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Television
Top 10 TV series of the decade
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-11-28 09:01
4. THE SHIELD
* FX, 2002-08
Just as David Chase found a new and powerful direction for crime drama, Shawn Ryan shattered the mold for police drama. "The Shield" was everything no police series had ever been, starting with antihero Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis), a sympathetic but impossibly corrupt Los Angeles cop who made up his own rules of law enforcement as he went along. Moral ambiguity provided a gateway to stories that were stark, real and absolutely incredible.
3. CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM
* HBO, 2000-present
From his earnings as creator of "Seinfeld," Larry David could have bought one of the Virgin Islands and retired to a life of leisure and luxury. Instead, he trumped himself with a comedy series that poked fun at political correctness and poked even more fun at a curmudgeonly version of himself. Plotted but not scripted, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" raised mortification and tactlessness to art forms.
2. THE WEST WING
* NBC, 1999-2006
Creator Aaron Sorkin swore this show wasn't his way of making civics palatable to a mass audience, but it did just that. Neo-cons ran the real White House during most of the show's run. On TV, though, a team of highly principled progressives operated the levers of TV government. Quite possibly, this unfailingly witty and intelligent series, packed with powerful performances, whetted the country's appetite for change it can believe in.
1. THE SOPRANOS
* HBO, 1999-2007
From its opening musings about ducks in Tony Soprano's swimming pool to its ambiguous and much-discussed ending, "The Sopranos" pioneered a new form of drama. Creator David Chase brilliantly melded the dark, violent world of organized crime boss Soprano (James Gandolfini) with the conventions of middle-class suburbia. It dominated water cooler conversation even though, as an HBO program, it was available in only a small fraction of the nation's households.
