TV: What are your top 10 shows of the 2010s? Part Infinity + 1

[Elvis P]

Mine are in no order.

1. Sherlock
2. Homelands
3. House of Cards
4. Fargo
5. Mad Men
6. Better Call Saul
7. Mr Robot
8. The Americans
9. Westworld
10. The Man in the High Castle

Click to read more...

 

[Ducks in a row]

In no particular order from shows from 2010 to present

Spartacus Blood and Sand,Gods of the Arena,Vengeance and War of the Damned (counting all as one)

Falling Skies

The Man in the High Castle

Timeless

Continuum

Black Mirror

Black Sails

Almost Human

Dark Matter

Terra Nova

 

[Elvis P]

Thanks for posting. It's nice to see some less obvious choices.

 

[frisco]

I don't think I have ten but:

Homeland
The League
Californication
Mad Men
Breaking Bad
The Simpsons (still)
Modern Family
X-Files (new incarnation)
Curb
Sharp Objects

My Best-Carey

 

[Shareefruck]

These are all the ones that I don't have major reservations about

1. Tatami Galaxy
2. Louie
3. Atlanta
4. Ping Pong: The Animation
5. Horace and Pete
6. Mad Men
7. Devilman Crybaby
8. Planet Earth II
--
9. The Thick of It
10. Generation Kill

 

[The Crypto Guy]

Off the top of my head in no order:

- Game of Thrones
- Black Sails
- The Leftovers
- 13 Reasons Why
- Stranger Things
- S.W.A.T.
- Chicago PD
- Chicago FD
- Rookie Blue
- Survivor
- This is Us

I'm sure i left off 1-2.

 

[Teemu]

1. Game of Thrones
2. Justified
3. Parks & Recreation
4. The Americans
5. Breaking Bad
6. Community
7. BoJack Horseman
8. Happy Endings
9. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
10. Kroll Show

 

[reckoning]

I'm probably forgetting something, but...

1. Twin Peaks: The Return
2. The Affair
3. Boardwalk Empire
4. Silicon Valley
5. Broadchurch
6. True Detective
7. Enlightened
8. The Newsroom
9. Veep
10. Penny Dreadful

 

[Carlzner]

The Leftovers
Nathan for you
Westworld
TD Season 1
Parts Unknown
Breaking Bad
Fargo Season 2
Game of Thrones
House of Cards
Veep/Sherlock

Kinda in order and not much thought put into the list.

 

[SJSharksfan39]

I'll list what I can come up with. Not sure if I can come up with 10

Orphan Black
Orange is the New Black
Stranger Things
The Expanse
First season if Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Veep
Parks and Recreation
The Good Place
The Flash

 

[RobBrown4PM]

The Expanse
Better Call Saul
Attack on Titan
Fargo
Boardwalk Empire
The man in the high castle


And that's about it

Also, I can't believe Terra Nova was mentioned. To each their own, but the show was bad bad bad. The idea for the show they shredded prior to production had so much more potential, and would have probably saved the show.

Can't believe they had a no kill rule for the Dinos.

 

[Babe Ruth]

I can't do ten, but..

I like The Goldbergs..
Breaking Bad
Blue Bloods
F is for Family

 

[kihei]

Heavy on mysteries, especially British ones (in order):

Luther
The Young Montalbano (Italian)
Dr. Who
Inspector Montalbano (Italian)
Game of Thrones
Worricker Trilogy (Bill Nighy--and highly recommended)
River (Stellen Skarsgard --and highly recommend)
Sherlock
Shetland
Wallander (Sweden, but the British series with Kenneth Branagh is almost as good)

HM: HNIC; Breaking Bad; Vera; Broadchurch; Happy Valley

 

[Shareefruck]

Huh... for some reason I always assumed that Sherlock was just throwaway entertainment rather than something that was so well received.

 

[davemess]

Probably missing some obvious ones but from the top of my head

Game of Thrones
Peaky Blinders
Sherlock
Mindhunter
Banshee
The Newsroom
Hannibal
True Detective
Penny Dreadful
Luther

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Horace and Pete, Louie and Atlanta are the only shows that I feel were/are consistently great. I've enjoyed other stuff, some with great peaks, but most shows lose steam for me.

