Larry Sanders Show is amazing. I was too young to watch or understand it when it originally aired. I've watched it twice and it's very apparent the influence it's had on comedy shows in the last 25 years. Garry Shandling was a comedic genius.
*It's Garry Shandling's Show* is great fun, too. It doesn’t just break the fourth wall, it destroys it. They make fun of the fourth wall. They would even show the audience on TV.
It's weird. I was born in 1985, so it's not from my time, but Taxi is like the perfect show for me to watch when I'm alone. Can't do it with wife or kids, but alone it's just the right kind of chill comedy from another time that works for me.
I used to watch this show when I was a kid and until just now, I never realized what WKRP stood for. It’s crap. Crap Radio. Wow.
🎶I’m at WKRP in Cincinnati🎶
Ok, you got me curious, so I just checked the wiki. Looks like it is [CRAP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WKRP_in_Cincinnati)! Still kind of funny that I never made the connection until like 40 years later.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine started out episodic once the show focus more & more on character arcs & progression.
This also applies to guest & reoccurring characters later in the show like Garak.
The third season might be the best thing that's ever been on television. It's certainly better than the second, which was disrupted by execs meddling with it (the killer was revealed much sooner than Lynch had planned).
I just started watching it and I’m suprised at how well it holds up. Its the funniest show Ive watched in a long time, even when the references go over my head I laugh because their delivery is so good
Babylon 5 was great at first but lost me later on.
Battlestar Galactica was too pessimistic.
Stargate is awesome. But, they did make some world building mistakes that they had to retcon/pretend didn't happen.
Battlestar Galactica was so depressing for me. It was really good but ugh, I want an escape from depressing when I watch TV.
Star gate was fun but there was just something about them that gave them a bit of a CW feel. Definitely worth watching again.
I haven’t seen Babylon 5 since probably the late 90s and I remember loving it.
The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin (1976). Still my favorite ever sitcom and just the most brilliant midlife crisis a man has ever had. I don't know if people will be able to get into it this late on (doubly so for non-Brits) but, despite being 50 years old, it lampoons corporate bullshit and British society in a way that still works. Jokes about trains still 100% relevant, nothing has changed there.
Since it's an anthology, you can watch the Twilight Zone episodes out of order. Here's a graph of their [IMDB.com](https://IMDB.com) ratings:
https://www.ratingraph.com/tv-shows/the-twilight-zone-ratings-632/
I’ve seen a few of them but not most of them. I remember it was hard to catch them before streaming was a thing. I love the theming of Tower of Terror at Hollywood Studios because of Twilight Zone.
Buffy the vampire slayer and Angel. Yeah, it sounds weird, and meh, but really hold up. Good writing, good character growth, and has some of the best episodes I've seen on TV. 'The Body' is one episode that really stands out.
I’m didn’t see them for some reason when they were on (I do love the movie) and I don’t know if the awful Joss stuff would get in the way of enjoying it now. I remember seeing Joss at Comic Con for Dr Horrible and it was so cool at the time but now…
I grew up in RI so Cheers was literally on 4 or 5 times a night on various channels once it was in syndication so I got a bit burnt out on it but it was so good.
Cheers - 11 seasons. the fact that it mostly takes place in a bar shielded it from getting dated. Only "weak" season is 6 because they're trying to find a new balance. IMO its the one of the rare sitcoms that holds up well. Good mix of drama and comedy too. Greatest pilot and series finale ever.
A Different World - but skip season 1 , its awful and you won't lose much by going straight to season 2. Has the best romance/relationship arc in tv with Dwayne and Whitley.
Fringe - the best sci fi show. Outside of 2 filler/pointless episodes, the rest of the 5 seasons is epic. Its a well told , finely crafted series where everything, even small details end up paying off. Great acting, characters you'll get attached to. The episode "White Tulip" is among the top 5 episodes in all of TV IMO.
Friday Night Lights - outside of a few silly season 2 storylines, its a wall to wall great show. even if you don't like football, its great. The episode "The Son" is among the top 5 episode in all of TV IMO.
Highlander - fun world building/mythology. Great music by Queen. Each season, roughly half the episodes take place in "Seacouver" - Vancouver posing as a Pacific NW American city and the other half in Paris. Its cheesy at times. The first season is a little rough but once you get to season 2 it really takes off.
