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

Monty Python's Flying Circus

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If not for the efforts of five Britons (and one American animator), paid for by the BBC and imported by PBS, nerds the world over would still have to impress each other by quoting the periodic table of the elements. Python made erudition cool by tearing out the final stones in the Hadrian's wall between high and low culture, showing that Sartre references and "botty" jokes could live together in hilarious sin. The show's droll, Dadaist sketches—I won't try to list them, but your brother or nephew in college will be glad to—hold up so well decades later because they focus on the timeless: philosophy, the class system and, of course, the eternal issue of transvestitism in the lumber industry.