 

[Pattysaurus]

Game of Thrones
Parks and Recreation
The Americans
Justified
Mad Men
Stranger Things
Peaky Blinders
Fargo
Lovesick
This Is Us

 

[Fantomas]

Most TV is bad, including the so-called prestige TV. I'm of the view that television does not produce masterpieces, with very few exceptions (like Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, for example). But there is some entertaining fast food TV from recent years, such as:

- Garrow's Law
- Line of Duty
- Party Down (right on the edge of the two decades)
- Louie
- Wolf Hall
- True Detective season 1
- The Missing
- Happy Valley
- Äkta människor

Many shows start out really good, but then fizzle out. Examples being Silicon Valley and Stranger Things.

Fargo's season two wasn't bad.

Sherlock is absolutely horrid. For a good Holmes adaptation look no further than the old Soviet TV miniseries with Vasily Livanov.

 

[Fantomas]

2. The Affair

An underrated "chick flick" show. Perfect to watch with a spouse.

Completely silly throughout, but with a few powerful moments. I finished season 4 recently and wow what a punch in the gut!

 

[Shareefruck]

Most TV is bad, including the so-called prestige TV. I'm of the view that television does not produce masterpieces, with very few exceptions (like Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, for example). But there is some entertaining fast food TV from recent years, such as:

- Garrow's Law
- Line of Duty
- Party Down (right on the edge of the two decades)
- Louie
- Wolf Hall
- True Detective season 1
- The Missing
- Happy Valley
- Äkta människor

Many shows start out really good, but then fizzle out. Examples being Silicon Valley and Stranger Things.

Fargo's season two wasn't bad.

Sherlock is absolutely horrid. For a good Holmes adaptation look no further than the old Soviet TV miniseries with Vasily Livanov.

Completely agreed.

 

[tacogeoff]

Black Sails
Banshee
Ozark
Justified
Game of Thrones
Spartacus
Boardwalk Empire
True Detective
Parks and Rec
Hell on Wheels

 

[blueandgoldguy]

Most TV is bad, including the so-called prestige TV. I'm of the view that television does not produce masterpieces, with very few exceptions (like Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, for example). But there is some entertaining fast food TV from recent years, such as:

- Garrow's Law
- Line of Duty
- Party Down (right on the edge of the two decades)
- Louie
- Wolf Hall
- True Detective season 1
- The Missing
- Happy Valley
- Äkta människor

Many shows start out really good, but then fizzle out. Examples being Silicon Valley and Stranger Things.

Fargo's season two wasn't bad.

Sherlock is absolutely horrid. For a good Holmes adaptation look no further than the old Soviet TV miniseries with Vasily Livanov.

Please elaborate on the bolded. Why do you consider most tv bad? Is it the over-reliance on cliff-hangers? Something else? And what makes the above shows "fast food tv" vs something that is ... I don't know... a fine dining experience?

 

[Nalens Oga]

Four people mentioned Parks & Rec...it started in 2009. So did Community to the person who mentioned that and Modern Family.

Network comedy is poor now, the sitcoms have been terrible in general this decade. The Good Place is the only truly great one imo followed by a few decent ones like Brooklyn 9-9 or Superstore but they don't come close to the better 2000s sitcoms. There are some good non-network ones like Kimmy Schmidt and American Vandal or Veep but really it's mostly bad family sitcoms or 'dramedies' like Master of None or This Is Us.

As for the person who said most TV is bad....I kinda agree. It's not bad, it's accessible and enjoyable but it feels like empty calories and insignificant compared to film. The whole serialized format leads to too much formula and repetition. And I don't mind that in an enjoyable film even if it's low-brow, it's just that once I'm done the film, I'm done the film. Not having to be tied to one episode and another and another season etc.

 

[Shareefruck]

Also, because of the reliance on limited networks, content delivery services, marketing, and ratings (with which your only choice as a show-runner is to be completely at the mercy of), show-runners rarely get an opportunity to make something truly uncompromising and that is allowed to just stand entirely on its own (without having to fall back on tricks that compromise their integrity in order to pull audiences in and keep them addicted), or the opportunity to dedicate all of their passion to one cohesive finite experience that starts and ends.