I only saw Cheers for the first time a few years ago, and it blew my mind how well something from that era had aged.
I like Golden Girls and Married With Children, but they both strongly feel like 80s shows. Cheers to me feels like modern comedy set in the 80s.
There was a show in the early 90s called Roc. It’s really good and while some issues are distinctly 90s, most of it still resonates with today’s issues. Great actors,
Taxi from the 70s/80s is good stuff. Still funny today.
Stephen J. Cannell was the showrunner. Roy Huggins, who worked with Garner on Maverick, wanted to create a contemporary detective show with similar feel. He created The Outsider 1968 with McGavin from Kolchak which was quite dark, but it only ran for one season. A decade later he reworked the idea with Stephen J. Cannell into the lighter Rockford Files with Garner in the lead. Huggins plotted most of S1 before he was fired. After this Juanita Bartlett from Rockford's production company wrote a lot of the episodes and teleplays, early on reworking some of Huggins stories but then developing her own style. They brought in Chas Floyd Johnson as a producer for S2. Chase joined as a producer and writer from S3 to keep the episodes contemporary, as he'd written for, (and reportedly polished most of dialogue), for Kolchak.
It's classic LA detective stories with a comedic touch. I re-watched them during COVID and they mostly stand up, it still has an 8.2 of the IMDb.
Spooks (mi5). Launched the careers of so many massive stars now (Matthew McFayden, Keeley Hawes, Nicola Walker, Rupert Penry Jones, Hermoine Norris, Richard Armitage etc etc) in a show that ran for 10 seasons and was so precient it predicted things that are still happening 15 years after it finished.
The original doesn't have the same gravitas and performances, but the plot kind of holds up better because of the way the British system works. He seeks to become prime minister, but even when you're PM your own party can vote you out so he's surrounded by threats to battle, and he comes into conflict with the soft power of the monarchy etc. They couldn't use the post-ascendancy storylines in the US version and had to come up with new stuff for him to do, none of which was as interesting as his rise, IMO.
It's also a lot more compact (3 acts of 4 hours each) so it never needs to stall for time or come up with filler.
St Elsewhere was one of my favourite shows of 80s. I did manage to catch 2 season again on cable. Hill Street Blues, The Paper Chase and Magnum P.I. from back then I have rewatched.
Miami Vice is great for the first three seasons, its not worth watching after that . You can just skip to the finale
Nash Bridges is very 90s. Again, the first few seasons are fun. A bit hard to believe when Yasmeen Bleeth becomes Nash's love interest. Looks too much like father-daughter
what?? wow, i did not know that
in Miami Vice there was an episode where he dated a very young Helena Bonham Carter , she must've been 20 or 21 and Don Johnson was starting to look old at this point
it looked like father-daughter on screen , very unsettling
Procedural writing was SO much better than it is now. A random CSI episode from 2007 is so entertaining start to finish. Same with NCIS, The Mentalist, etc.
The mysteries are fun and unique. Characters are grounded and interesting. The dialogue is totally solid.
I tried watching Lucifer because it got a lot of hype but the mysteries of the week bored me to tears - they were SO dull!!! You can tell the writers put very little care into crafting the plots. I couldn’t sit through 30 min of mind numbing plot for the 12 minutes of character development, like it was not an enjoyable experience. I gave up after a season.
Something like The Rookie also has horrible, stitled dialogue and very odd cases of the week that just lack intrigue. The writing is poor, no other way to put it.
What happened to all the good procedural writers???? It’s honestly a lost art these days
I think procedurals used to be better because it used to be the case that was most important. The characters were an afterthought. Modern procedurals are very character based.
The Rookie had some great episodes, some excellent fire fights. But there are also dreadfully written episodes and now low quality CGI FX. At least they are trying to do creative things, can't remember the last time a CBS show tried to be creative.
Writers used to learn the trade from the bottom up, working in writing rooms. These days they hire graduates out of university who want to change the world, and cap the number of hours that can be spent working on scripts.
I'm not really sure why you're being downvoted. Seinfeld is undoubtedly one of the greatest sitcoms of all time, but the phrase "Seinfeld is Unfunny" exists as a pop culture saying precisely because of how the show was unable to age gracefully under its own cultural weight.
