TV SHOWS - study set

Key & Peele

2012-15 Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key aren't merely masterful comics - they're culture burglars breaking into taboo areas of racial stereotypes, gender politics, food, work and the erotics of ass-slapping. But their deadliest weapon was the way they hit hilarious insights on male neurosis, the topic they know best, as in their attention-getting sketch about the word (looks around nervously) "biiiiiitch." And Obama's Anger Translator might be one of the things we'll miss most about Obama.

Girls

2012-2017 (HBO) Lena Dunham aspired to be the voice of her generation - or at least a voice of a generation - with this unflinching HBO sitcom about a quartet of acid-tongued young women failing their way through their twenties, striking out at relationships, rehab, careers, school and basically everything else they attempt. Executive Produced by Judd Apatow.

Ed Sullivan Show

1948-71 Aired live on Sunday nights as America's big showbiz variety fest, presided over by a granite-faced host who didn't look more than a century or two old. Gave the Beatles their big U.S. debut, breaking ratings records in 1964 when 73 million Americans tuned in to see the moptops do "She Loves You." He was also the guy who censored Elvis from the waist down and ordered the Stones to change "Let's spend the night together" to "Let's spend some time together," which may help explain why he finally went off the air in 1971.

Your Show of Shows

1950-57 Sid Caesar perfected the sketch-comedy format in the Fifties, with legends like Carl Reiner and Imogene Coca. When Nanette Fabray replaced Coca in 1954, the title changed to Caesar's Hour, but the spirit remained the same. His writers' room broke in hungry young rookies like Mel Brooks, Neil Simon and Woody Allen. Flights like the 1955 opera Gallipacci still look fresh - especially when the manic Caesar whimpers "Just One of Those Things," in clown drag, blubbering in pure faux-Italian gibberish.

I Love Lucy

1951-57 (CBS) The adventures of real-life Hollywood couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz - he was Cuban bandleader Ricky Ricardo, and she was the daffy redhead housewife as slapstick queen. They were TV's premier married couple, in an era when the network would only let them sleep in separate beds - and awaited the real-life arrival of Little Ricky without allowing anyone to utter the word "pregnant" on the air.

The Honeymooners

1955-56 (CBS) One of the founding Fifties comedies, spun off as a sketch from Jackie Gleason's hit variety show, about Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden and his put-upon wife, Alice, played by Audrey Meadows. No Father Knows Best here - this was brutalist blue-collar city life. It was the template for every sitcom marriage between a boorish slob and a tsk-tsking shrew, with Ralph shouting threats ("To the moon, Alice!") and Art Carney as his dimwitted pal Ed Norton.

Gunsmoke

1955-75 With 635 episodes that aired over 20 seasons, the longest-running prime-time series in American television history until The Simpsons overtook it. Set in Dodge City, Kansas, with James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon, pure frontier gravitas in a white hat.

The Dick Van Dyke Show

1961-66 (CBS) As the Petries, Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore were TV's answer to JFK and Jackie - comedy god Carl Reiner put his own experiences into this look at the life of a TV writer. The way Dick kept tripping over the same ottoman in his living room was a handy metaphor for domestic life in itself.

The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson

1962-92 (NBC) There's a reason Carson remains the template for every late-night host after hosting for three decades. Like a TV answer to Frank Sinatra, he epitomized Rat Pack cool, and his monologues were a soundtrack to generations of Americans boozing themselves to slumber every night. Nearly 25 years after he signed off (and more than 10 years after he died), Carson's the ghost king who still haunts late night. When he abdicated in 1992, Letterman and Jay Leno began battling for his throne and somehow never quit. (In his final show, Letterman cracked, "It looks like I'm not going to get The Tonight Show.")

The Fugitive

1963-67 (ABC) Dr. Richard Kimble got falsely convicted of murdering his wife - but after he broke loose, he went hunting for the real killer. The finale was a historic ratings smash as the whole country tuned in to see him catch the one-armed man. Remade into film in 1993.

Doctor Who

1963-Present (BBC) A science-fiction yarn that keeps thriving through the years, traveling through space and time in the TARDIS time machine, a half-century after it debuted on the BBC. The 1st Doctor. William Hartnell The 2nd Doctor. Patrick Troughton The 3rd Doctor. Jon Pertwee The 4th Doctor. Tom Baker The 5th Doctor. Peter Davison The 6th Doctor. Colin Baker The 7th Doctor. Sylvester McCoy The 8th Doctor. Paul McGann The War Doctor. John Hurt The 9th Doctor. Christopher Eccleston The 10th Doctor. David Tennant The 11th Doctor. Matt Smith The 12th Doctor. Peter Capaldi The 13th Doctor. Jodie Whittaker

Jeopardy

1964-1975, 1984-Present The longest-ruling, most ingeniously constructed, most endlessly playable quiz show of all time? The hardiest survivor from the old-school game shows (though many of us carry a torch for Charles Nelson Reilly-era Match Game and Paul Lynde-era Hollywood Squares), hosted by Alex Trebek.

Star Trek

1966-69 (NBC) The Starship Enterprise took off with a five-year mission: "To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations," and it succeeded in creating the most beloved of sci-fi franchises, not just inspiring countless spinoffs but also codifying fan fiction as an art form. Gene Roddenberry's original series remains the foundation, with William Shatner's awesomely pulpy Capt. Kirk, Leonard Nimoy's logical Mr. Spock, Bones, Sulu, Uhura and Scotty. They make contact with bizarre and inexplicable life-forms - Romulans, Gorns, Joan Collins. During its three years, the show suffered from low ratings until NBC pulled the plug, but thanks to the most doggedly loyal of TV cults (remember when "Trekkie" was an insult?), Roddenberry's vision lives long and prospers to this day.

