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

My So-Called Life

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Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz made their name in TV with thirtysomething, a drama about solipsistic adults who saw their every minor crisis as an all-consuming tragedy. In other words, they acted like teenagers. And in the producers' follow-up high-school drama, the same navel-gazing was somehow more sympathetic and appropriate. Angela Chase (Claire Danes) was a fully realized TV teen, smart and perceptive one minute, whiny and unstable the next, ready to burst into red-faced tears after getting jerked around by learning-challenged heartthrob Jordan Catalano. Angela's narration was angsty in that '90s, suburban, I've-listened-to-In-Utero-a-million-times way—"School is a battlefield for your heart"—but she won the battle for our hearts anyway.