Unopened Boxsets that I liked the look of from the Pilot: The ILX Television 51 Show Countdown Extravaganza!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i think i'd prefer a 00s film poll. 90s too long ago to remember whether i liked sabrina or clarrisa more.

i'd still love it though.

really not a good time for polling 90s (or 80s) imo

for some reason i am thinking a 'greatest telly of all time' one wouldn't work.

The Office U.K. - funny show, but no way did I see it ranking this highly - top UK show!

I think for a lot of Americans, this is the only British TV show from this decade they've seen. In some cases I imagine it was driven by curiosity after having become fans of The Office U.S., but even before the U.S. version aired, the U.K. show seemed to attract an awful lot of hype around here.

yeah, Planet Earth aside, The Office was the only British show I even thought about putting on my ballut (but ultimately didn't), and even that was mainly because I really wanted to make sure it beat the US version. couple other shows I liked but not enough to vote for (Primeval, Spaced, etc.).

haha ballut

When did US telly get so good? Because it was hilariously and notoriously dreadful when I was growing up 20-30 years ago (James L Brooks, Larry Gelbart, Steven Bochco and Burrows/Charles/Charles apart, I s'pose). Influence of HBO?

never really got how The Office was able to break thru in the USA this way

xp Michael Jones: Totally agree with you - even the 90s, which had many good shows, is a huge distance from this decade in show quality. I believe honestly there were specific shows in genres in the late 90s that broke through the mold and pushed boundaries, allowed others to grow in their place. For instance, for comedies there's obviously Seinfeld which would lead directly to Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arrested Development. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sopranos led to much high quality, character driven and continuity heavy drama of all sorts. X-Files isn't superb in retrospect or in total, but because of it we got Lost and other riskier scifi/fantasy/drama types.

Of course there's stuff in the 80s and early 90s as well (hello Twin Peaks!) but especially towards the end of the decade, it really opened the floodgates.

Larry Sanders was HBO right?

If an all time greatest poll were to be done, I think it would be best to wait a while as many of the results here would be replicated. I think a 90s one could work, though I'd be a bit worried about getting a lukewarm response due to that decade's output being less fresh in people's minds/arguably inferior. I'm going to Norfolk for the weekend, but I might try and drum up some more enthusiasm for the idea on Monday.

Yeah, Larry Sanders may have been the first show that I wanted to watch but couldn't (because I didn't have cable).

us drama got good starting with oz is the received wisdom, right?

if we're talking 90s we can't forget Kids In The Hall.

made it ok to be a man in a dress.

if it is i sure never received it (xpost)

xps Wasn't Oz sort of the direct descendant of Homicide though (and then followed by The Wire)? I think they all shared certain producers and casting and such.

oh yeah, KITH definitely rules, but I can't think of any sketch comedy show that's directly followed in its footsteps. but I'm sure it's still massively influential on a lot of modern comedy

I was going to mention X-Files as something of a watershed show in the mainstream - it was certainly the first non-comedy import that I can ever remember trying to watch every week (didn't really get into Hill Street Blues and I'm not sure Homicide was shown regularly on British TV). Oh, My So-Called Life too!

I completely forgotten about ER, which I've pretty much watched from the start. Didn't even get nominated. I assume it would do better in a 90s poll.

I just looked up St Elsewhere - can't believe that finished in '88. I'm getting old :(

16. Buffy The Vampire Slayer - Loved it up to Graduation Day (S3 finale), where I thought it should have ended, then it lost its way for me and I stopped watching. Looks like it picked up again from what people are saying.

Do yourself a favor and watch seasons 4 and 5. 4 is entertaining enough, but 5 is ridiculously good. Then brace yourself for season 6, which is essentially an extended depression narrative. But I 'like' it a lot. It's rough going, but you feel better for having gotten through it. And then the unjustly maligned season 7 is just a fun, high-speed rollercoaster ride to the end of the series.

I think for a lot of Americans, this is the only British TV show from this decade they've seen. In some cases I imagine it was driven by curiosity after having become fans of The Office U.S., but even before the U.S. version aired, the U.K. show seemed to attract an awful lot of hype around here.

Voice of America piping up here: Thanks to the wonders of the internet (pre-torrent, even!), I pretty much watched the UK Office as it aired. And I've watched and continued to watch quite a bit of British telly. And a lot of US telly. And it's still my favorite series of the '00s, and one of my favorites of all time.

