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

Six Feet Under

BACK
NEXT

View All

Digg
Facebook
Twitter
MORE
- Add to my:
- Blog this on:
  - TypePad
  - LiveJournal
  - Blogger
  - WordPress
  - MySpace

Alan Ball's all-in-the-funeral-family drama expanded on the themes of his movie American Beauty: families keep secrets, people maintain facades, and while death may be final, life is messy. The saga of the Fishers reveled in its characters' contradictions: matriarch Ruth (Frances Conroy) was both uptight and free-spirited; artist daughter Claire (Lauren Ambrose) was insightful yet whiny; son David (Michael C. Hall) was repressed yet brave; other son Nate (Peter Krause) was idealistic yet could be a total jerk. In its bravura last few episodes Nate dies of a brain hemorrhage—just after splitting up with his wife from his hospital bed—and the Fishers themselves became the mourners, celebrating Nate's imperfect life and moving on. The elegiac epilogue, fast-forwarding through the lives and deaths of each remaining main character, was the series' best imaginable epitaph.