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

Deadwood

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In this Western, the West is not so much won as stolen—first, of course, from the barely seen Indians, then by mining corporations from the prospectors who risked death and ruin to find the gold in them-thar hills. (These thar ones being the Black Hills, of South Dakota, just after Little Big Horn.) The law is as much a bludgeon as a savior, as the powerful strike sweetheart deals and the little guys scrabble as best they can: Al Swearengen, the Bowie-knife-wielding saloonkeeper; Seth Bullock, the lawman with rage issues; and Calamity Jane, the drunk, brokenhearted former pal of the doomed Wild Bill Hickok. Written with Shakespearean filigree by David Milch, these characters gave Deadwood its vulgar poetry.