I would totally be up for a '90s TV poll. I've practically got my ballot written up in my head already.

Thanks DWH, I'll hopefully get a chance to watch the rest of Buffy, I think a friend has the lot on DVD.

Seems unfair that Coogan is nowhere in this list. I've just been watching the second series of I'm Alan Partridge and it's hilarious. Surely he would place in a 90s list?

IAP would probably be my #1 UK 90s show

Great TV shows of the 90s

OK, I've been compiling a noms list from the 90s thread, and there's some great stuff there. I'll get the ball rolling on Monday.

I can't stop watching I'm Alan Partridge. Now onto series 2/ep.3 - "From Spalding to Felixstowe - all the issues"

"Help! He's a mentalist!"

30 Rock isn't funny though?

My list fwiw. I'm one of the people who ranked Mad Men #1 since I'm white apparently.

1. Mad Men
2. Freaks & Geeks
3. Lost
4. 30 Rock
5. American Idol
6. Friday Night Lights
7. Curb Your Enthusiasm
8. Big Love
9. Project Runway
10. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
11. The Daily Show
12. Top Chef
13. True Blood
14. Six Feet Under
15. Arrested Development
16. Weeds
17. The Office (U.K.)
18. Spaced
19. Entourage
20. The Office (U.S.)
21. Planet Earth
22. Extras
23. The Soup
24. The Colbert Report
25. Dexter

Nathan Barley
Peep Show
Mad Men
Deadwood
Doctor Who
Come Dine With Me
The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon
North Square
Arrested Development
Spaced
Ideal
Boy A
Being Human
The Devil's Whore
The Inbetweeners
Criminal Justice
State of Play
Clocking Off
Firefly
Wallander (UK)
Wonder Showzen
Apparitions
Bleak House
A History of Britain
Life On Mars

^Nathan Barley artificially high in a - failed - attempt to get it onto the results list.

i'm sort of shocked the Shield didn't place at all. more than sort of - lets upgrade that to "quite" shocked.

OK, I've been compiling a noms list from the 90s thread, and there's some great stuff there. I'll get the ball rolling on Monday.

Should we be adding nominations to that thread if they aren't already there...?

If you like - though I'll give people a day or two next week to add more to the existing list.

i wonder if i still love doug and hey arnold and etc. enough to nominate them. hmmm.

oh, and biker mice from mars.

this poll gonna be heavily skewed by childhood.

would be so refreshing to have poll results dominated by kids' shows and trad sitcoms instead of big serious serial dramas

was interesting to see the amount of love for American Idol here - the UK equivalents don't seem to be rated by anyone (for me it would be a bit like voting for Blind Date in the 90s poll)

The host for Blind Date used to host a roundtable scifi discussion show where Dwight Schulz would shake intently at Harlan Ellison.

New X Factor suckz. Charlie Brooker put it perfectly in 2 of his saturday articles: 1. adding a crowd from day 1 ruins the joek on retards/making yr mind up on good ones 2. not knowing what to do when the 'step up' was supposed to be how they deal with the added pressure of a crowd etc. so just adding more lights.

The host for Blind Date used to host a roundtable scifi discussion show where Dwight Schulz would shake intently at Harlan Ellison.

― Philip Nunez, Friday, 6 November 2009 19:01 (50 seconds ago) Bookmark

http://www.musicpophits.com/images/MaleFemCovers/FemaleCillaBlack.jpg ?

survivor and amazing race were such a big part of my t.v. decade that i couldn't NOT vote for them. i might not watch them like i did, but i was definitely fanatical about those initial (i dunno, 4 or 5) seasons.

I thought he meant
http://hogwild.net/images/Misc/roger.lodge.jpg
until I realized there was a British show by the same name.

loved some of the first seasons of big brother too (though not the first one which was the worst. and now it has really gone down some hellish musclemania mtv hole), but not as much.

OH. I forgot all about Comedians Of Comedy. That would have very likely ended up on my final ballot. Can we redo poll now plz? Thanks!

Was there anything on Arrested Development quite as disturbing as Will Arnett humping Aziz Ansari in a Mary Kate mask on Human Giant?

the Comedians of Comedy movie was pretty funny, but the series was much lighter on funny standup stuff and filled more time with them being whiny regular people and hanging out in comic book stores