There are no TV-equivalents to film schools and there are no independent TV show festivals in every major city across the world that one can hone their craft and build a reputation with, so it's tougher for creatives to even get a sniff unless they fit a certain mold or are willing to allow advertisers/higher ups to influence their work. Even if all else was equal, the odds of a typical five-season television series being absolutely perfect is about as likely as a filmmaker creating five consecutively perfect movies in a row on a tight schedule. There are so many more opportunities and pressure coming from all sides that can screw it up, and one episode out of dozens is really all it takes.

Of the minuscule percentage of incredibly lucky show-runners who are given an opportunity that allows them to escape all of these traps (something that has only recently STARTED to become a possibility), how many of them are actually artistic geniuses capable of creating a masterpiece? How many giants are there that they can actually be inspired to stand on the shoulders of? Film required decades and decades of that kind of culture being cultivated literally all over the world (with fewer opportunity barriers, greater international interest, and just generally being taken more seriously as artform) in order to build up that kind of peak and consistency-- Television isn't going to just catch up overnight on the backs of HBO.

 

[Fantomas]

Please elaborate on the bolded. Why do you consider most tv bad? Is it the over-reliance on cliff-hangers? Something else? And what makes the above shows "fast food tv" vs something that is ... I don't know... a fine dining experience?

Before I articulate this further, please know that I like fast food. I eat a lot of it, but we all need different kinds of nourishment.

Most TV is made for the purpose of generating profit for large corporations and therefore it adheres to modes of storytelling and style that are conventional predictors for success with audiences. Movies are different because historically many have been made - and some are still made - under conditions where profit-making was not the fundamental end-goal. For example the French New Wave films were made at a time when French national cinema was heavily subsidized as a way of differentiating the country's filmic output from the Hollywood model. Similarly American films in the late-60s and early-70s were made without strict corporate oversight due to the downfall of the old studio system, which was a brief period in which subversive cinema flourished. This resulted in experiments with cinema that, again, sought to experiment beyond familiar trappings of conventional, classical trappings of style and narration - goal-oriented protagonist, stylistic unity, cause-and-effect chains.

Television has traditionally been in the business of distraction, marketing, advertising, immediate gratification. In many ways the opposite of what films can do, because you could go to the movies and actually allow yourself to be challenged and surprised. Films could affect you both politically and spiritually in a way television never could. Although Hollywood has shown in the past that it is possible to make outstanding films in a profit-driven model, there are certain forms of expression that are not possible in such contexts (e.g., forbidden political speech, narrative and stylistic approaches deemed too boring or confusing for mainstream consumption). Great films were made, but under exceptional circumstances, slipping through the cracks as a result of great sacrifices to some people. Television was much more closed to such opportunities.

The so-called 'golden age of tv' started around the time of HBO's Sopranos, spurring many attempts at prestige TV - shows like Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, and others, which are supposed to be more cinematic than traditional TV, offering more narrative ambiguity, attention to style and detail and high production values. But prestige TV never strives as far as most narratively and politically subversive films have gone -- you will never see anything as politically controversial and stylistically difficult as Godard, or as surrealistic as Ruiz, or as psychologically penetrating as Bergman, or as spiritually overwhelming as Tarkovsky. And this has to do with the basic economic realities of making television in present time, which always demand a financial return for the investment. Even prestige tv is about satisfying viewers, or giving viewers whatever producers and showrunners believe will satisfy them, rather than what some movies historically attempted to do - - convey the artistic vision and integrity of auteurs.

And unlike Hollywood of old, TV is probably too rigid to allow many creative accidents. The Coen brothers could raise a shoestring budget to film Blood Simple in the 1980s, but who will raise enough money for an entire season of a TV production? I think only a studio could do that, or perhaps a very wealthy benefactor with particular conditions and expectations of return.

I'm not saying that television is bad, because I enjoy TV (and sometimes I only have the mental energy to watch something that does not challenge me on an intellectual level). And, as I've said earlier, there are some exceptions. But there seem to be few of these, and lately even the barebones expectations of prestige TV have not delivered. Many contemporary TV series are not even competent in the most basic sense, because you can tell that productions are rushed, when storytelling justifies 3 or 4 episodes but is stretched into an 8 or 10 episode season to make more money. The series I've listed are those that I have found to be among the most competently written and filmed.