The 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME

"First, I apologize. I know I left some of your favorite shows off this list. How do I know that? Because I left some of my favorite shows off this list. The happy and unfortunate fact is that there are far more than 100 great shows, and more created every year. Lists are incredibly important: they are how we define what matters to us, what we want entertainment and art to do, what we expect of our culture."
—TIME TV critic James Poniewozik

Cheers

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Long before Lost, there was a series about the connections among a group of unrelated people on an island. This island just happened to have stools around it and an alcoholic ex-pitcher pulling beers in the middle of it. Cheers' setting—not home, not an office—set it at the margins of its characters' lives; a bar is where you go to get away from the big events of your life, not live them out. That meant that Cheers was free to find humor in the little things—Cliff's obsession with trivia, Norm's greetings, Carla's insults. And the one big thing driving the show's early years, Sam and Diane's bickering romance, was a rare will-they-won't-they-oh-they-just-did storyline that didn't disappoint. Cheers was playful, urbane and bracing as a tall cold one.