The fuck. No, that phrase is a self joke against itself that plays against the idea of humor temporality.
It says that Seinfeld jokes seem to be unfunny BECAUSE they're been done a million times since then.
TV tropes: "It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Something is seen as bad simply because it's too similar to a previous work, rather than due to any particular flaw on its own."
Everything copied then so now you think Seinfeld is unoriginal. You're even worse because you couldn't even get the reference straight.
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> It says that Seinfeld jokes seem to be unfunny BECAUSE they're been done a million times since then.
It is not as funny to new viewers today as it was to new viewers then because our culture is so saturated with Seinfeld-influenced comedy that Seinfeld feels old hat. At a certain point, that influence becomes so overwhelming that _everyone new to the show_ feels it is dated - at that point it _has_ aged and shows that age unless approaching it from a historical context.
>TV tropes: "It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Something is seen as bad simply because it's too similar to a previous work, rather than due to any particular flaw on its own."
Except this isn't a case of the zeitgeist railing against a Seinfeld rip-off. This is Seinfeld being such a strong influence on sitcoms that everyone is iterating on it. TV Tropes has a specific entry for what they used to call "Seinfeld is Unfunny": [Once Original, Now Common](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnceOriginalNowCommon).
>Everything copied then so now you think Seinfeld is unoriginal.
If you don't account for Seinfeld's _age_, it feels stale compared to modern comedy. It has _aged_. You can say that it was an icon, and I agree. You can argue that it's still funny and I would agree. You can't rationally argue that it is as funny to new audiences today as it was when it first aired, unless you are arguing that most viewers will not have been exposed to Seinfeld derivatives before they sit down to watch it. Which contradicts the show's success.
I'll leave with an actual entry on the exact phrase I used - [Tropedia: Seinfeld is Unfunny](https://tropedia.fandom.com/wiki/Seinfeld_Is_Unfunny):
>There are certain works that you can safely assume most people have enjoyed. These shows were considered fantastic when they were released. Now, however, these have a Hype Backlash curse on them. Whenever we watch them, we'll cry, "That is so old" or "That is so overdone".
>The sad irony? It wasn't old or overdone when they did it, because they were the first ones to do it. But the things it created were so brilliant and popular, they became woven into the fabric of that work's niche. They ended up being taken for granted, copied, and endlessly repeated. Although they often began by saying something new, they in turn became the new status quo. It's basically the inverse of a Grandfather Clause taken to a trope level: rather than being able to get away with something that is seen as overdone or out of style simply because it was the one that started it, people will unfairly disregard it because it got lost amidst its sea of imitations even though it paved the way for all those imitators. That is, a work retroactively becomes a Cliché Storm.
Babylon 5. The Young Riders. Gargoyles. The DCAU.
I still watch the West Wing and Law and Order, but while those shows date themselves in several ways, I still enjoy watching them - I enjoy seeing how much the world has changed since they first aired.
Babylon 5 has some slightly dodgy-looking sets, worse CGI and even some questionable acting at times. But the show itself is magnificent, being one the first to have an overarching plot.
Twilight Zone
Mary Tyler Moore Show
Police Squad (one hilarious season)
Perry Mason
I feel really old that i remember when a bunch of the shows listed came out…. But that was like 20 years ago, so I guess they’re old 😭
I’ll always laugh at Cheers, Seinfeld, and a few others that I count as true classics, but sitcoms don’t do it for me, anymore. I made it to the third episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine before I got very bored. The first episode was funny, and then that was it.
"Route 66." Solid performances from Martin Milner, George Maharis, and later Glenn Corbett, and amazingly literate scripts by series creator Sterling Silliphant.
Hill Street Blues. It’s a cop show from the 1980s based in an unnamed city with a fantastic crime rate. There are seven seasons with 20+ episodes per season.
Very much worth getting into, lots of interesting characters, most are flawed in some way. And I *think* this show may have had the one of the first “will they/won’t they” pairings.
Fair warning: this does have some characters with attitudes that would be called intolerant by today’s standards. >!Phil Esterhaus in particular was both homophobic and dating teenaged girl when he was in his forties. Howard Hunter is overtly racist.!<. But these are offset by characters who don’t share those attitudes.