Monty Python's Flying Circus

1969-74 (BBC) And now for something completely different. The perfect comedy cocktail - five British intellectuals and a token American clod, Terry Gilliam, running amok on the BBC. They were the Beatles of comedy, each one an indispensable element in the chemistry, from John Cleese's spluttering rage to Eric Idle's pointed-stick wordplay. Godfathers to all ambitious jokers who followed - Lorne Michaels and Chevy Chase met in line for a Holy Grail screening. But these 45 episodes remain the comedic equivalent of Mount Everest: forbidding, aloof, terrifying, the mountain with the biggest tits in the world.

Sesame Street

1969-Present (PBS) No kiddie show has ever been as fiercely beloved as this urban utopian fantasy, set in a brownstone neighborhood populated by a multiracial cast of smiling adults, a gigantic yellow bird, a grouch in a garbage can, and math-loving vampires, plus countless talking letters and numbers. It has great songs, but most importantly, has soul, which is why the air has stayed sweet for 40 years - or as the Count would say, 45! 46! 47 years!

The Odd Couple

1970-75 Tony Randall was neurotic neat-freak Felix; Jack Klugman was cigar-chomping sportswriter slob Oscar. Thrown out by their wives, they shared a Park Avenue bachelor pad, taking out all their midlife male angst on each other. Though based on Neil Simon's play, it worked even better in sitcom form, thanks to Randall and Klugman's negative chemistry and that perky theme song - their dance on a Central Park lawn is one of the truly romantic visions of New York.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

1970-77 (CBS) The ultimate template for how to make comedy gold out of being a grown-up neurotic making it on your own in the big city. She worked in a Minneapolis TV newsroom full of cranks like Ted Knight's windbag anchorman and Ed Asner's hard-drinking boss, Lou Grant. ("I haven't been this mad at anybody since 1944." "Did anything much happen?" "I captured a town in Germany.") Revolutionary at the time, blasé about sex and birth control, it also pioneered the all-too-rare concept of going out on top - it signed off in 1977, a massive hit to the end.

Columbo

1971-78 Peter Falk's cheap detective was the coolest TV cop of the Seventies. With all due respect to Kojak, Baretta, Starsky, Hutch and all six of Charlie's Angels, it was this Lieutenant who snagged the cover of Rolling Stone. John Cassavetes sidekick Falk hit the streets as a rumpled dirtbag in a trench coat, always mumbling and asking for a pencil, walking away from the bad guy at the end but then turning around with one of his crazy grins to say, "Oh, wait - just one more thing." He's always the underdog, but that's how he plays his mind games on all the smug L.A. high-society types who make the fatal mistake of thinking he's an idiot

The Bob Newhart Show

1972-78 Already a comedy legend for his brilliant 1960s stand-up monologues - his albums routinely topped the charts. His button-down mind seemed too dry and cerebral for TV, but he hit the jackpot as a Chicago psychologist seeing one nut case after another - perfect for his unflappable deadpan. He could get laughs just clearing his throat. (Nobody ever was a throat-clearing virtuoso like this man.) Suzanne Pleshette was his wife - in one of the Seventies' most enduringly hot TV marriages.

M*A*S*H

1972-83 (CBS) The Korean War show that lasted three times as long as the Korean War, taking off from the revolutionary 1970 Robert Altman comedy, as the doctors and nurses of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital wait for the next chopper with the next crop of wounded grunts requiring "meatball surgery." The show began as a gritty comedy, with Alan Alda's Hawkeye and the rest of the staff trying to keep their sense of humor alive amid the daily carnage with booze, sex and hijinks. It evolved into a solemn (if sometimes preachy) meditation on the futility of war. The finale was seen by more than 120 million and remains one of the most-watched TV events of all time.

Good Times

1974-79 (CBS) The Evans kids grow up in the Chicago projects - keeping their heads above water, making a wave when they can. They remain one of the most relatable TV families ever, from the 1970s boom for superfly black sitcoms that also gave us Sanford & Son and What's Happening!! The show had the dy-no-mite Jimmie "J.J." Walker, long-suffering mama Esther Rolle ("Damn, damn, damn!") and black-power little bro Michael, surely the first kid on TV to get sent home from school for calling George Washington a slave owner.

The Rockford Files

1974-80 (NBC) James Garner was a new breed of TV detective - a small-time P.I. who got stuck with the loser cases nobody else wanted, living in a Malibu trailer with his elderly dad. He didn't exactly live the glamorous life: He was an ex-con wisecrack machine who had done hard time in San Quentin, now scraping by as a freelancer while routinely getting his ass kicked or getting stiffed on his fee. But thanks to Garner, he always got by on a superhuman supply of cocky charm.

Happy Days

1974-84 Garry Marshall 1970s hit sitcom set in the 1950s, with Henry Winkler as the Fonz, the leather-boy greaser who ruled Arnold's Drive-In with his nerd pals Richie, Potsie and Ralph Malph. It's easy to forget the Fonz had a dark introspective side - best seen in the surprisingly harsh episode where he stars in Richie's production of Hamlet ("I thought a couple of times about whether I wanted 'to be or not'"). Scott Baio as the Fonz's douche cousin Chachi, but that can be forgiven, as can the time Fonzie got on water skis for an aquatic stunt that invented the concept of "jumping the shark."

Fawlty Towers

1975-79 (BBC) John Cleese based this most horrible of hotel owners on a resort where the Monty Python gang once stayed. Basil Fawlty is the nastiest piece of work Cleese has ever played - one of his most famous scenes features him snarling at a nun. But nobody infuriates him like his customers, especially the one inconsiderate enough to die in his room. "It does actually say 'hotel' outside, you know. Perhaps I should be more specific: 'Hotel for people who have a better than 50 percent chance of making it through the night.'"

The Jeffersons

1975-85 (CBS) Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford were the coolest customers on the block, a couple who were ruthlessly sarcastic yet perfectly matched. George and Weezy moved on up to their deluxe apartment in the sky, but never lost their street swagger. Originally the Bunkers' neighbors on All in the Family, they got 10 times funnier on their own.

