up sandwiched in between two shows, Lost and Arrested Development, that debuted during George W. Once again, we reached out to TV stars, creators, and critics - from multihyphenates like Natasha Lyonne, Ben Stiller, and Pamela Adlon to actors like Jon Hamm and Lizzy Caplan as well as the minds behind shows like The X-Files, Party Down, and Jane the Virgin - to sort through television’s vast and complicated history. So, we decided to update our list of television’s all-time best offerings, originally compiled in 2016. How do you identify the very best series in a medium that’s been commercially available since the end of World War II? Especially when that medium has experienced more radical change in the nine years between the finales of Breaking Bad and its prequel, Better Call Saul, than it did in the 60-odd years separating Walter White from Milton Berle? The current Peak TV era is delivering us 500-plus scripted shows per year, many of them breaking boundaries in terms of how stories are told and who’s doing the telling.
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