Favorite TV series of your lifetime.

[Montecfo]

Great lists!

Breaking Bad
The Unit
Burn Notice
Alias
Seinfeld
Downton Abbey
Poldark


Going deeper into the archives...

Monte Pythons Flying Circus
The Fugitive
Dallas
Get Smart
Green Acres

 

[Midpack]

I am usually tired of most shows by the time they close out, e.g. we liked The Big Bang Theory but it had lost its appeal to us in the last couple of years.

The only three TV shows I can think of that I still wanted more of when they signed off were The West Wing, House and Northern Exposure...

 

[charais]

Growing up I loved Gidget with Sally Field and Peter Duel. (Duel was also in Alias Smith and Jones, another good show) And Dark Shadows! Funny to watch it now...so cheesy! But we loved Quentin and Barnabas! Ha! I also loved Star Trek TNG. Jean-Luc Picard! Be still my heart

 

[FrankiesGirl]

I saw so many shows in this list that had me emphatically saying "yes!", but there's one I didn't see that I dearly loved:

Six Feet Under (HBO)

On occasion, I watch the series finale. The music and the preview into their collective futures really stuck with me. Off to see if I can find it right now.

Just coming in to say this. Best damned series wrap up I've ever seen. Was bawling at the end of it but it was so perfect. Whole thing was just... wonderful. Characters you hated, then fell in love with, characters you loved and then hated. They grew, some grew up, some came out, some found love and meaning and through it all the cycle of love and birth and death and family and the whole "what is the meaning of life" type of thing. And lots of humor. And drama. And weirdness. And beauty. And sadness. And loss. And messy vibrant sometime heartbreaking sometimes joyful life... which I guess is the whole point of it all.



Any day above ground is a good day.




But for me in no particular order (in addition to the above):


Buffy The Vampire Slayer
MASH
The Rockford Files
Murder She Wrote
Midsomer Murders
Barney Miller
WKRP In Cincinnati
The Office
The Venture Bros.

 

[blueskyk]

Seinfeld is the best television series of all time.

Yaahhhsss! We watch reruns and they are STILL funny.

The Office is right up there as well

 

[eytonxav]

Sopranos
Dallas
All in the Family
Prison Break
Lost
Green Acres
Seinfeld
Wild Wild West
Wild Kingdom
Billions
Three Stooges
Little Rascals
Andy's Gang
Twilight Zone
Home Improvement
Peyton Place
Cheers
Married with Children
Rifleman
Have Gun will Travel
Sea Hunt
Bonanza
Wagon Train
Wonder Years
Leave it to Beaver
Father Knows Best
Dragnet

 

[misshathaway]

Sopranos
.
.
.

Nothing else should even be in the same column

 

[scrabbler1]

I'm not sure it has risen to "lifetime" status yet, but in the last 6 months I have been getting deep into "The Good Wife," recently in syndication on two networks - the cable TV network StartTV and a local independent OTA network.


As a fan of "L.A. Law" back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I liked those courtroom dramas. L.A. Law went downhill in its last few seasons when it emphasized personal issues more than the courtroom stuff. The Good Wife seems to better intertwine political stuff with its courtroom stuff.


Speaking of courtroom dramas, I forgot to mention the original Law & Order on my previous lifetime list. Not its still-running spinoff, SVU, because it has many lousy episodes.

 

[Qs Laptop]

I'm going to list shows that I really, really like based on the fact that I have rewatched them or in the case of Burn Notice and The Americans I would happily rewatch them.


Comedy
M*A*S*H
Cheers

Sci-Fi
Star Trek TOS
Dr. Who
Stargate SG1
X-Files

Action/Intrigue/Spy
24
Burn Notice (binge watched this in the past several months--think of it as James Bond meets Mission Impossible meets MacGyver)
Mission Impossible, 1960's era

Drama
The Practice, esp. earlier seasons
The Americans
Halt and Catch Fire
Blacklist

There's a lot that's not on my list that's on other people's lists. Breaking Bad was very interesting, well acted, and had great production values. I would never watch it again, however.

I've not seen many favorites of others like GOT, The Wire, Justified, House of Cards, Sopranos, The West Wing, etc.

I'm open to suggestions from others. Look over my list and make suggestions as to what you think I would like. Thanks.

 

[mickeyd]

The Five.

 

[Calico]

I saw so many shows in this list that had me emphatically saying "yes!", but there's one I didn't see that I dearly loved:

Six Feet Under (HBO)

On occasion, I watch the series finale. The music and the preview into their collective futures really stuck with me. Off to see if I can find it right now.

I never watched this show when it aired, but given all the heartfelt testimonials to it in this thread, I have added it to my Amazon queue.

 

[W2R]

When I was a kid, I loved The Lone Ranger and The Cisco Kid. I wasn't always able to watch those shows each week, but when I could I got a huge kick out of them.

Honestly I haven't really seen any TV shows as an adult that I liked as much. I thought I liked Househunters and Joan of Arcadia, but after a few years of not watching TV at all (and getting "unaddicted" I guess), I saw an episode of each on Youtube and thought both were pretty stupid.

