Top 100 TV Shows

[blade1889]

Wonder how much Netflix has influenced some of the risers and fallers. Seems quite a few old shows have been given a new lease of life thanks to it.

 

[Cardsfan]

I loved the first two series of Sherlock, absolutely excellent TV, gripping storylines and relatively true to the original. The third series was fucking abysmal, almost a completely different show, whether they were catering to the "fans", it turned into a cringey, cheesey drama where Sherlock in particular was completely out of character. Are they making a fourth?

 

[Meadow]

I loved the first two series of Sherlock, absolutely excellent TV, gripping storylines and relatively true to the original. The third series was fucking abysmal, almost a completely different show, whether they were catering to the "fans", it turned into a cringey, cheesey drama where Sherlock in particular was completely out of character. Are they making a fourth?

Yup. Christmas special and a new series next year - I think. The Christmas one sounds a bit crap, it's set in Victorian times apparently.

 

[Rammy]

16. House of Cards
Points: 111 | Lists: 9 | Number One's: 0 | 2013 Position: 195th | 2011 Position: N/A
Seasons: 3 | Episodes: 39

Kevin Spacey successfully breaks the fourth wall in a role that was made for him.​

Having only just fimished its first season last time this feature ran, House of Cards makes a huge jump to a very good 16th place finish.

House of Cards is an American political drama. It is an adaptation of the BBC's mini-series of the same name and is based on the novel by Michael Dobbs. The entire first season, comprising thirteen episodes, premiered in February 2013, on the streaming service Netflix. House of Cards has been renewed for a fourth season, which will premiere in 2016. While Willimon has stated that plans for the show's future are decided after each season, lead actor Kevin Spacey has predicted that the series will run for a total of 12 seasons.

Set in present-day Washington, D.C., House of Cards is the story of Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey), a Democrat from South Carolina's 5th congressional district and House Majority Whip who, after being passed over for appointment as Secretary of State, initiates an elaborate plan to get himself into a position of greater power, aided by his wife, Claire Underwood (Robin Wright). The series deals primarily with themes of ruthless pragmatism, manipulation and power.

For its first season, House of Cards received nine Primetime Emmy Award nominations, becoming the first original online-only web television series to receive major Emmy nominations. Among its nine nominations were Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Kevin Spacey, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Robin Wright, and Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for David Fincher. The show also earned four Golden Globe Award nominations and Wright won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama to be the first major acting award for an online-only web television series. For its second season, the series received 13 Primetime Emmy Award nominations. This included further nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor (Kevin Spacey), Outstanding Lead Actress (Robin Wright), Outstanding Directing (Carl Franklin) and Outstanding Drama Series while also receiving nominations for Outstanding Writing (Beau Willimon), Outstanding Guest Actor (Reg E. Cathey) and Outstanding Guest Actress (Kate Mara). The second season also earned three nominations at the Golden Globes with Spacey winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama.

 

[Rammy]

15. Fawlty Towers *
Points: 127 | Lists: 9 | Number One's: 1 | 2013 Position: 16th | 2011 Position: 15th
Seasons: 2 | Episodes: 12​

Some consistency here from Fawlty Towers as it moves up one place to return to the 15th place finish it achieved in 2011. A notable large jump in score here, having only seen small increases up to now.

Fawlty Towers is a BBC sitcom that was first broadcast on BBC2 in 1975 and 1979. Twelve episodes were made (two series, each of six episodes). The show was written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, then married, both of whom also starred in the show.

The series is set in Fawlty Towers, a fictional hotel in the seaside town of Torquay, on the "English Riviera". The plots centre on tense, rude and put-upon owner Basil Fawlty (Cleese), his bossy wife Sybil (Prunella Scales), comparatively normal chambermaid Polly (Booth), and hapless Spanish waiter Manuel (Andrew Sachs), showing their attempts to run the hotel amidst farcical situations and an array of demanding and eccentric guests.

There are far too many excellent scenes from this show, but here's a select few. If you've been living under a rock and somehow never seen this, get it watched!!!

 

[Mustard]

Was gonna vote for Pointless but then I thought nah no points from me.

