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

Playhouse 90

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While Playhouse 90 was unquestionably a great show, it wasn't really a great *TV* show; it was a theater repertory producing stage plays that happened to have cameras pointed at them. But TV is a distribution tool as well as an art form, and Playhouse 90 produced some of the finest writing and acting that TV's electrons have managed to carry. Its original productions—often performed live—included Requiem for a Heavyweight and The Miracle Worker, while its adaptations brought writers like George Bernard Shaw and William Faulkner some of the biggest audiences they would ever have. Later TV dramas took advantage of the wider possibilities that videotaping offered, but this anthology gave them a high target to aim for.

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  1. The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting
  2. The '00s: Goodbye (at Last) to the Decade From Hell
  3. Workers of the World vs. China Inc.
  4. The Gospel of Glee: Is It Anti-Christian?
  5. In Italy, A Sex Scandal to Rival Berlusconi's
  6. How to Get Smarter, One Breath at a Time
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  10. Obama's 'Mistakes': Way Too Early to Judge
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