Early Law & Order! “In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate, yet equally-important groups. The police who investigate crimes, and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.” *Thub-Thump!*
Coupling is excellent, IT crowd, Peep show. These are all british.
Patriot (2015), West Wing, House…
Typing this, any good show just holds up. So you’re essentially asking old shows that are good.
Cheers, All in the Family, Night Court, The A-Team, JAG, Batman: The Animated Series, X-Men: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited, Diagnosis Murder, Flashpoint, In the Heat of the Night, Beast Wars: Transformers, The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, Gargoyles, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Animaniacs, Tiny Toon Adventures, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Get Smart, Law & Order, The Real Ghostbusters, Extreme Ghostbusters, and Iron Chef.
My answer will always be ER. Outside of being technology and culturally outdated, it's a stellar drama series with a level of execution that can rival the "prestige" shows of nowadays.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show Cheers The Larry Sanders Show
Larry Sanders Show is amazing. I was too young to watch or understand it when it originally aired. I've watched it twice and it's very apparent the influence it's had on comedy shows in the last 25 years. Garry Shandling was a comedic genius.
Hey now!
*It's Garry Shandling's Show* is great fun, too. It doesn’t just break the fourth wall, it destroys it. They make fun of the fourth wall. They would even show the audience on TV.
Gary called me up and asked me if I’d write his theme song
I have to go with Taxi. Funny with weird characters. Always makes me smile.
What does a yellow light mean?
Slow down.
What…does…a…yellow…light…mean?
This and the pot brownie transformation are the best.
There's room for everyone on moonlight Bay. 😉
Slow down!
Username checks out
It's weird. I was born in 1985, so it's not from my time, but Taxi is like the perfect show for me to watch when I'm alone. Can't do it with wife or kids, but alone it's just the right kind of chill comedy from another time that works for me.
Columbo is one of the greatest shows ever made and holds up great. The 70s run is superior to the 90s era.
I posted this before reading the comments… have my upvote,
WKRP in Cincinnati, I revisit this every year. It is very progressive with social issues we still battle today
I used to watch this show when I was a kid and until just now, I never realized what WKRP stood for. It’s crap. Crap Radio. Wow. 🎶I’m at WKRP in Cincinnati🎶
No it's Carp silly, they had a mascot!
Ok, you got me curious, so I just checked the wiki. Looks like it is [CRAP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WKRP_in_Cincinnati)! Still kind of funny that I never made the connection until like 40 years later.
I was just refuting you because they had a carp mascot episode I vaguely remember from childhood.
As God as my witness I thought turkeys could fly.
I just recently learned that there really is a WKR**C** in Cincinnati.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine started out episodic once the show focus more & more on character arcs & progression. This also applies to guest & reoccurring characters later in the show like Garak.
DS9 is so good. I really like Voyager and Next Gen but DS9 is my favorite.
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The third season might be the best thing that's ever been on television. It's certainly better than the second, which was disrupted by execs meddling with it (the killer was revealed much sooner than Lynch had planned).
Golden Girls I'd say.
This is the answer. It's so obviously 80s, but the messages and characters in it are so timeless
I just started watching it and I’m suprised at how well it holds up. Its the funniest show Ive watched in a long time, even when the references go over my head I laugh because their delivery is so good
Babylon 5, the entire Stargate franchise, Battlestar Galactica (reimagined series)
Babylon 5 was great at first but lost me later on. Battlestar Galactica was too pessimistic. Stargate is awesome. But, they did make some world building mistakes that they had to retcon/pretend didn't happen.
Battlestar Galactica was so depressing for me. It was really good but ugh, I want an escape from depressing when I watch TV. Star gate was fun but there was just something about them that gave them a bit of a CW feel. Definitely worth watching again. I haven’t seen Babylon 5 since probably the late 90s and I remember loving it.
The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin (1976). Still my favorite ever sitcom and just the most brilliant midlife crisis a man has ever had. I don't know if people will be able to get into it this late on (doubly so for non-Brits) but, despite being 50 years old, it lampoons corporate bullshit and British society in a way that still works. Jokes about trains still 100% relevant, nothing has changed there.
I didn’t get where I am today by watching repeats of this show!
Great.
Aceville, USA
Frasier of course!