 

[Rammy]

14. I'm Alan Partridge
Points: 129 | Lists: 11 | Number One's: 0 | 2013 Position: 15th | 2011 Position: 7th
Seasons: 2 | Episodes: 12

Probably the best comedy character written. Awkward but hilarious, Alan Gordon Partridge has given us many great lines.​

I'm Alan Partridge is a BBC sitcom starring Steve Coogan, of which two series of six episodes each were produced — the first in 1997 and the second in 2002. The series followed the titular Alan Partridge, a failed television presenter whose previous exploits had featured in the chat-show parody Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge, and who is now presenting a programme on local radio in Norwich.

Both series were written by Peter Baynham (who also appears in one episode), Coogan and Armando Iannucci; supporting Coogan were Felicity Montagu as his faithful but timid personal assistant, Lynn Benfield; Simon Greenall as Geordie Travel Tavern handyman/BP garage attendant Michael; and Phil Cornwell as disc jockey Dave Clifton.

It has been well received by both critics and fans, and was nominated for three BAFTAs (winning two), two British Comedy Award (winning both), and a Royal Television Society award.

 

[blade1889]

Think I had Fawlty Towers as my top choice. Dont tire of watching it and one of those rare series' that left on a massive high and you wanting more.

 

[Jackinky]

Fawlty Towers was very high up on my list, have seen all the episodes about 10 times over, the only trouble with it is they didn't make enough episodes.

 

[Murphy]

Pointless finishing 21st pleases me. A lot. The BEST quiz show on TV. Crystal Maze scoring so high is also an excellent thing in my opinion.

Never been able to get into the Big Bang Theory sadly, never quite managed to evolve with the show.

 

[Magic]

The Big Bang Theory isn't even in the top 100 tv shows that didn't make the top 100 tv shows.

 

[Smally]

Been watching Big Bang Theory the last few days. Not really a fan of it, I don't really care that much for the characters. I can see why it's popular but it comes across to me as a show that tries too hard to be nerdy and funny but fails more often than not

 

[Rammy]

13. Peep Show
Points: 129 | Lists: 12 | Number One's: 0 | 2013 Position: 6th | 2011 Position: 8th
Seasons: 8 | Episodes: 48​

It's a first time outside the top ten for Peep Show, as it slips down to 13th. Peep Show is a British sitcom starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb. It has been broadcast on Channel 4 since 2003. In 2010 it became the longest-running comedy in Channel 4 history. Stylistically, the show uses point of view shots with the thoughts of main characters Mark and Jeremy audible as voice-overs.

Peep Show follows the lives of two men from their twenties to thirties. Mark Corrigan (Mitchell), who has steady employment for most of the series, and Jeremy "Jez" Usbourne (Webb), an unemployed would-be musician, are the main characters of the show. The pair met at the fictional Dartmouth University, and now share a flat in Croydon, south London. Mark is initially a loan manager at the fictional JLB Credit, later becoming a waiter and then a bathroom supplies salesman. He is financially secure but neurotic and socially awkward, with a pessimistic and cynical outlook on life. Jeremy, having split up with his girlfriend Big Suze prior to the first episode, now lives in Mark's spare room. He usually has a much more confident and happy-go-lucky outlook on the world than Mark, yet his self-proclaimed talent as a musician has yet to be recognised, and he is not as popular or attractive as he would like to think himself, although he is more successful with women than Mark.

In September 2013, Channel 4 announced that the show's ninth series will be its last and it will air in 2014. In January 2014, Bain stated work had not begun on the ninth series and he was not sure when production would begin. He also said he was not killing off the characters in case he wanted to continue the series. Series 9 began filming in August 2015 and will air late 2015 / early 2016.

 

[Hooray]

Peep Show was very high on my list. Cannot wait for the new series.

 

[Rammy]

12. Friends *
Points: 151 | Lists: 13 | Number One's: 1 | 2013 Position: 22nd | 2011 Position: 21st
Seasons: 10 | Episodes: 236​

Friends is an American sitcom, which originally aired on NBC from September 1994 to May 2004. It is somehow still repeated all day every day, with the rights currently held by ComedyCentral.

Kauffman and Crane began developing Friends under the title Insomnia Cafe between November and December 1993. They presented the idea to Bright, and together they pitched a seven-page treatment of the show to NBC. After several script rewrites and changes, including a second title change to Friends Like Us, the series was finally named Friends.

Despite it revolving around a circle of friends living in Manhattan, filming took place at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California. The series finale on May 6, 2004, was watched by around 52.5 million American viewers, making it the fifth most watched series finale in television history and the most watched episode of the decade.

