Best Television Series Ever

OrnotBitwise

OrnotBitwise

Watermelon
This is not a poll. I am dispensing wisdom. Pray attend lest you remain unenlightened.

This Sunday night, if the local dungeon is closed and your spouse/sig-ot isn't in the mood, the fourth season of the Best TV Series Ever begins. This will be a good opportunity to take a chance and find out just how good television can really be when someone actually tries.

This is television for thinking people. It is not short attention span friendly. In fact, it's so dense and tightly edited that I advise pinning your eyelids open: an inopportune blink can cause you to miss something crucial.

Don't believe me? Fair enough. Here's another opinion . . . .
Yes, HBO's 'Wire' is challenging. It's also a masterpiece.

Over the course of its first three seasons, "The Wire" on HBO has been one of the great achievements in television artistry, a novelistic approach to storytelling in a medium that rewards quick, decisive and clear storytelling. It has never flinched from ambition -- dissecting a troubled American city, Baltimore, as well as and certainly more truly than any history book could have. It has tackled the drug war in this country as it simultaneously explores race, poverty and "the death of the American working class," the failure of political systems to help the people they serve and the tyranny of lost hope. Few series in the history of television have explored the plight of inner-city African Americans and none -- not one -- has done it as well.

On the off chance that you need to be reminded, this is not "Desperate Housewives."

. . .

And yet here are the hard truths about "The Wire," not all of them the kind of accolades that might sit well with a producer hoping for a big turnout come Sunday. First, it is, in fact, a difficult series. Viewers would benefit greatly from having seen the first three seasons, currently available on DVD or waiting like little orphans at Netflix. (That said, you can slide into Season 4 on Sunday with less effort than it took to hook yourself on Season 3, in part because "The Wire" is essentially starting from scratch, and new viewers could check out the immensely helpful HBO Web site to familiarize themselves with the characters, and also come to Jesus on the issue of great art taking a little more effort than, say, watching a sudsy hospital drama.)

Second, the argument over whether "The Wire" is the best show on television needs only two other participants -- also from HBO -- in the form of "The Sopranos" and "Deadwood." Rather than split hairs, let's just say that the breadth and ambition of "The Wire" are unrivaled and that taken cumulatively over the course of a season -- any season -- it's an astonishing display of writing, acting and storytelling that must be considered alongside the best literature and filmmaking in the modern era.

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Seriously, do yourselves a favor and try it if you haven't already.
 
While I do like the Andy Griffith Show, I cant agree its the best ever. What about The Cosby Show?
 
All a matter of taste or lack thereof Ornot :)
You like tomato, I hate tomato. Actually not though.
I grow my culture in a petri dish ;)
 
I've never seen angel but I've seen one episode of Buffy. Perhaps I shouldn't judge from one episode.

My wife used to have a group of friends who loved the show. We had never seen it but from commercials it didn't look like our type of show. Frankly the episode was so cheesy I started to laugh the whole way through the show. I felt like I was watching an episode of MST3K. We were parodying the show the whole way home.

But I suppose I caught a really bad episode it has some goofy looking green monster or something.

I always laugh now whenever I hear anyone mention Buffy.

But to each his own there were some really bad episodes of Star Trek too but overall I liked that show.
 
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