The Muppet Show

1976-81 (ITV England/CBS America) Starring Kermit, the Great Gonzo, the Tom Waits-esque piano dog Rowlf, the Swedish Chef, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and everybody's favorite, Beaker. (Meeeep!) The jokes were nonstop corn - "Fozzie, what are you carrying that fish for?" "Oh, just for the halibut" - with one-shot guests like Marvin Suggs and His All-Food Glee Club. Full of unforgettable music moments too, like Elton John doing "Crocodile Rock" with a choir of gators or Animal mangling the drums to "Wild Thing." Thanks to these characters, the gentle hippie spirit of Henson lives on forever. Play us out, Animal.

Roots

1977 Running for only eight episodes, it changed the way America saw its own history - the topic of slavery was an unspeakable taboo in U.S. culture until this miniseries brought the horrifying details to life. Setting ratings records in January 1977 - a 100 million Americans tuned in live as it followed Alex Haley's family history from Africa to the slave ship to the plantation, without any attempt to water down the violence for mainstream appeal.

Taxi

1978-82 (ABC), 1982-83 (NBC) It seemed like an unlikely idea for a hit - a bunch of depressive taxi drivers working the night shift, trying not to think about the rotten disappointments that got them stuck at the Sunshine Cab Company. But the show hit pay dirt because it had warmth, as these losers bonded together - Andy Kaufman's babbling naif, Christopher Lloyd's wacked-out hippie, Tony Danza's meatball, Judd Hirsch's cynic. And Danny DeVito suddenly became a star playing a larger-than-life monster as the drunken dispatcher Louie De Palma.

Dallas

1978-91 (CBS) This sex-and-money blockbuster chronicled the spectacularly evil Ewings and their Texas oil empire, led by Larry Hagman's J.R. Brought the prime-time soap tropes for family sagas, influencing everything from The Sopranos to Empire - as Hagman said proudly, "Even the mother was bad." Larry Hagman as J.R. Ewing, Patrick Duffy as Bobby Ewing, Linda Gray as Sue Ellen Ewing. First appearance of Brad Pitt.

Hill Street Blues

1981-87 (NBC) A police show too adult to ever get much traction in the ratings but cherished at a time when network dramas were the pits. These cops were troubled people dealing with moral conflicts, urban corruption and their messy personal lives. Precinct captain Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti) and public defender Joyce Davenport (Veronica Hamel) were secretly an item after hours - it was racy stuff in the Eighties to show an unmarried couple who liked to share a bathtub. So many landmark dramas came out of this precinct - the writers included everyone from Law & Order's Dick Wolf to Deadwood's David Milch, not to mention producer Steve Bochco.

Late Night With David Letterman

1982-2015 (NBC) A failed Indiana weatherman takes over the graveyard shift after Johnny Carson and completely changes the way America sees itself. Letterman brought weirdos to the tube like we'd never seen before - from Larry "Bud" Melman to Harvey Pekar, from Peewee Herman to Sandra Bernhard, from R.E.M. to Andy Kaufman. Not to mention Paul Shaffer, the indispensable piano man. Letterman was a connoisseur of American eccentrics without ever pretending to be one himself, and a master interviewer, especially when he was up against a fellow curmudgeon, like when Cher called him an "a**hole." (She was right, and thank God for that.) When Letterman made the move to CBS' Late Show in 1993, he changed titles and time slots, but kept that same acerbic spirit alive - especially in his magnificent final weeks, as he broke down the statistics: "33 years, 6,028 shows, eight minutes of laughter." We'll never see his like again.

Cheers

1982-93 (CBS) You need a place where everybody knows your name - even if it's just a dive bar in Boston full of regulars with no place else to go. The show started with a focus on the mismatched romantic banter between Ted Danson's washed-up Red Sox pitcher Sam and Shelley Long's uptight bookworm Diane. ("Over my dead body!" "Hey, don't bring last night into this.") But it regularly renewed itself by bringing in new blood like Woody Harrelson, Kirstie Alley and Kelsey Grammer.

Buffalo Bill

1983-84 (NBC) Nobody played irascible, chauvinistic characters in the early 1980s better than Dabney Coleman — and instead of trying to soft-pedal the Texas character actor's toxic-caveman persona for primetime audiences, this NBC sitcom doubled down on it. Coleman's Bill Bittinger is the Number One-rated daytime talk-show host in Buffalo, New York, railing against the smut peddlers and immoral businessmen tainting our great nation. He's also a quick-tempered hypocrite, a nightmare of a boss, a selfish bastard, and a womanizing, sexist pig. A critical hit from the get-go, this was one of the rare sitcoms of the time to truly revel in its lead character's bad behavior; the pilot concerns Bill finding out that his best friend has just died... and then desperately trying to get the guy's job at 60 Minutes. The fact that it only lasted two seasons is an injustice that still inspires Bittinger-level tantrums in fans.

Night Court

1984-1992 (NBC) Comedian/magician Harry Anderson made such an impression in a handful of Cheers episodes as con man Harry the Hat that he was rewarded with his own show. The show was the silly tale of a genial young judge, Harry Stone (Anderson), presiding over nightly hijinx involving ridiculous low-stakes crimes, the lechery of prosecutor Dan Fielding (John Larroquette, who won four straight Emmys for the role), and the eccentricities of public defender Christine (Markie Post), court clerk Mac (Charles Robinson), and bailiffs Bull (Richard Moll) and Roz (Marsha Warfield). The underrated utility player of NBC's Eighties comedy empire.

The Golden Girls

1985-92 Four sassy seniors share a party pad in Miami, where they romance the local gentlemen and share cheesecake on the lanai. All four Girls brought something special: Bea Arthur as cynical Dorothy, Betty White as sweet-but-stupid Rose, Rue McClanahan as sex bomb Blanche and Estelle Getty as the Sicilian avenging angel Sophia Petrillo.