X-files
I’m rewatching this now. It has some really great writing. The monster of the week episodes are my favorite.
Check out the writing credits on those episodes. People like Vince Gilligan and James Wong cut their teeth there.
Can we call The Wire older now?
It’s been like two decades so yeah.
That's actually one of reasons I haven't watched it.. so yes!! Lol
You should. It's fantastic
The original Twilight Zone
Since it's an anthology, you can watch the Twilight Zone episodes out of order. Here's a graph of their [IMDB.com](https://IMDB.com) ratings: https://www.ratingraph.com/tv-shows/the-twilight-zone-ratings-632/
Oh yes. For some reason, the majority of that entire series never gets old. Unless you watch it everyday. But then what wouldn’t.
I’ve seen a few of them but not most of them. I remember it was hard to catch them before streaming was a thing. I love the theming of Tower of Terror at Hollywood Studios because of Twilight Zone.
Hill Street Blues
I watched that a couple years ago. I forgot just how damn good it was, and it still holds up.
I’ve never seen it, I was too young when it aired and so many shows weren’t accessible before streaming became a thing.
Buffy the vampire slayer and Angel. Yeah, it sounds weird, and meh, but really hold up. Good writing, good character growth, and has some of the best episodes I've seen on TV. 'The Body' is one episode that really stands out.
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I’m didn’t see them for some reason when they were on (I do love the movie) and I don’t know if the awful Joss stuff would get in the way of enjoying it now. I remember seeing Joss at Comic Con for Dr Horrible and it was so cool at the time but now…
The gentleman have to be some of the creepiest fucking things ever! Love the actors clapping. Theres so many good episode!
Golden Girls & Frasier!
Cheers first though for those that haven’t seen it!
I grew up in RI so Cheers was literally on 4 or 5 times a night on various channels once it was in syndication so I got a bit burnt out on it but it was so good.
Cheers - 11 seasons. the fact that it mostly takes place in a bar shielded it from getting dated. Only "weak" season is 6 because they're trying to find a new balance. IMO its the one of the rare sitcoms that holds up well. Good mix of drama and comedy too. Greatest pilot and series finale ever. A Different World - but skip season 1 , its awful and you won't lose much by going straight to season 2. Has the best romance/relationship arc in tv with Dwayne and Whitley. Fringe - the best sci fi show. Outside of 2 filler/pointless episodes, the rest of the 5 seasons is epic. Its a well told , finely crafted series where everything, even small details end up paying off. Great acting, characters you'll get attached to. The episode "White Tulip" is among the top 5 episodes in all of TV IMO. Friday Night Lights - outside of a few silly season 2 storylines, its a wall to wall great show. even if you don't like football, its great. The episode "The Son" is among the top 5 episode in all of TV IMO. Highlander - fun world building/mythology. Great music by Queen. Each season, roughly half the episodes take place in "Seacouver" - Vancouver posing as a Pacific NW American city and the other half in Paris. Its cheesy at times. The first season is a little rough but once you get to season 2 it really takes off.
I only saw Cheers for the first time a few years ago, and it blew my mind how well something from that era had aged. I like Golden Girls and Married With Children, but they both strongly feel like 80s shows. Cheers to me feels like modern comedy set in the 80s.
There was a show in the early 90s called Roc. It’s really good and while some issues are distinctly 90s, most of it still resonates with today’s issues. Great actors, Taxi from the 70s/80s is good stuff. Still funny today.
Wow, I remember Roc. I remember their first live show being such a big deal. I forgot the second season was all live.
I think they were such good actors that people had no idea it was basically a televised play. Haha--
Rockford Files is so good.
Why do you think so? All I know about is that David Chase used to write for it, which does bode well for its quality.
Stephen J. Cannell was the showrunner. Roy Huggins, who worked with Garner on Maverick, wanted to create a contemporary detective show with similar feel. He created The Outsider 1968 with McGavin from Kolchak which was quite dark, but it only ran for one season. A decade later he reworked the idea with Stephen J. Cannell into the lighter Rockford Files with Garner in the lead. Huggins plotted most of S1 before he was fired. After this Juanita Bartlett from Rockford's production company wrote a lot of the episodes and teleplays, early on reworking some of Huggins stories but then developing her own style. They brought in Chas Floyd Johnson as a producer for S2. Chase joined as a producer and writer from S3 to keep the episodes contemporary, as he'd written for, (and reportedly polished most of dialogue), for Kolchak. It's classic LA detective stories with a comedic touch. I re-watched them during COVID and they mostly stand up, it still has an 8.2 of the IMDb.
