FromBreaking BadtoThe Wire, the 2000s brought some of the greatest TV shows ever made. After all the ground broken byThe Sopranos, the ‘00s reaped the rewards ofthe Golden Age of Television. We got compelling antiheroes like Don Draper and Vic Mackey, twisted family sagas likeSix Feet Under, and cinematic spectacles likeBand of Brothers.
10The Shield
Before Shawn Ryan createdThe Shield, cop shows had a very black-and-white view of morality. The police officers were the good guys and the suspects they were chasing were the bad guys, and there was no room for nuance or ambiguity. Ryan updated that format for a modern world with rampant police brutality and corruption.
The Shieldis a completely different kind of cop show, because its protagonists are all crooked cops. In the very first episode, the character who’s supposed to be the hero murders one of his fellow officers of the law because he was investigating his unit’s long-standing illegal activities.There are no good guys in this show, and that set it apart.
930 Rock
After Tina Fey left her position as the head writer ofSaturday Night Live, she turned those experiences into a sitcom about the head writer of anSNL-type sketch variety show.30 Rockrevolves around the complicated love-hate relationship between awkward comedy writer Liz Lemon and her business-savvy, ultra-conservative new corporate overlord, Jack Donaghy, played hilariously by Alec Baldwin.
30 Rockhas a delightfully absurdist sensibility. It’s a biting,Larry Sanders-style satire of the media (and of corporate America in general), but it alsoplays like a live-action cartoon. It has random non-sequiturs and cutaway gags, and plenty of zany storylines that don’t make a lick of sense. There’sno other comedy series quite like30 Rock.
8Avatar: The Last Airbender
On the surface,Avatar: The Last Airbendermight seem to be a typical kids’ cartoon with a lot of action, an interesting mythology, and a cast of lovable characters — and it succeeds beautifully at all those things. But it’s also so much more than that;it explores a laundry list of complex issuesin more depth than most adult-oriented shows.
Avatar: The Last Airbenderdeals with topics like war, genocide, authoritarianism, class inequality, gender inequality, and political corruption. But at the same time, it’s not too heavy; it has plenty of humor and spectacle. It won a Kids’ Choice Award for being fantastic children’s entertainment, but it also won a Peabody Award for being a thoughtful exercise in social commentary.
7Six Feet Under
The bleak reality that we all have in common is the inevitability of death, andAlan Ball’s darkly hilarious, deeply moving dramaSix Feet Underexplored our mortality in all its horror and beauty. It centers on a dysfunctional family struggling to keep their funeral business afloat following the untimely passing of their beloved patriarch.
For a series that’s so relentlessly mired in death, it’s surprisingly uplifting and life-affirming.
Every episode ofSix Feet Underbegins with a death, which the Fisher family is tasked with commemorating in a memorial service. But amidst all the grief and suffering,Six Feet Underisreally about all the things that make life worth living. For a series that’s so relentlessly mired in death, it’s surprisingly uplifting and life-affirming.
6Peep Show
David Mitchell and Robert Webb brought their unparalleled comedic chemistry into a unique sitcom format inPeep Show. In the roles of uptight, anxious, hard-working, conservative, repressed, pessimistic Mark and lazy, laid-back, open-minded, free-spirited, naively optimistic Jez,Mitchell and Webb captured the yin-and-yang duality of man with awkward hilarity.
The cringe humor ofPeep Showis so excruciating, it makesThe Officelook like a walk in the park. The series is shot entirely from the perspectives of its characters, so it puts you right in their shoes at their most embarrassing moments, immersing you in the humiliation. It’s a comedic masterclass.
5Band Of Brothers
After making one of the greatest World War II movies of all time withSaving Private Ryan, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg reunited to executive-produce the greatest World War II TV series ever made.Band of Brothershas the epic scope and visceral cinematic vision ofSaving Private Ryan, but it had 10 hours to dig deep into its characters.
Band of Brothersviews this global conflict through the eyes of its central platoon,Easy Company, as they fight on the muddy, bloody battlefields and encounter horrors like an abandoned concentration camp.Band of Brotherswas one of the first shows of the Peak TV era; it wasone of the first shows to prove TV could go toe-to-toe with movies.
After cutting his teeth as a writer onThe Sopranos, Matthew Weiner created one of the bestSopranos-inspired shows of the Golden Age of Television.Mad Menrevolves around a philandering, hard-drinking, self-aggrandizing ad executive in the 1960s:Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm.Don is a worthy successor to Tony Soprano; he’s a bad person, but you can understand him.
What makesMad Menso impressive is that it didn’t need the mob murders ofThe SopranosorBreaking Badto be just as captivating as them.Mad Mencould get viewers on the edge of their seats with a high-stakes advertising pitch or a brooding stare across a barroom or a bitter argument between a husband and wife.
3Curb Your Enthusiasm
Larry David changed the way sitcoms could be made withCurb Your Enthusiasm. He came up with a brilliant story outline for every episode, withSeinfeld-style dovetailing storylines and ironic twists, but he didn’t write a word of dialogue. The actors improvised all their lines based purely on character and situation; there were no forced, hackneyed jokes.
Everyone can relate to Larry’s curmudgeonly character, questioning every silly unwritten rule of society.
That improvisational style paired with the single-camera shooting style and most of the cast members playing themselves toblur the line between fiction and reality.Curbrevolutionized TV comedy, and on top of that, it’s just one of the funniest shows ever made. Everyone can relate to Larry’s curmudgeonly character, questioning every silly unwritten rule of society.
2Breaking Bad
Traditionally, television has shied away from change. It sets up a group of characters in a certain setting and keeps them there for as many years as the show is profitable. ButBreaking Badcreator Vince Gilligan realized this long-form medium would be the perfect vehicle to tell a story about gradual change.
Gilligan famously set out to turn Mr. Chips into Scarface, and made Walter White’s transformation from a mild-mannered chemistry teacher into a ruthless drug lord one of the most gripping dramatic arcs ever filmed.Breaking Badmasterfully mixed harrowing human drama into a pulpy crime story, andBryan Cranston anchored it all with a nuanced, three-dimensional performancethat holds up to the all-time greats.
1The Wire
David Simon channeled his years of experience as a crime reporter in Baltimore into the most accurate police procedural ever made.The Wiretossed out all the tropes and clichés of the genre and insteadportrayed the neverending cycle of crime and the futile pursuit of justice with an almost documentary-like sense of realism.
The Wirehas a lot of great charactersin its sprawling ensemble, but the real main character of the series is the city of Baltimore itself. This show is a journalistic study of the broken institutions perpetuating problems like the drug trade, the class divide, and political corruption.The Wireis undoubtedly the greatest TV show of the 2000s, and maybe the greatest TV show of all time.
