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

Homicide: Life on the Street

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This deeply character-based police drama from Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson was notable for being a show where the murders were less important than the psyches of the cops who solved them (and sometimes failed to). The ongoing drama involved the Baltimore detectives who tried to turn the writing on the murder board from red (unsolved) to black (closed), including cerebral, intense Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher), sensitive rookie Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor), imperious Lt. Al Giardello (Yaphet Kotto) and sardonic John Munch (Richard Belzer). With an acute sense of the media, political and spiritual ramifications of crime, Homicide drew a broad picture of how many lives were changed when one is taken.