Friends received positive reviews throughout its run, becoming one of the most popular sitcoms of all time. The series was nominated for 62 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning the Outstanding Comedy Series award in 2002 for its eighth season. The show led the Nielsen ratings with its eighth season and finished among the top five every year from 1995 to 2004.

 

[Rammy]

11. South Park
Points: 162 | Lists: 11 | Number One's: 0 | 2013 Position: 5th | 2011 Position: 3rd
Seasons: 18 | Episodes: 257

"Hay this is a good movie!" Officer Barbrady

A good show in it's prime, but is again let down by more recent series'. Although there's usually at least one gem of an episode in the later series'. Slutters Stotch.​

There's no place in the Top Ten for South Park this time around having finished third in 2011, and 5th in 2013. South Park is an American adult animated sitcom created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. The show revolves around four boys—Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormick—and their bizarre adventures in and around the titular Colorado town. Much like The Simpsons, South Park utilizes a very large ensemble cast of recurring characters. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become infamous for its crude language and dark, surreal humor that satirizes a wide range of topics.

Parker and Stone developed the show from two animated shorts they created in 1992 and 1995. The latter became one of the first Internet viral videos, which ultimately led to its production as a series. South Park debuted in August 1997 with great success, consistently earning the highest ratings of any basic cable program. Subsequent ratings have varied but it remains one of Comedy Central's highest rated shows, and is slated to air through at least 2019. The pilot episode was produced using cutout animation. All subsequent episodes are created with software that emulates the cutout technique. Parker and Stone perform most of the voice acting. Since 2000, each episode is typically written and produced during the week preceding its broadcast, with Parker serving as the primary writer and director. There have been a total of 257 episodes over the course of the show's 18 seasons.

South Park has received numerous accolades, including five Primetime Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and numerous inclusions in various publications' lists of greatest television shows. The show's popularity resulted in a feature-length theatrical film, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut which was released in June 1999, less than two years after the show's premiere, and became a commercial and critical success. South Park is the third longest-running animated series in the U.S. behind The Simpsons and Arthur.

 

[Cheese & Biscuits]

Friends is the most overrated show of all time.

EOM

 

[Gladders]

Friends is the most overrated show of all time.

EOM

Bollocks

 

[Cheese & Biscuits]

Bollocks

Is it? Don't get me wrong, it was a decent comedy but it's nowhere near as good as its position or popularity suggest.

It was such a lazy show. The writers just couldn't be arsed most of the time and slipped in a flashback. It also had so many plot holes in it. They just couldn't be arsed to make a consistent storyline.

Decent watch on an afternoon but far from being one of the best shows of all time.

Of course, all my opinion.

 

[Gladders]

Its better than 95% of the stuff in this list so far from overrated.

Of course, all my opinion

 

[mistermagic]

Is it? Don't get me wrong, it was a decent comedy but it's nowhere near as good as its position or popularity suggest.

It was such a lazy show. The writers just couldn't be arsed most of the time and slipped in a flashback. It also had so many plot holes in it. They just couldn't be arsed to make a consistent storyline.

Decent watch on an afternoon but far from being one of the best shows of all time.

Of course, all my opinion.

I'd agree with that. I think the fact that most of us grew up with it has something to do but the amount of quality episodes is really quite scarce.

Seinfeld owns Friends every day of the god damn century. Without Seinfeld, there wouldn't have been anyway Friends. And How I Met Your Mother.

 

[SALTIRE]

Which belters voted for fucking Friends! I mean Jesus, that is bad.

 

[Rammy]

10. The Walking Dead
Points: 162 | Lists: 15 | Number One's: 0 | 2013 Position: 12th | 2011 Position: 98th
Seasons: 5 | Episodes: 67

Great first series, but lost it's way a bit with the farm. Has appeared to be returning to form and heading in the right direction since the blip, however. Dick Mimes.


Sadly the best thing about The Walking Dead is the opening credits, but it does have huge potential (the most recent series was one of the best) and certainly has its moments.​

The Walking Dead is an American horror drama series developed by Frank Darabont, and based on the comic series of the same name by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard. British actor Andrew Lincoln plays the shows lead character, sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes, who awakens from a months long coma to confront an apocalyptic world overrun by zombies. Rick reunites with his family and becomes the leader of a group he forms with other survivors. Together they struggle to survive and adapt to a world filled with zombies and some humans who areeven more dangerous than the zombies themselves. The first season takes place in the Atlanta metropolitan area, the second through fourth seasons and the first half of the fifth season is set in the surrounding countryside of northern Georgia. The second half of season five sees the group primarily based in Alexandria, Virginia.

