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
The Honeymooners
The story of bus driver Ralph Kramden and wife Alice was an unfancy celebration of unfancy people. The episodes—most of them sketches within The Jackie Gleason Show—were limited to sparse sets, usually the Kramdens' bare bones Brooklyn walkup. But the dynamics between rubber-faced Gleason, Audrey Meadows and swivel-hipped jack-in-the-box Art Carney as sewer guy Ed Norton made the setting seem expansive. OK, so it was TV's most famous example of spouse-abuse-threats-as-comedy. But knowing that there was no way Alice was ever actually going to go to the moon only added to Ralph's blobby comic ineffectuality.
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