Best TV Shows of the Decade

I decided to skip over the Top 10s of the year and go right for the big daddy - the Best of the Decade.

First up - Television.

 This last decade of TV represents for me, the golden age of television.  Simply put, it is the best television has ever produced:




The Wire - The best. Ever. David Simon's brutally honest dystopian vision is the gold standard.









 





The Sopranos - The one that started it all - and relaunched Journey's career.

















 
Breaking Bad - Fearless. Bold. Funny. Visionary. Brutal.















Mad Men - Tone-perfect subtle portrayal of the pivot point of a decade and a man's journey to find his authentic self.
















Deadwood -  David Milch's foul-mouthed Shakespearean western is a multi-layered tour-de-force.

Band of Brothers - Epic portrayal of the realities of war in the mid-century.

Dexter - Puts all those CSI clone shows to shame.  Michael C. Hall carries the show with nothing but subtle facial expressions.














 
Curb Your Enthusiasm - Seinfeld synthesized into a crack-like addictive journey into Larry David's warped vision of ultimate social discomfort and humiliation.















Battlestar Gallactica - Sci-Fi told on an epic scale while maintaining its focus on character.

Rescue Me - Foul-mouthed.  Daring.  Brutally honest.  Went head-first into post 9-11 territory that no one else with a sane mind would touch.  Thank you Dennis Leary.















These brilliant and revolutionary shows easily match up against the best television of any decade - perhaps even the best narrative dramas of any medium.  If will be interesting to see if the next decade can live up to these achievements.  Clearly the most creative minds are now working in television - where the showrunners (usually writers) can maintain control of their vision.

Not one of these shows was produced by traditional network television.  And no one cares anymore - the era of the networks is dead.  My children couldn't tell a network from cable or pay tv or YouTube or hulu or Netflix.  It is all simply visual storytelling that comes to them from a box in our home - or on a mobile device on the go.  The revolution is already over.

The best of the rest:

Six Feet Under
The Office
Rome
Entourage
Generation Kill
Friday Night Lights
30 Rock
True Blood
Survivor
The Daily Show With John Stewart
Lost

Next up:  Best Horror Movies of the Decade