The Walking Dead premieried in the US in October 2010, on the cable channel AMC. AMC has renewed the show each year due to its consistently increasing audience, which have been unprecedentedly high for a cable series, including averaging the most 18- to 49-year-old adult viewers of any cable or broadcast television series during its fourth and fifth seasons. The series has been renewed for a sixth season, which will premiere in October 2015. An AMC companion series, Fear the Walking Dead, will debut August 23, 2015.

The series has been well received by critics and has been nominated for several awards, including the Writers Guild of America Award for Television: New Series and the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Drama.

 

[Rammy]

Now for the greatest show ever made. The true number one. The show so many have tried to replicate, but failed spectacularly. I'm talking about you FlashForward, The Event, and Revolution to name a few.

9. Lost **
Points: 188 | Lists: 14 | Number One's: 2 | 2013 Position: 10th | 2011 Position: 5th
Seasons: 6 | Episodes: 121

4 8 15 16 23 42​

Constantly kept you on edge with its ever-changing storylines. Good cast of characters. The ending wasn't that bad.

"It's never BEEN easy, Jack!"​

Just stop watching it soon enough for it not to be shit.

Lost is always going to hold a special place in my heart, because I didn't really watch TV shows until I started checking it out. So in a sense it was the first proper series I watched. A lot of people like to shit on it, but while it was running it was more than a TV show, it was a fucking event. Everybody talking about it all the time, and I used to love coming on TFF to talk about it with everybody on here, doing my long ass write ups analysing every detail. No show before or since has created the same level of popularity and discussion.​

Lost keeps hold of its top ten place it's now held in all three lists. It is an American drama that originally aired on ABC from September 2004 to May 2010. The show contained elements of science fiction and the supernatural. It follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet, flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean. The story is told in a heavily serialized manner. Episodes typically feature a primary storyline set on the island, augmented by flashback or flashforward sequences which provide additional insight into the involved character

Lost was created by Jeffrey Lieber, J. J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, who share story-writing credits for the pilot episode, which Abrams directed. Throughout the show's run, Lindelof and Carlton Cuse served as showrunners and head writers, working together with a large number of other executive producers and writers. Due to its large ensemble cast and the cost of filming primarily on location in Oahu, Hawaii, the series was one of the most expensive on television, with the pilot alone costing over $14 million. The fictional universe and mythology of Lost are expanded upon by a number of related media, most importantly, a series of short mini-episodes called Missing Pieces, and a 12-minute epilogue titled "The New Man in Charge".

A critically acclaimed and popular success, Lost has been consistently ranked by critics on their lists of the top ten television series of all time. The first season garnered an estimated average of 16 million viewers per episode on ABC. During its sixth and final season, the show averaged over 11 million U.S. viewers per episode. Lost was the recipient of hundreds of industry award nominations throughout its run and won numerous of these awards, including the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series in 2005, Best American Import at the British Academy Television Awards in 2005, the Golden Globe Award for Best Drama in 2006, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Drama Series. Lost was declared the highest-rated show for the first ten years of IMDb.com Pro (2002–2012).

Throughout its run people took to the internet to discuss theories on the shows biggest questions and mysteries. Broadcasters have repeatedly tried and failed to replicate this kind of attention/obsession from the audience.

 

[Mr. Scruff]

Lost in 9th

If we needed any more confirmation of people sending in joke lists its beyond doubt now.

 

[blade1889]

Lost in 9th

If we needed any more confirmation of people sending in joke lists its beyond doubt now.

I think it was probably Rammy sending in the joke lists

 

[Oaf]

Yeah, the fact that it didn't crack the top 3 is an outrage. Fuck you all with your joke lists.

 

[mistermagic]

Never heard of it.

 

[RavenBish]

Lost is shite and always will be

 

[Murphy]

Walking Dead and Peep Show are brilliant (Even if I forgot to put the latter on my list ) Fawlty Towers great as well even if it didn't make my list, and like BBT, I've never been able to get into Friends.