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

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

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"Ahead of its time" is a cliche for cult shows, but it may also be an understatement in this case. I'm not sure the time will ever quite come for Norman Lear's fantastically weird, deadpan parody of soap operas and consumer culture. A nightly comedy-drama, set in a small town in Ohio, its stories involved country music, a murder mystery and the title star, played by Louise Lasser in her iconic pigtails, a housewife obsessed with waxy buildup on her kitchen floors. Following the binge of the '60s and the purge of Watergate, Lear's unsettlingly sardonic show captured a hungover America, wandering in a Valium-like haze, morally adrift, and addicted to—you guessed it—television.

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