Frank's Place

1987-88 (CBS) This warm-hearted gem reunited WKRP in Cincinnati creator Hugh Wilson with one of that show's stars, Tim Reid, for a serio-comic trip to New Orleans. Reid played Ivy League professor Frank Parrish, who inherits the family restaurant and travels home with the goal of selling it and leaving quickly, only to fall victim to a voodoo curse that forces him to stick around and run the place. Usually more wistful and sweet than laugh-out-loud funny, Frank's Place explored class and race — like an episode where Frank learns about the "paper bag test" a local black social club uses to keep out darker-skinned men like him — in ways that felt years, even decades, ahead of its time.

Thirtysomething

1987-91 (ABC) The ultimate yuppies-in-love drama, as ad execs and their wives reckon with parenthood, marriage, work and real estate. These white-collar suburbanites climbed the corporate ladder, looking for ways they could live with their compromises both at work and at home.

The Wonder Years

1988-93 Timed perfectly for the late Eighties, this show depicted the childhood of baby boomers in the most nostalgic terms, as Fred Savage's Kevin Arnold grew up in 1960s suburbia and learned about life from the girl next door, Winnie Cooper - played by future mathematician Danica McKellar.

Roseanne

1988-97 This show came as a blast of Midwestern blue-collar grit that made all other Eighties sitcoms look like contemptible fluff as soon as it dropped. Featuring the unsaintly matriarch of this struggling heartland family, with biker husband John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf as her hard-luck sister, Jackie.

Law & Order

1990-2010 (NBC) Dick Wolf's long-, long-, long-running procedural created its own formula - gruesomely violent crimes ripped from the headlines, clock-punching cops, idealistic lawyers, stern judges who bang the gavel and say "I'll allow it," each character a different cog in the crime-solving machine until the trial scene at the end. All of its different incarnations, from Logan and Briscoe to Benson and Stabler, just proved what a rich formula it was, not to mention a chance for countless aspiring NYC actors to get their first real taste of catering

Twin Peaks

1990-91 "These girls are authentically dreamy," auteur David Lynch told Rolling Stone in 1990. "They're all just boss chicks. And they're just jampacked with secrets." The small town is full of these women and their deadly secrets, from murdered high school homecoming queen Laura Palmer to alive-and-how seductress Audrey Horne. A few years after Blue Velvet, Lynch's surreal Pacific Northwest mystery followed Kyle MacLachlan as FBI agent Dale Cooper, on a quest for damn-good coffee as well as the solution to the murder of Palmer.

In Living Color

1990-94 (Fox) Keenan Ivory Wayans blew the roof off with this hit, bringing a hip-hop sensibility to sketch comedy. Including sketches like Homey the clown ("Homey don't play that"), the World's Hardest-Working West Indian Family ("I have 15 jobs!" "You lazy lima bean!") and a rubber-faced token white guy then-called James Carrey. (Whatever happened to him?) Also included Damon, Kim Marlon & Shawn Wayans, Jamie Foxx, David Alan Grier.

The Ren and Stimpy Show

1991-95 Nickelodeon (1991-1995) MTV (1996). In the post-Simpsons days, when everybody was watching to see where the next great animated comedy was coming from, it turned out to be John Kricfalusi's Nickelodeon toon about this lovable duo - a high-strung Chihuahua and his loyal cat pal. Happy happy, joy joy.

The Real World

1992-2017 (MTV) 2019 (Facebook Watch), 2021-Present (Paramount+) This MTV petri dish hatched the reality-TV virus that soon swept the airwaves. Hugely influential as soon as it debuted in 1992, bringing together an apartment full of strangers to fight, cry and jump into bed, with the promise "This is what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real."

The Larry Sanders Show

1992-98 (HBO) The late, great Garry Shandling could have taken over as host of The Tonight Show - but instead he starred in his own nightmare fictional version. He played a showbiz monster whose loathing for all forms of humanity (especially himself) left him no choice but to make small talk with strangers behind the desk of his late-night chatfest. The show debuted on HBO in 1992 with a whole new look - single camera, no laugh track, a constant stream of bile and abuse - and became a word-of-mouth hit. He always had the biggest ego in the room, but he had competition from Rip Torn's producer Artie and Jeffrey Tambor's pitiful sidekick, Hank. Countless comedy legends cut their teeth here - Judd Apatow, Sarah Silverman, Bob Odenkirk, Janeane Garofalo and Dave Chappelle for starters.

The X-Files

1993-2002, 2016-2018 (FOX) Oh, the Nineties - when our scariest worry about the government was its plot to cover up alien abductions. Chris Carter created a whole sci-fi mythology, where all of the sinister conspiracies in the universe aren't as tough as the loyal bond between two FBI agents: David Duchovny's Mulder (he wanted to believe) and Gillian Anderson's Scully (she didn't). This show invented a new kind of TV fan for the online-message-board era, alternating between "monster of the week" and the overall arc, but always throwing in geek details for the hardcore devotees. And their archenemy: the Smoking Man, William B. Davis, the marvelously evil bureaucrat lurking in the shadows of every conspiracy from the JFK assassination to rigging the Super Bowl

NYPD Blue

1993-2005 (ABC) Nearly a decade after Hill Street Blues, Steven Bochco raised the ante for down-and-dirty police realism. The 15th Precinct was home to hard-boiled detectives brought to life by the likes of Jimmy Smits, Amy Brenneman and David Caruso. Dennis Franz's Detective Sipowicz was a foulmouthed alcoholic racist bully - and he was the most sympathetic cop here.