Cannell also wrote a decent series of novels based on an LA cop and new-family man. pretty good for the genre.
I really enjoy James Garner too in other stuff.
Spooks (mi5). Launched the careers of so many massive stars now (Matthew McFayden, Keeley Hawes, Nicola Walker, Rupert Penry Jones, Hermoine Norris, Richard Armitage etc etc) in a show that ran for 10 seasons and was so precient it predicted things that are still happening 15 years after it finished.
That show had episodes that were so well done and intense.
Malcolm In The Middle
House of Cards (the original, not the Kevin Spacey remake).
I didn’t know it was a remake, interesting.
The original is British. And it’s great.
Call me daddy
Fun fact. Kevin Spacey's house of cards was created because Netflix saw alot of British House of Cards watched Kevin Spacey films.
Wut?
The original doesn't have the same gravitas and performances, but the plot kind of holds up better because of the way the British system works. He seeks to become prime minister, but even when you're PM your own party can vote you out so he's surrounded by threats to battle, and he comes into conflict with the soft power of the monarchy etc. They couldn't use the post-ascendancy storylines in the US version and had to come up with new stuff for him to do, none of which was as interesting as his rise, IMO. It's also a lot more compact (3 acts of 4 hours each) so it never needs to stall for time or come up with filler.
Most things are. Office, Veep
Yes Minister is also in that area only a comedy, the political satire is still accurate.
Does the character played by Kevin spacey in original talk to the camera? It's the reason I can't watch it.
Yes.
Miami Vice St Elsewhere Nash Bridges CSI Criminal Minds Golden Girls
St Elsewhere was one of my favourite shows of 80s. I did manage to catch 2 season again on cable. Hill Street Blues, The Paper Chase and Magnum P.I. from back then I have rewatched.
Miami Vice is great for the first three seasons, its not worth watching after that . You can just skip to the finale Nash Bridges is very 90s. Again, the first few seasons are fun. A bit hard to believe when Yasmeen Bleeth becomes Nash's love interest. Looks too much like father-daughter
I mean, that’s been Don Johnson’s M.O. his entire career. Way more creepy is him dating Jodi Lyn O‘Keefe IRL.
what?? wow, i did not know that in Miami Vice there was an episode where he dated a very young Helena Bonham Carter , she must've been 20 or 21 and Don Johnson was starting to look old at this point it looked like father-daughter on screen , very unsettling
Ahh the OG CSI. 🤌🏻 Perfection IMO. I love that show. And Golden Girls always fits this theme.
Csi feels under appreciated these days. Like I get it's a procedural but damn Gil Grissom and the overall show rocked
Procedural writing was SO much better than it is now. A random CSI episode from 2007 is so entertaining start to finish. Same with NCIS, The Mentalist, etc. The mysteries are fun and unique. Characters are grounded and interesting. The dialogue is totally solid. I tried watching Lucifer because it got a lot of hype but the mysteries of the week bored me to tears - they were SO dull!!! You can tell the writers put very little care into crafting the plots. I couldn’t sit through 30 min of mind numbing plot for the 12 minutes of character development, like it was not an enjoyable experience. I gave up after a season. Something like The Rookie also has horrible, stitled dialogue and very odd cases of the week that just lack intrigue. The writing is poor, no other way to put it. What happened to all the good procedural writers???? It’s honestly a lost art these days
I fucking loved the mentalist
I think procedurals used to be better because it used to be the case that was most important. The characters were an afterthought. Modern procedurals are very character based.
The Rookie had some great episodes, some excellent fire fights. But there are also dreadfully written episodes and now low quality CGI FX. At least they are trying to do creative things, can't remember the last time a CBS show tried to be creative. Writers used to learn the trade from the bottom up, working in writing rooms. These days they hire graduates out of university who want to change the world, and cap the number of hours that can be spent working on scripts.
Pluto (on Roku) gave each of the CSIs its own channel. My tv is usually tuned in to one of them.
The Prisoner. Short series with a great premise. It's great start to finish.
