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

Dragnet

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Viewed alongside a complex modern cop drama like The Wire or even The Shield, Jack Webb's mother of all procedurals looks like a cave painting. But there's an artistic economy to the show's simple storylines and clipped cadences—Det. Joe Friday may never have used a semicolon in his life. And a lot of more ambitious dramas could learn something from its clean, documentary style and single-minded commitment to story, story, story. ("Just the facts, ma'am" was not a slogan but a command.) And then there are the spare, noir visuals; not only did this show teach Law & Order and CSI how to tell stories, it looked damn fine doing it. Friday kept his personal life under his tilted-just-so hat, but he arrested our attention all the same.

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