43THIRTYSOMETHING - TIE

Aired: ABC, 1987-1991

Since this sensitive ensemble drama burst onto the scene at the end of the "greed is good" 80s, many have tried and just as many have failed to replicate a show about well, ennui-riddled, upwardly mobile strivers, encountering speed bumps or ruptures in their relationship lives. Back then the characters were called yuppies. Creators Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz would go on to shepherd My So-Called Life and Once and Again onto the air, before network television went the way of vampires, mentalists, criminologists and what have you. Meanwhile, the term "thirtysomething" (or twentysomething, or fortysomething) lives on as a self-identifying shorthand and as a metaphor for the weightless feeling of being less than fully formed in life. "As far as we're concerned, television very rarely had people who sounded like we did," Zwick told L.A. Times television critic Howard Rosenberg when the show went on the air.