#1. Mad Men
AMC

The year's best new show is a time machine: It recreates the style, mores and ideas of 1960 with astonishing detail and even more astonishing clouds of cigarette smoke. It's also a timeless machine: Don Draper is a self-reinventing American protagonist in the mold of classic characters like Jay Gatsby and Huck Finn. Unflinching in portraying a sexist, un-P.C. time, Mad Men gives its men and women depth and complexity. And that's not just blowing smoke.