 

[CoolRich59]

Mad Money with Jim Cramer.

LOL!!

I’m not a big TV watcher, but I always liked the Rockford Files.

 

[HFWR]

A nod to PBS for Nova, Frontline, and American Experience...

 

[Cessna152]

Newer stuff, probably Billions and House of Cards. Older series over the past 30 years, probably Dallas (JR was/is my hero). Before that, I liked Route 66 and the Big Valley.

The favorites seem to skew to shows from the mid 1960s and later, which is fine since favorites are established at a young age when one has time to savor TV. In my own prime working years I watched very little TV.

But late-in-life discoveries can get around that. Route 66 started airing when I was only 4 years old. Have Gun, Will Travel started airing when I was 1 year old. About 4 years ago I needed something to watch while exercising on an elliptical once every day, so I started watching series that had enough episodes to keep me looking forward to the next day’s exercise for months. Some were faint memories I wanted to flesh out. Of all the series that I went through, Route 66 and Have Gun, Will Travel stood out with a high proportion of well written and well acted shows. I didn’t watch Big Valley but imagine it was on a par with its peers of the time, which were generally well written (because good writing was a priority back then.)

Side note: Route 66 did something that is unlikely to ever be done again: every episode was filmed on location (in a couple cases the town was given a fictional name but not the state.) The homogenization of culture that the freeways and broadcast TV brought to the U.S. had been underway only a few years, so the show managed to capture some of the now-lost regional differences.

 

[Another Reader]

Masterpiece Theater. The First Churchills and Upstairs Downstairs were my favorites. Susan Hampshire was the best.

The others already cited - Star Trek, M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore, Twilight Zone, Bonanza, and the rest, add in Sixty Minutes and Wall Street Week.

Haven't watched much TV in the last 15 years or so. The older HGTV programs were interesting, too over the top now.

 

[bushpilot]

The Rockford Files
The Bob Newhart Show, and Newhart
MASH
The Rifleman

And some of the others previously mentioned. I basically gave up TV in the 90s, so I can't really name anything that meant anything to me since then. Most weeks go by without ours being turned on.

 

[bja1234]

Barney Miller
Coach

 

[kingkarmann]

Mad Men
Love the drinking and debauchery!

Firefly
Love interstellar westerns!

 

[morriss003]

Grew up watching Bonanza, Andy Griffen show, Mary Tyler Moore, etc. which were all great. Started watching Parenthood for a second go round and have personally declared this series is one of the greatest ever produced. The show touches on so many elements of my personal life specific to Asberger's.. Wish there were more seasons. What show has touched you regarding your life's travels?

Babylon 5, Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, Star Trek, Star Gate. Laugh In, The Smothers Brothers

 

[Katsmeow]

Hard to say what has touched my life travels. I don't really evaluate shows that way. My two favorites are probably West Wing and, well, Buffy.

 

[MultiEventer]

I'm a sci-fi fan so the original Star Trek is probably my all time fav. But there have been some absolutely magnificent sci-fi shows since of course. The 2000 version of BattleStar Galactica; X-Files; Fringe; Stargate SG1 and Firefly come to mind as sci-fi masterpieces that are hard to beat. I've not seen a sci-fi show in 10 years that come even close. In fact, the new stuff disgusts me as it is more about pushing an immoral lifestyle on you than getting into true, 'hard' sci-fi where they go into scientific/engineering detail that bends your mind. Those days are currently gone but I hope it returns. I read about 'conservative' sci-fi fans that want a return to true sci-fi senerios where every other character is not a trans or gay making a political statement. But as of now, you can't find anything on tv that is not inundated with it. Call me a bigot. Call me old fashioned. Whatever! But I like what I like.

 

[JakeinChina]

As a child, I remember the show Dallas as being the biggest thing ever. I think it was on Sunday nights?


Growning up, the Wonder Years was amazing.


Recently Cheers, Seinfeld and the Sopranos are my favs.

 

[kwblack]

Considering I didn't watch much TV until I retired, my list is longer than I expected.

Star Trek, TOS, TNG
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Here come The Brides
MASH
Sopranos

Some others, I'm sure, but the top two (tied):

Battlestar Galactica 2003, and Deadwood.

Deadwood scores a bit higher. Beyond the language, it's loaded with tiny grace note scenes that only become clear after multiple watching. I've bought one book about the making of it, and just donated to a kickstarter campaign for a new book. Both shows had gifted show-runners who had a real vision (most of the time...RDM got a little off track at times).

There's a longer list of shows that were favorites and didn't get the seasons they deserved: Firefly, Defiance, Forever, among others.

Galavant is one of those but it's in a class of it's own, a musical medieval fantasy tale that parodied, with respect, a ton of Broadway musicals.

I'm putting Sons of Anarchy and Justified on my list partially because they seemed to be in competition to see who could hire the most "Deadwood" alumni. Although "Fear the Walking Dead" is coming up close, since they've now had at least three "Deadwood" alumni on.

 

[bclover]

the Cosby show
The West wing
Designer women