‘Time’ Magazine’s 100 Greatest TV Shows List Not As Stupid As You Might Think

Time magazine’s TV critic, James Poniewozik, offers up the magazine’s definitive list of the 100 greatest television shows of all time (sorry, “all-TIME”). The list is surprisingly good, hitting pretty much every critic-bait mark in drama and comedy. The Wire? Check. Buffy? Check. Arrested Development? Check. Freaks and Geeks? Check. The Simpsons and The Sopranos? Double check! Poniewozik even does a decent job of including some shows that don’t fit the traditional comedy/drama mold: American Idol, SportsCenter, Sesame Street, and “MTV 1981–1992” are all, appropriately, on the list.

All that said, even a 100-strong list excludes some worthy candidates, so we’re wondering: Where’s Mister Rogers? Where’s Jeopardy!? What about The Flintstones, V, Angels in America, Law & Order, Today, and NYPD Blue? Surely you could have knocked out Felicity for one of those shows, right? And that’s not even mentioning the most outrageous exclusion of all, You Can’t Do That on Television, a show whose absence from the list makes us so angry we can only say, I don’t know what Poniewozik is — ARRRGHH!

The 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME [Time]