101 Best Lists

101 Best Written TV Series List

Announced in 2013, the 101 Best Written TV Series list honors seven decades of outstanding television writing and the writers who brought it all to life.
101 Best Written TV Series List
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The 101 Best Written TV Series list was announced on June 2, 2013. The writing credits noted are based on that date.
THE SOPRANOS
1. THE SOPRANOS
Created by David Chase

A mobster in therapy, having problems with his mother," was how The Sopranos initially sparked, according to creator David Chase, though he was thinking about the premise for a feature film.

SEINFELD
2. SEINFELD
Created by Larry David & Jerry Seinfeld

At the end of Seinfeld's run, Jerry Seinfeld commented that one of the more underrated aspects of his show was the number of its locations and sets, creating a sense of indoor-outdoor movement unusual for a multi-camera sitcom.

THE TWILIGHT ZONE
3. THE TWILIGHT ZONE
Season One writers: Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Robert Presnell, Jr., Rod Serling

No show in the history of television has lingered in the imagination quite like Rod Serling's anthology series, which could function both as a science fiction chiller and an issues-driven examination of human behavior and moral complexities, with climactic twists.

ALL IN THE FAMILY
4. ALL IN THE FAMILY
Developed for Television by Norman Lear, Based on Till Death Do Us Part, Created by Johnny Speight

Asked how he'd been able to be so controversial on All in the Family, creator Norman Lear said to the WGAW website in 2009: "I don't really know how to explain it. It took me three years to get All in the Family on the air. Let me put it that way."

M*A*S*H
5. M*A*S*H
Developed for Television by Larry Gelbart

M*A*S*H remains the only long-running series, comedy or drama, set around a war zone.

THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW
6. THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW
Created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns

The MTM brand, under Moore and then-husband Grant Tinker, was responsible for an iconic run of comedies (and dramas) in the 1970s, beginning with The Mary Tyler Moore Show, an updating of the workplace sitcom set at a Minneapolis TV station where Mary Richards (Moore) was a news writer and producer.

MAD MEN
7. MAD MEN
Created by Matthew Weiner

Matt Weiner wrote the Mad Men pilot nearly a decade before it found a home as the first scripted drama at AMC, where the series debuted in the summer of 2007 and quickly took hold of the imagination with its evocation of Madison Avenue and the country as the turbulent 1960s dawn.

CHEERS
8. CHEERS
Created by Glen Charles & Les Charles and James Burrows

The qualities that made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a seminal sitcom in the 1970s gave Cheers the same importance to the '80s.

THE WIRE
9. THE WIRE
Created by David Simon

No series, arguably, is more responsible for the novelistic ambitions possible for television writers now.

THE WEST WING
10. THE WEST WING
Created by Aaron Sorkin

"The people who get angry at us on one Wednesday night will be standing up and cheering the next Wednesday night," Aaron Sorkin wrote in Written By before The West Wing premiered.

THE SIMPSONS
11. THE SIMPSONS
Created by Matt Groening, Developed by James L. Brooks and Matt Groening and Sam Simon

The Simpsons is as ineffable as American humor gets. Among the show's landmarks (hitting 100 episodes, then 200, then 500) was the inclusion of Homer's exclamation, "Doh!" in the Oxford English Dictionary ("used to comment on a foolish or stupid action, especially one's own").

I LOVE LUCY
12. I LOVE LUCY
"Pilot," Written by Jess Oppenheimer & Madelyn Pugh & Bob Carroll, Jr.

Though the show won an Emmy as Best Comedy, the writers were never so honored (in fairness, the Emmy for sitcom writing didn't exist until 1955).

BREAKING BAD
13. BREAKING BAD
Created by Vince Gilligan

Creator Vince Gilligan said he was joking with Tom Schnauz that the two former X-Files writers might have to rent an RV and cook crystal meth if their stalled Hollywood careers didn't turn around.

THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW
14. THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW
Created by Carl Reiner

Carl Reiner has said he based his first sitcom on his experiences as a writer on Your Show of Shows, working for temperamental star Sid Caesar while also trying to be a husband and father.

