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

Dallas

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J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) took America from the 1970s to the 1980s. 1978, when Dallas appeared, was in the midst of the Iran crisis, on the heels of gas crunches, energy crises and Jimmy Carter in a cardigan telling us to dial back our thermostats: an oil baron as a primetime villain made perfect sense. And the summer of 1980, when the country caught Who Shot J.R.? fever, was when Ronald Reagan was about to begin the '80s love affair with business and money. But current-events relevance was just the icing on Dallas' petroleum-soaked cake: it was the perfect primetime soap because of its timeless mix of sex, money, intrigue, family and lies. Plus a delightful, stetson-hatted villain whom everyone had a reason to kill—and whom, therefore, viewers wanted to live forever.