Late Night with Conan O'Brien

1993-2009 When a redheaded nobody named Conan was announced as the successor to Letterman, everyone assumed his talk show would bomb even faster than Chevy Chase's. But over the years, nobody could touch Conan for sheer comic velocity. Even now, exiled to TBS, Conan continues to give the world Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, which would be enough to seal his legend. Conan went to Tonight Show, then had a timeslot dispute with NBC/Jay Leno in 2010. "I'm with Coco"

The State

1993-95 The MTV comedy show was a whiff of youthful arrogance in the early Nineties, with 11 college wise-asses running wild in manic sketches about monkey torture, Muppet-eating and the mailman who only delivers tacos. After three years on MTV, they jumped to a network - and got destroyed amid the corporate machinery. But their cult kept growing, especially after they masterminded Wet Hot American Summer. Cast: Kevin Allison, Michael Ian Black, Robert Ben Garant, Todd Holoubek, Michael Patrick Jann, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Thomas Lennon, Joe Lo Truglio, Ken Marino, Michael Showalter and David Wain.

Beavis and Butthead

1993-97 (MTV), 2011 Mike Judge captured the spirit of American adolescence, epitomized by two cartoon butt-munches who live for metal, nachos and breakin' the law (or at least putting poodles in the washing machine). It was liberating how cheap and crummy the animation looked, compared with the sophisticated rococo of The Simpsons or Ren & Stimpy, but these two spoke their own kind of trash poetry, whether they were heckling MTV ("Stop in the name of all which does not suck!") or looking for wholesome fun: "This sucks. Let's go over to Stewart's house and burn something." And they hung with Daria, who got her own classic show. Kids, do try this at home.

My So-Called Life

1994-1995 (ABC) "Ignore Angela. She can't help herself - she's the product of a two-parent household." Claire Danes became a teen-angst heroine with this high school classic, so ahead of its time it got axed after one season. The World Happiness Dance episode - where two lost and lonely kids find a moment of disco redemption together - might be the Nineties' most emo hour of TV, which may explain why some of us out here still get a little dusty whenever we hear Haddaway's "What Is Love."

Friends

1994-2004 (NBC) A group of twenty-somethings in New York sit around complaining about their day jobs, their sex lives, their screwed-up families. It's a formula countless sitcoms tried to get right over the years (nice try, Herman's Head), but it took the Central Perk crew to get the right mix of personalities, from Lisa Kudrow's flaky folk singer to the schlub-fox romance of David Schwimmer's Ross and Jennifer Aniston's Rachel. Even at the time, it was ridiculous how huge and luxurious Monica's West Village apartment was, and the story line where she's banging Tom Selleck just gets more stomach-turning the longer Blue Bloods stays on the air.

ER

1994-2009 (NBC) The hospital drama to put all others on the DNR list, this show blew up in the early Nineties, making stars out of Julianna Margulies and the previously obscure George Clooney, until then best known as the big-hair hunk teacher from The Facts of Life. But the real surprise was how long the show kept thriving, replacing all its original stars yet remaining itself for 15 years, with hour after hour of life, death and romance amid the scrubs.

Mr. Show

1995-98 (HBO) What completely bizarre careers Bob Odenkirk and David Cross have had - and how bizarre that we first met them as the duo behind this wild-ass HBO cult sketch show, always erratic but often astounding, with future stars like Sarah Silverman in the crew. They excelled at high-concept stunts like their Jesus Christ Superstar parody, with Jack Black as the hippie messiah, or the gay metal band Wyckyd Sceptre. Best line: "I'm not talking to clouds on a sunny day!"

The Daily Show

1996-Present (Comedy Central) The fake news show that became more credible than the real news. Comedy Central began the show with Craig Kilbourne in 1996, but it hit its stride when Jon Stewart took over in 1999. The show got more politically abrasive as the news got progressively worse. Stewart had the rage of a man who'd signed on at the end of the Bill Clinton years, only to end up with an America much scarier and uglier than the one he bargained for, and the anger showed. "It's a comic box lined with sadness," he told Rolling Stone in 2006. Trevor Noah took the reins in 2015.

Daria

1997-2002 (MTV) For every teenage girl who quietly balked at being sugar and spice and everything nice, Daria Morgendorffer was an icon in combat boots and glasses. The titular hero of this animated Beavis and Butt-Head spinoff took sardonic to new heights, deadpanning her way through interactions with her dopey high-school classmates, her oblivious white-collar parents, Jake and Helen, and her pretty, popular, and ditzy younger sister Quinn. Her wry observations, delivered in a jaded monotone (often to her equally dry-witted, artsy friend Jane), were a clarion call to budding slacker-feminists everywhere.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

1997-2003 (The WB Seasons 1-5, UPN seasons 6-7) Sarah Michelle Gellar created a supernatural feminist avenger in Joss Whedon's saga of the California girl who finds herself by kicking vampire ass. Surviving adolescence and fighting off the undead forces of evil turn out to be the same thing. And the musical episode - "Once More, With Feeling" - is a classic in itself.

The Wire

1997-2003 The HBO prison drama was a searing exposé of life in maximum-security Oswald State Penitentiary: the shankings, the sexual abuse, the racial warfare. Michael K. Williams (Omar), Idris Elba, Michael B. Jordan

South Park

1997-Present (Comedy Central) Trey Parker and Matt Stone touched America somewhere deep and special, and you must respect their authori-teh. Year after year, this cartoon began, Matt Stone told Rolling Stone, "We would view success as finally getting to the point where we get canceled because no one gets it."

Sex and The City

1998-2004 This shoe-porn Manhattan fantasy was ubiquitous, to the point where Jay Z could rap that Beyoncé wouldn't talk to him when this show was on. Nothing could stop fans from feeling the Carrie fever, as Sarah Jessica Parker and her clique - Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis, Kim Cattrall - date, shop and quip their way through a borough full of rich straight guys, eventually realizing their only true soulmates are one another. And maybe also Manolo Blahnik.