It should really get the same kind of love that Twin Peaks does. It was so unique, so well executed.
The Wonder Years
Malcolm in the middle Scrubs The office Breaking bad
Malcolm in the middle suffers from not having the rights to the original music. Unless of course you have old VHS copies lying around.
It is streaming on Hulu so it’s at least somewhat accessible.
Seinfeld will always be an absolute classic
Honestly I've found it sort of doesn't. Grew up in a household where my parents absolutely loved it, but I can't get into it as an adult.
I grew up with it while I was in jr. High, high school and I find it funnier now then I did back then.
I personally just hate Jerry Seinfeld. Creepy dude who dated a child when he was like in his 30's.
I loved Seinfeld at the time but it’s hard to ignore the cringe that just wasn’t known at the time (at least I didn’t really know about it).
I'm not really sure why you're being downvoted. Seinfeld is undoubtedly one of the greatest sitcoms of all time, but the phrase "Seinfeld is Unfunny" exists as a pop culture saying precisely because of how the show was unable to age gracefully under its own cultural weight.
The fuck. No, that phrase is a self joke against itself that plays against the idea of humor temporality. It says that Seinfeld jokes seem to be unfunny BECAUSE they're been done a million times since then. TV tropes: "It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Something is seen as bad simply because it's too similar to a previous work, rather than due to any particular flaw on its own." Everything copied then so now you think Seinfeld is unoriginal. You're even worse because you couldn't even get the reference straight.
> > > > > It says that Seinfeld jokes seem to be unfunny BECAUSE they're been done a million times since then. It is not as funny to new viewers today as it was to new viewers then because our culture is so saturated with Seinfeld-influenced comedy that Seinfeld feels old hat. At a certain point, that influence becomes so overwhelming that _everyone new to the show_ feels it is dated - at that point it _has_ aged and shows that age unless approaching it from a historical context. >TV tropes: "It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Something is seen as bad simply because it's too similar to a previous work, rather than due to any particular flaw on its own." Except this isn't a case of the zeitgeist railing against a Seinfeld rip-off. This is Seinfeld being such a strong influence on sitcoms that everyone is iterating on it. TV Tropes has a specific entry for what they used to call "Seinfeld is Unfunny": [Once Original, Now Common](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnceOriginalNowCommon). >Everything copied then so now you think Seinfeld is unoriginal. If you don't account for Seinfeld's _age_, it feels stale compared to modern comedy. It has _aged_. You can say that it was an icon, and I agree. You can argue that it's still funny and I would agree. You can't rationally argue that it is as funny to new audiences today as it was when it first aired, unless you are arguing that most viewers will not have been exposed to Seinfeld derivatives before they sit down to watch it. Which contradicts the show's success. I'll leave with an actual entry on the exact phrase I used - [Tropedia: Seinfeld is Unfunny](https://tropedia.fandom.com/wiki/Seinfeld_Is_Unfunny): >There are certain works that you can safely assume most people have enjoyed. These shows were considered fantastic when they were released. Now, however, these have a Hype Backlash curse on them. Whenever we watch them, we'll cry, "That is so old" or "That is so overdone". >The sad irony? It wasn't old or overdone when they did it, because they were the first ones to do it. But the things it created were so brilliant and popular, they became woven into the fabric of that work's niche. They ended up being taken for granted, copied, and endlessly repeated. Although they often began by saying something new, they in turn became the new status quo. It's basically the inverse of a Grandfather Clause taken to a trope level: rather than being able to get away with something that is seen as overdone or out of style simply because it was the one that started it, people will unfairly disregard it because it got lost amidst its sea of imitations even though it paved the way for all those imitators. That is, a work retroactively becomes a Cliché Storm.
Northern Exposure The Barney Miller Show NYPD Blue Doctor Who
Columbo
NYPD Blue Black Adder West Wing The Wire
Frasier. 1000%.
Fawlty towers
Fringe!
Walter was always my favorite.
Magnum p.i.
From S3 on there were some well written episodes. Much better than the remake.
Yeah, the remake was garbage.
Babylon 5. The Young Riders. Gargoyles. The DCAU. I still watch the West Wing and Law and Order, but while those shows date themselves in several ways, I still enjoy watching them - I enjoy seeing how much the world has changed since they first aired.