HILL STREET BLUES
15. HILL STREET BLUES
Created by Michael Kozoll and Steven Bochco

Low rated in its infancy, Hill Street Blues broke as many TV storytelling rules as its ultimate success helped establish for cop shows.

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
16. ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
Created by Mitchell Hurwitz

Mitchell Hurwitz offered a glimpse into his take on the family sitcom when he spoke of his own parents' refusal to "quietly disappear into their middle age."

THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART
17. THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART
Created by Madeleine Smithberg, Lizz Winstead; Head Writer: Chris Kreski; Writers: Jim Earl, Daniel J. Goor, Charles Grandy, J.R. Havlan, Tom Johnson, Kent Jones, Paul Mercurio, Guy Nicolucci, Steve Rosenfield, Jon Stewart

It began as The Daily Show (hosted by Craig Kilborn) in 1996, became The Daily Show (hosted by Jon Stewart) in 1999, and is now just as often referred to as Jon Stewart as its official title, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

SIX FEET UNDER
18. SIX FEET UNDER
Created by Alan Ball

Alan Ball pushed dramatic television into uncharted territory with his series about the Fishers and their Los Angeles funeral home.

TAXI
19. TAXI
Created by James L. Brooks and Stan Daniels and David Davis and Ed. Weinberger

Post-Mary Tyler Moore Show, James L. Brooks, Stan Daniels, Ed. Weinberger and David Davis left MTM, formed their own company, and sold Taxi to Paramount (according to TV.com, Brooks and Davis bought back the option to a New York magazine article about night-shift cab drivers from MTM's Grant Tinker).

THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW
20. THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW
Created by Garry Shandling & Dennis Klein

Having lampooned himself and sitcoms generally on the meta It's Garry Shandling's Show, Shandling this time trained his comedic radar onto the fear and self-loathing backstage at a late-night talk show.

30 ROCK
21. 30 ROCK
Created by Tina Fey

Tina Fey's canny take-off on her former life as head writer on Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock was initially viewed as "too inside" for a mass audience, a behind-the-scenes look at a sketch show, with Fey playing showrunner Liz Lemon and Tracy Morgan as Tracy Jordan, the hard-to-control comedy star brought in to juice ratings.

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
22. FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
Developed by Television by Peter Berg, Inspired by the Book by H.G. Bissinger

Peter Berg wrote and directed the pilot of a show that was the second adaptation of H.G. Bissinger's non-fiction narrative about the impact of high school football on the hearts, minds, and lives in small-town Dillon, Texas.

FRASIER
23. FRASIER
Created by David Angell & Peter Casey & David Lee, Based on the character "Frasier Crane" created by Glen Charles & Les Charles

The Grub Street Productions team of Casey-Angell-Lee furthered the work they'd done on Cheers by moving psychologist Frasier Crane from Boston to Seattle and giving him a radio call-in show.

FRIENDS
24. FRIENDS
Created by Marta Kauffman & David Crane

Co-creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane met in the theater program at Brandeis; by the time they created Friends, they had added a third partner, Kevin Bright, with whom they'd worked on the pilot of the HBO series Dream On.

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
25. SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
Season One writers: Anne Beatts, Chevy Chase, Al Franken, Lorne Michaels, Marilyn Suzanne Miller, Paul Mooney, Garrett Morris, Michael O'Donoghue, Herb Sargent, Tom Schiller, Rosie Shuster, Alan Zweibel

In his 2009 memoir, writer-performer Tom Davis conjures the small gang of writers standing outside Lorne Michaels' office at the inception of SNL in July of 1975.

THE X-FILES
26. THE X-FILES
Created by Chris Carter

Fox's signature drama for most of the '90s, The X-Files, created by Chris Carter, was one of primetime television's all-time great hit science-fiction series, although to call it sci-fi is requires qualifying that it delved into the paranormal and the conspiratorial.

LOST
27. LOST
Created by Jeffrey Lieber and J.J. Abrams & Damon Lindelof

A pastiche of genres sci-fi, James Bond movies, action, adventure, and thriller co-mingled to intoxicating effect on Lost.