Freaks and Geeks

1999-2000 (NBC) High school mathlete Lindsay takes her first puff of weed but gets busted by one of her fellow nerds, who tells her, "I know what high people look like. I went to a Seals and Crofts concert last summer!" Paul Feig and Judd Apatow truly captured the agonies of American adolescence in this intensely compassionate comedy, set in a Michigan town in 1980. It tragically lasted only one season, but all 18 episodes hit home, with a rock soundtrack and a cast of future legends. Martin Starr's Bill, Jason Segel's Nick, most of all Linda Cardellini's Lindsay - these are kids who don't fit in, craving a place they might belong, whether that's a Dungeons & Dragons game or a van following the Grateful Dead tour.

The West Wing

1999-2006 Aaron Sorkin gave America the leader we didn't quite deserve in Martin Sheen's benevolent President Jed Bartlet, a high-toned Catholic professor from New Hampshire. Premiering in the fall of 1999, the show played like a Bubba-era fantasy of how the political future would look (like if the Democrats had a little more courage, or if the Republicans had a principle or two) that soon turned out to be utterly out of step with the Bush-Cheney years. But Sorkin's trademark rapid-fire dialogue and the Bartlet administration's idealism made this a welcome parallel universe.

The Sopranos

1999-2007 The crime saga that cut the history of TV in two, kicking off a golden age when suddenly anything seemed possible. It created an immortal American antihero in James Gandolfini's New Jersey Mob boss, Tony Soprano, presiding over a crew of gangsters who also double as damaged husbands and dads, men trying to live with their murderous secrets and dark memories. The show is full of broken characters who linger on in the long-term parking of our national imagination - Edie Falco's Carmela, Dominic Chianese's Junior, Michael Imperioli's Christopher, Tony Sirico's Paulie Walnuts. E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt became Tony's lieutenant Silvio.

Curb Your Enthusiasm

2000-Present (HBO) The master misanthrope behind Seinfeld goes to L.A., where all the sunshine on his bald pate just makes him more miserable. We thought we already knew Larry David via his Seinfeld be the most painful-to-witness tryst of Larry's abysmal career as a single guy. From religion to race, from the mock Seinfeld reunion to the burning ethical dilemma of whether men should wear shorts on airplanes, Larry is always there to make every awkward situation worse.

Six Feet Under

2001-05 (HBO) A California family with a funeral home to run - which means that mortality and grief are never far from anyone's mind. Every episode opened with a disturbing (or comic, or both) death scene. Alan Ball's dark yet tender HBO drama explored new terrain, and the closing episodes helped innovate the idea that a series finale should be an artistic epitaph, rather than just a death rattle.

24

2001-10 Can Agent Jack Bauer save our nation? This adrenaline thriller starred Kiefer Sutherland as the Counter Terrorism Unit's most lethal weapon, leaving no principle of civil liberties unviolated in a cloud of ass-kicking and CGI effects. It also had that innovative real-time structure, each season another 24-hour crisis point and each episode another hour of Jack racing the clock

American Idol

2001-16 (Fox), 2018-Present (ABC) The glitziest of singing competitions, it gave the world memorable freakazoids like Simon Cowell, the hostile judge in a V-neck, and Paula Abdul, the semi-coherent judge who just loved everybody for believing in their pitchiest dreams. It found stars like Kelly Clarkson, Adam Lambert, William Hung and the "Pants on the Ground" guy.

The Shield

2002-08 (FX) The first time we meet Vic Mackey, he's shooting a fellow cop in the face - to stop him from ratting on what a sleazebag Vic is. Like his captain says in the premiere, "He's Al Capone with a badge." Michael Chiklis created one of TV's most fearsome cops in Mackey, a dirty detective with plenty of street smarts but barely any scruples. Shawn Ryan's FX drama followed Vic through seven seasons of murder, drug dealing and torture, with a hell of an endgame.

The Wire

2002-08 (HBO) You come at the king, you best not miss. Former reporter David Simon aimed high with his epic HBO tale of the drug game in Baltimore -Each season told a different story - the Barksdale gang in Season Three, the doomed school kids in Season Four. The show offers characters no one had seen before, from Idris Elba's menacing Stringer Bell to Robert F. Chew's endlessly quotable Proposition Joe. But Michael K. Williams created the ultimate badass with Omar, the shotgun-toting trench-coat avenger.

Arrested Development

2003-06 (Fox), 2013, 2018 (Netflix) Mitch Hurwitz's absurdist tale of the Bluth family seemed too far out to survive in the network wasteland. Yet it managed to last three seasons on Fox (and then a Netflix reboot) without losing its kinks, thanks to Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, David Cross and Henry Winkler as the family lawyer.

Chappelle's Show

2003-06 Comedy - it's a hell of a drug. Sometimes his Comedy Central show was brilliant, sometimes it was crap, and he eventually decided it wasn't worth the money or the trouble. But it sent shock waves through pop culture, whether he was immortalizing Charlie Murphy's memories of Rick James ("He is a habitual line-stepper") and Prince ("This bores me") or playing the world's only blind black white supremacist. It's a celebration, bitches!

Battlestar Galactica

2003-09 (Sci Fi) The 1970s original was a promising but failed sci-fi franchise, one of many the networks rushed out in the wake of Star Wars. But Ronald D. Moore's version was the rare reboot that topped the original, with a space colony of humans escaping the Cylons and searching for a home somewhere in the universe - maybe this planet they've heard about called Earth. Edward James Olmos is the commander who leads the way; Mary McDonnell is the president with a very different vision of this society. And Katee Sackhoff's Starbuck remains one of the most badass frakking action heroes ever. So say we all.

Real Time with Bill Maher

2003-Present (HBO) For the past 20 years or so, he has been one of the most reliably caustic political wits out there, managing to piss off new enemies every time the regime changes, with his unfiltered attacks on religion ("New rule: If churches don't have to pay taxes, they also can't call the fire department"), military spending ("We waste 20 percent of our budget basically fighting Russia in 1978") and every other brand of sanctimonious bullshit.