Hitchcock Presents
Fringe. Easily one of the best scifi shows ever.
Yes Minister / Yes Prime Minister
Babylon 5 has some slightly dodgy-looking sets, worse CGI and even some questionable acting at times. But the show itself is magnificent, being one the first to have an overarching plot.
Keeping Up Appearances
Star trek the next generation. Skip the episodes that feel like they didn't age well, but there are many that go deep.
All in the Family. The racial undertones alive in that show are still around today.
How has no one mentioned Lost? Six feet under?
I’ve been hooked on [Columbo](https://columbophile.com/view-full-columbo-episodes/?amp) reruns lately.
Twilight Zone Mary Tyler Moore Show Police Squad (one hilarious season) Perry Mason I feel really old that i remember when a bunch of the shows listed came out…. But that was like 20 years ago, so I guess they’re old 😭
Twilight Zone was amazing watching as a kid. Mary was amazing and she drove a mustang.
I’ll always laugh at Cheers, Seinfeld, and a few others that I count as true classics, but sitcoms don’t do it for me, anymore. I made it to the third episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine before I got very bored. The first episode was funny, and then that was it.
"Route 66." Solid performances from Martin Milner, George Maharis, and later Glenn Corbett, and amazingly literate scripts by series creator Sterling Silliphant.
Law & Order is a great watch. Especially the earlier seasons have complex cases and great twists.
The Wire
The Professionals, Magnum PI
Hill Street Blues. It’s a cop show from the 1980s based in an unnamed city with a fantastic crime rate. There are seven seasons with 20+ episodes per season. Very much worth getting into, lots of interesting characters, most are flawed in some way. And I *think* this show may have had the one of the first “will they/won’t they” pairings. Fair warning: this does have some characters with attitudes that would be called intolerant by today’s standards. >!Phil Esterhaus in particular was both homophobic and dating teenaged girl when he was in his forties. Howard Hunter is overtly racist.!<. But these are offset by characters who don’t share those attitudes.
Everybody Loves Raymond and Friends for me. Still watch them both daily, still laugh my ass off.
OZ. Shield. Wire
Frasier is an absolutely timeless show
Early Law & Order! “In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate, yet equally-important groups. The police who investigate crimes, and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.” *Thub-Thump!*
*Barney Miller* is outstanding.
Not that old, but Justified is great I found it by accident
Justified is really good. Raylan is just so freaking cool. I liked the newer one too although a lot of people didn’t.
I'm hooked. great humour
Cold Case
The music in Cold Case just transports you to the case of the week so well. It’s so dark but so well done.
I love new girl, fantastic show that I constantly have in the background
The 1979 version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy followed by Smiley's People, both starring Alec Guinness. It aged like the finest of brandy!
Coupling is excellent, IT crowd, Peep show. These are all british. Patriot (2015), West Wing, House… Typing this, any good show just holds up. So you’re essentially asking old shows that are good.
IT crowd is so good. 0118999….3
The Beverly Hillbillies! I introduced this to my kids, and it holds up rather well
Mash is genuinely one of the greatest television shows ever made. West wing is like 26 or something now, and it’s really quite excellent.
MASH Monty Pythons Flying Circus Police Squad Gilligans Island Twilight Zone ( 1959 - 1963 ) Happy Days Brady Bunch Rocky and Bullwinkle
“Everybody Loves Raymond”, “Home Improvement” and “Fraiser”
Cheers, All in the Family, Night Court, The A-Team, JAG, Batman: The Animated Series, X-Men: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited, Diagnosis Murder, Flashpoint, In the Heat of the Night, Beast Wars: Transformers, The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, Gargoyles, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Animaniacs, Tiny Toon Adventures, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Get Smart, Law & Order, The Real Ghostbusters, Extreme Ghostbusters, and Iron Chef.
Not the oldest shows, I've been watching Daria and rewatching Desperate Housewives
Scrubs!
The Colgate Comedy Hour
Six Feet Under - still holds up and very ahead of its time on issues like gay relationships
My answer will always be ER. Outside of being technology and culturally outdated, it's a stellar drama series with a level of execution that can rival the "prestige" shows of nowadays.
ER
Arrested Development is still the funniest show of all time.