Much as it did with film, The New York Times has conducted a massive poll of more than 500 "stars, showrunners and other TV insiders," including critics, to come up with "The 100 Best TV Shows of the 21st Century."
Today, it announced Nos. 100–81. The list will be released in batches of 20, starting today and ending Friday, when the top shows are revealed. The main contenders will no doubt be "The Wire," "Mad Men," "Breaking Bad," "Succession" and "The Leftovers."
"The Sopranos," which would get my vote, isn't eligible. The Times asked voters to name the 10 best series that premiered since Jan. 1, 2000. "The Sopranos" premiered in January 1999, so it doesn't qualify, which is lame, since the show ran from 1999 to 2007.
81 - The Queens Gambit
82 - Better Things
83 - Justified
84 - Planet Earth
85 - The Great British Baking Show
86 - Shogun
87 - Reservation Dogs
88 - Dexter
89 - Baby Reindeer
90 - Eastbound & Down
91 - Catastrophe
92 - The Night Of
93 - Station Eleven
94 - The Diplomat
95 - House
96 - Halt and Catch Fire
97 - Community
98 - The OA
99 - Gilmore Girls
100 - Scandal
I’ll update this post daily until the #1 show is revealed.
"Sopranos" creator David Chase has said that in the age of streaming, the Golden Age is over. He treated the show's 25th anniversary more like a "funeral" for sophisticated TV, calling the Golden Age a "25-year blip" that won't be repeated.
This was a time when the line between TV and cinema blurred, and even auteurs like David Fincher, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Steven Soderbergh and Spike Lee brought personal projects to television.
The Golden Age gave us impossible moral dilemmas and characters we loved even when they did terrible things. Tony Soprano, Walter White, Don Draper. None of those shows ever told us how to judge these men. They trusted us to figure that out ourselves, and that was half the fun of watching.
Most of what I see on TV now does the opposite. It tells you who to root for, who to hate and exactly how you're supposed to feel about all of it. It's shallow, and much of it galls flat. Of course, there are still exceptions every year, but the barrage of nonstop greatness the small screen gave us during the first two decades of the 21st century is long gone.
Robert Eggers, who has already taken on witches, vikings, a vampire, and now werewolves, is turning to two teenagers in love. He's lined up a “Romeo and Juliet” adaptation at Focus Features.