What Are Your Favorite Television Series - Dramatic?
No Movie's of the Week. No comedy series. Drama. We want drama.
Here are my favorite series, ever:
- The West Wing [1999-2006]
- Battlestar Galatica [2004-2009]
- Six Feet Under [2001-2005]
- My So-Called Life [1994-1995]
- The Wire [2002-2008]
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer* [1997-2003]
- *(not counting Seasons 6 & 7 except the Musical)
Mad Men may make the list. I like it lots so far. But I only judge a show once the entire series is complete and I can see the series start to finish, ideally a couple of times. If it isn't worth watching all the way through a few times then it isn't worth making this list (so far as I'm concerned.)
I've heard wonderful things about a few other shows such as The Sopranos, however I stopped watching after two seasons (same with Big Love; it just didn't hold me.) Perhaps at some point I'll go back and watch the entire series start to finish at which point my opinion will change. But for now... nada.
Dollhouse has been wonderful. As Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles was about half the time. But the impact both of them had on me and on television has been insufficient so far as I'm concerned -- and after all, it's my list. *laughs* -- for them to make my best dramatic series list of all time; the standards there are HIGH. Short version is, you screw up, you're out... EVERYTHING has to be shiny plus have that extra special something that is GREAT television, that CHANGES me and/or all of us, that means something to me in a special way, to make it to the list, while still not screwing anything up in any major way. (Which is why Buffy is at the bottom of the list with an asterisk. They REALLY blew the last two years of the series in multiple ways. But the series up till that point was SO good, and even with the damage they did it still mattered to me and to so many others, it ends up on the list.)
In contrast to Dollhouse and Sarah Connor Chronicles, the amazing My So-Called Life, even with only one season (and a short season at that) made such an enormous difference to me personally, and altered the teen drama on television for all who followed, as well as giving us Claire Danes, that to me my list would simply be incomplete without including the show.
So...
This is my dramatic list. Six series. Yes, I could have reached back further to Hill Street Blues which really was appointment television for me in my early twenties. But it doesn't hold up today. None of the old shows that I've gone back and looked at hold up today. So they don't make my list.
What about you? What are your series (drama)? Your standards?
Who is on your list and why?
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