Deadwood

2004-06 Al Swearengen's moral philosophy: "You can't cut the throat of every c****sucker whose character it would improve." Spoken like a true Founding Father. He's the villain of David Milch's epic Western set in the mud and slime of an 1870s South Dakota gold-mining camp. At the center of it all (i.e., the Gem Theatre saloon), Ian McShane's Al glowers, pours drinks, counts money and slices jugulars, in a frontier hellhole full of prospectors, whores, drunks and lost freaks looking for one last fatal fight to get into (and often finding it at Al's place). It was like McCabe & Mrs. Miller with more depressing sex scenes. The first two seasons are solid gold, the third, flimsier, but the show is about how communities get built - and all the dirty work that involves.

Lost

2004-10 (ABC) A cosmic mystery trip so complex nobody has ever quite figured it all out - a band of castaways trapped on an island after the crash of Oceanic Flight 815, with a smoke monster and the enigmatic group called the Others, multiple timelines, the Seventies backstory of the Dharma Initiative, each episode crammed with clues to be argued over for years to come. The show proved there was a broad audience out there who wanted their TV to be more unpredictable and challenging, not less - and TV would never be the same. 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.

The Office

2005-13 (NBC) Nobody expected this to be more than yet another example of a U.S. network trying to rip off an edgy Brit-com and getting it all wrong. Except, with Steve Carell as the world's worst boss, it turned out to be a groundbreaking and original comedy in its own right, with a dream team of eccentric employees lost in the cubicles of Dunder-Mifflin. Carell's Michael Scott wasn't hateful, just a moron - with a cast including Rainn Wilson's Dwight ("Through concentration, I can raise and lower my cholesterol at will"), Mindy Kaling's Kelly and the ever-bilious Creed Bratton. (Let's just pretend those last two post-Carell seasons never happened, OK?)

The Colbert Report

2005-14 "Anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you." With that mission statement, a Daily Show correspondent set off on a whole new approach to fake news, playing a character named after himself who happened to be a conservative twit, dedicated to the principle of "truthiness" and pushing the slogan "Blame America Last." "We want people to be in pain and confused," he told Rolling Stone in 2006. "I have no problem making things up, because I have no credibility to lose."

Friday Night Lights

2006-11 (NBC) "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose" is the golden rule in a dusty Texas town where everyone lives and dies for the high school football team, but the show isn't really about football so much as family, work, class, the bitter taste of dashed dreams, with Kyle Chandler as Coach Taylor, Connie Britton as wife Tami and Taylor Kitsch as Tim Riggins - the most memorable of the many vulnerable kids who pass through the Panthers' locker room. Riggins' story becomes especially moving after his gridiron glory fades and real life beats him down.

30 Rock

2006-13 (NBC) Alec Baldwin said it best: "You are truly the Picasso of loneliness." He has a point. Tina Fey's Liz Lemon is a single gal who spends her evenings playing Monopoly alone, working on her night cheese or watching the Lifetime movie My Stepson Is My Cyber-Husband. But Fey made her a timeless heroine, turning her SNL writers-room experience into the backstage antics at The Girlie Show, with a crazy-deep bench that included Tracy Morgan, Jane Krakowski and Jack McBrayer. And Baldwin chewed up the role of his life, turning what could have been a generic sitcom boss into the only man worthy to stand by Lemon.

Party Down

2009-10 (Starz) The great Lizzy Caplan and Adam Scott headed up a crew of caterers - you know, failing actors - who served hors d'oeuvres and despaired at porn-star conventions, high school reunions and other disasters. This masterwork never got anywhere near the attention it deserved.

Eastbound and Down

2009-13 - HBO - Danny McBride created a timeless American slob hero with the travails of Kenny Powers, a washed-up ballplayer who fought his way back to a trash redemption.

The Walking Dead

2010-Present (AMC) The zombie apocalypse to end all zombie apocalypses, based on the Robert Kirkman cult comic book. A monster hit in every sense of the word, with a band of humans battling to survive the onslaught of the undead walkers, featuring some of the small screen's most viscerally repulsive violence. Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes.

Downton Abbey

2011-16 Welcome to the aristocratic English countryside circa 1912, where Julian Fellowes' Crawley family acts out the decline and fall of the British Empire, from the bed-hopping elites to the downstairs schemes of the servants. Dame Maggie Smith steals the show as the delightfully nasty shade queen Dowager Countess, who does a better job than anyone else here at pretending the world isn't changing.

Portlandia

2011-2018. who could have guessed the genius duo of SNL vet Fred Armisen and Sleater-Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein? Mocking the hipster aspirations of modern America is a topic that never runs out of comic juice for these two, whether it's pickle fetishes, artisanal shoelaces or the cult of kale.

George R.R. Martin

2011-Present (HBO) The night is dark and full of terrors. With its premise of "The Sopranos in Middle-earth," it's the HBO fantasy series that broke through genre boundaries to stake its claim as one of the most compellingly realistic dramas on the air, going beyond George R.R. Martin's books. It might grab attention with the nudity, the dragons and severed heads, but at heart it's a political thriller. As Martin told Rolling Stone, "History is written in blood, a gold mine - the kings, the princes, the generals and the whores, and all the betrayals and wars and confidences. It's better than 90 percent of what the fantasists do make up."

Homeland

2011-Present (Showtime) Claire Danes made a big comeback 15 years after My So-Called Life - as a CIA agent in a Showtime drama about terrorism. With its bonkers plot leaps (she sleeps with the terrorist who killed the vice president and gets promoted!), lots of crying jags and the soothing presence of Mandy Patinkin's beard, this show became an unlikely hit.