ER
28. ER
Created Michael Crichton

The show that launched George Clooney's career had a 20-year gestation period between the time Michael Crichton first wrote the pilot in 1974 and John Wells guided it to the top of the ratings in the mid-1990s.

THE COSBY SHOW
29. THE COSBY SHOW
Created by Ed Weinberger & Michael Leeson and William Cosby, Jr., Ed. D.

Bill Cosby's return to network television caused a new vogue for sitcoms based closely on the act of a stand-up comedian, a trend that dominated primetime into the ensuing decades.

CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM
30. CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM
Created by Larry David

Having co-created Jerry Seinfeld's roman a clef of a sitcom, Larry David has turned himself inside out on Curb.

THE HONEYMOONERS
31. THE HONEYMOONERS
Season One writers: Herbert Finn, Marvin Marx, A.J. Russell, Leonard Stern, Walter Stone, Sydney Zelinka*

The standard by which all working-class sitcoms are still measured had a fitful beginning. Harry Crane and Joe Bigelow are credited with creating Ralph Kramden, a Brooklyn bus driver, as a sketch character for Jackie Gleason in 1951, when Gleason was hosting the Dumont network's Calvalcade of Stars variety show (two other writers on that show, Coleman Jacoby and Artie Rosen, brought in Art Carney for a different sketch).

DEADWOOD
32. DEADWOOD
Created by David Milch

After a dozen years as the bard of NYPD Blue, David Milch's first created series was a strange, brilliant, and rococo Western set in a Gold Rush town in the Dakota territories, circa the late 1800s.

STAR TREK
33. STAR TREK
Created by Gene Roddenberry

As creator Gene Roddenberry wrote to science fiction author Isaac Asmiov two months after the first Star Trek series premiered in 1966: "Star Trek almost did not get on the air because it refused to do a juvenile science fiction, because it refused to put a Lassie' aboard the space ship, and because it insisted on hiring Dick Matheson, Harlan Ellison, A.E. Van Vogt, Phil Farmer, and so on."

MODERN FAMILY
34. MODERN FAMILY
Created by Steven Levitan & Christopher Lloyd

The sweet spot on Modern Family, done as a mock documentary, is in exposing the growing pains for a culture confronting the fluid meaning of the mainstream family unit.

TWIN PEAKS
35. TWIN PEAKS
"Pilot," Written by Mark Frost & David Lynch

"When Blue Velvet Meets Hill Street Blues," read the New York Times headline in 1990, describing Twin Peaks.

NYPD BLUE
36. NYPD BLUE
Created by David Milch & Steven Bochco

Steven Bochco made more creative elbow room on network television with YPD Blue, which debuted amid "viewer discretion" hype before settling into what it was one of the last important primetime cop series.

THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW
37. THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW
Season One: Written by Bill Angelos, Stan Burns, Don Hinkley, Buz Kohan, Mike Marmer, Gail Parent, Kenny Solms, Saul Turtletaub; Writing Supervised by Arnie Rosen

The kind of beloved series that television executives abandoned long ago comedy-variety, with an infectiously multi-talented comedian as host, aided by a small band of merry pranksters, Burnett's show was part of the era that also included Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, The Flip Wilson Show, and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (2005)
38. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (2005)
Developed by Ronald D. Moore, Based on the Series Battlestar Galactica, Created by Glen A. Larson

Having written for the series Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager, Ronald Moore arrived at his remake of Battlestar Galactica determined to bring the "space opera" genre out of its fusty cartoon past.

SEX AND THE CITY
39. SEX AND THE CITY
Created by Darren Star, Based on the Book by Candace Bushnell

Is the show over? Because the movies aren't. Creator Darren Star based his series on Candace Bushnell's book, adapted itself from her columns in the New York Observer.

GAME OF THRONES
40. GAME OF THRONES
Created by David Benioff & D. B. Weiss, Based on A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin

Medieval (or thereabouts) fantasy is not a TV genre with a particularly exalted tradition, which is why Game of Thrones, in its lavish production values and depth of mythology, feels so unprecedented in television.