Veep

2012-2019 (HBO) Louis-Dreyfus presides over the Oval Office in this political satire - President Selina Meyer is one of the truly great monsters in TV history, a politician you can count on to say things like "You're gonna cancel this recount like Anne Frank's bat mitzvah." Each episode is a warp-speed blast of insults, many aimed at Timothy Simons' delectably loathsome aide, Jonah. ("How am I doing? Eating so much pussy I'm shitting clits, son.") Veep's peak for sheer gall might be the "Testimony" episode, a frantic half-hour when almost every line of dialogue is perjury. Four more years, please.

The Americans

2013-2018 (FX) There's never been a TV marriage like this one: Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys play a pair of deep-cover Russian spies living in the D.C. suburbs in the early 1980s. They pretend to be a nice, normal, happy American couple - except these two do things like kill a hit man to the strains of "Tainted Love." The FX masterwork is both a taut espionage thriller and a bleakly intimate marital drama.

House of Cards

2013-2018 (Netflix) Adaptation of 1990 BBC Miniseries that was adapted from a 1988 novel. Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood, a murderous D.C. politician, and Robin Wright as Claire Underwood.

Orange Is the New Black

2013-2019 (Netflix) When Jenji Kohan's women's-prison drama started, there was no real way of knowing it would remain great. No other drama can match this ensemble, as actresses like Uzo Aduba, Jessica Pimentel, Danielle Brooks and Samira Wiley go deep on these characters and the heart-shredding stories that brought them here

Transparent

2014-2019 (Amazon) Jill Soloway's painfully compassionate drama was like nothing else the screen had seen before - and remains that way, with Jeffrey Tambor as the patriarch-unto-matriarch of a bitterly estranged family, transitioning from Mort to Maura on sheer nerve.

Broad City

2014-2019 (Comedy Central) Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer invent a new comedy subgenre that we'll be seeing a lot more of in years to come: the two-woman stoner-slob hangout. These broads never learn or grow or achieve a thing; all they care about is each other, living their carpe day-umm lifestyle.

Schitt's Creek

2015-2020 (CBC) Having lost his fortune after being bled dry by a business manager, video-store mogul John Rose and his family find themselves relocating to a small backwoods town that John once bought for his son David as a joke. What starts out as a fish-out-of-water comedy turns into an ode to community and kindness, and it's to the credit of co-creators and co-stars Eugene and Dan Levy that the series finds the perfect balance between genuine sweetness and side-splitting snark. Catherine O'Hara's Moira Rose is the diva to end all divas; Annie Murphy's Alexis completely updates the ditzy-socialite type for the 21st century.

The People vs. O.J. Simpson

2016 (FX) Even after all Ryan Murphy has achieved, he proved he's still peaking with a 10-part miniseries of the O.J. murder case. With out-of-nowhere career performances from John Travolta, Sarah Paulson and David Schwimmer, it made the ultimate made-for-TV trial disturbing all over again. Cuba Gooding Jr. as O.J. Simpson.

Baskets

2016-2019 (FX) Zach Galifianakis played both failed clown Chip and his petty twin brother Dale, while Louie Anderson got in drag to play their mother Christine — utterly seriously. There was still plenty of room for laughter, particularly via Martha Kelly's deadpan delivery as Chip's only friend. But the show was ultimately great for embracing the sad-clownhood that Chip was told to avoid.

Insecure

2016-2021 (HBO) Over five seasons, the trials and tribulations of Issa Rae's neurotic alter ego Issa Dee have been a study in the messy realities of being young, single, and perpetually lost. Through Issa, her friends Molly (Yvonne Orji), Kelli (Natasha Rothwell), and Tiffany (Amanda Seales), her exes Lawrence (Jay Ellis) and Daniel (Y'lan Noel), and more, Rae presents black lives in full, hilarious imperfection, delivering a classic hangout show firmly rooted in her native Los Angeles (not to mention one that features a lot more sex than Sex and the City). Issa hypes herself up by freestyle rapping in the mirror. Real Issa doesn't need the hype — the woman looking back at her is a comedy legend in the making.

Big Mouth

2017-Present (Netflix) This unabashedly prurient animated comedy has middle schoolers battling real hormones and their randy avatars, Hormone Monsters (voiced by Maya Rudolph and co-creator Nick Kroll), as they enter puberty. In one recent meta exchange, best friends Andrew (John Mulaney) and Nick (Kroll) ponder a show-within-the-show inspired by Hulu's Pen15, which also features adults playing horny adolescents. "I mean, the main characters are kids," Nick says, "but the show is so filthy." Andrew replies, "It's too much! And I like dirty stuff."

Derry Girls

2018-Present (Channel 4/Netflix) Against the backdrop of the Troubles in 1990s Northern Ireland, headstrong Erin (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), her kooky cousin Orla (Louisa Harland), uptight Clare (Nicola Coughlan), and party girl Michelle (Jamie-Lee O'Donnell) — plus her cousin, "wee English fella" James (Dylan Llewellyn) — stumble through teenage antics from burning down the local chip-shop owner's flat to clogging the toilet at a funeral repast with weed-infused scones. Creator Lisa McGee wrote the show based on her own experiences growing up in Northern Ireland, which explains its earthy charm and gimlet-eyed nostalgia. These are characters full of heart but devoid of sentimentality, as only people who've been getting on with their lives amid generations of conflict can be. Bonus points to Siobhan Sweeney as the deadly-dry Sister Michael, beleaguered headmistress of the girls' school, and Game of Thrones' Ian McElhinney as curmudgeonly Granda Joe.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K)

KTMA-TV (1988-89) The Comedy Channel (1989-1991) Comedy Central (1991-96) Sci-Fi Channel (1997-99) Netflix (2017-18) A janitor (Joel Hodgson) and his robot friends sit in the dark and heckle some of the worst B-movies ever made, from Rocket Attack U.S.A. to Jungle Goddess, adding their own commentary.