[imagesource: 20th Century Fox]

Roll up your sleeves and get ready to fight with strangers on the internet.

What’s entertaining is subjective but hey, don’t let that stop you from typing something angry in response to a random person’s opinion.

I’ve just skimmed through the top 10 of Rolling Stone’s definitive list of the 100 greatest TV shows of all time and I am relieved to see Ted Lasso is nowhere to be found. I gave it two seasons, I tried, but I find it unwatchable. That’s my right, just as it’s yours to think that Jason Sudeikis deserves his Emmys (he doesn’t, you’re wrong).

Rather than carry on that argument let’s just skip ahead and deal with the top 10 from the list. I’ll briefly run you through 10 to six:

• 10 – The Mary Tyler Moore Show
• 9 – Atlanta
• 8 – Cheers
• 7 – Mad Men
• 6 – Seinfeld
  

This brings us to number five, Fleabag:

Sure, it’s rewarding when a TV show can provide dozens of hours of mirth across many seasons. Sometimes, though, the most satisfying experience comes from series that have a few things to say, say them perfectly, and then shake their heads and walk away before you can follow them into less-interesting story arcs.

Never has that short-and-sweet approach been more impeccably executed than with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s tragicomic tour de force, where she played a self-destructive woman so lonely that her healthiest relationships were with her unseen television audience, and with the Hot Priest (Andrew Scott) with whom she fell madly in lust in the second season.

Two seasons and that was that. Sometimes I wish American shows would follow suit.

In fourth we have a classic – The Wire:

It was an urban epic that gradually touched every corner of its fictionalized Baltimore, from cops and drug dealers to middle school students and politicians.

The Wire preached that “all the pieces matter,” then put the concept into action, so that the slow pacing and narrative sprawl made all the show’s tragedies — visited upon one of the most amazing casts of characters ever assembled, from ambitious drug dealer Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) down to sweet junkie Bubbles (Andre Royo) and stickup artist Omar Little (Michael Kenneth Williams) — and all of its criticisms of the state of modern America, hit harder each time.

Five seasons of superb entertainment await if you’re yet to dabble.

Third on the list is Breaking Bad:

High school teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston) tells his students that he likes to think of chemistry as “a study of change,” which conveniently is the major theme of the crime saga built around him.

No series before or since has taken better advantage of the medium’s ability to track a character’s journey over a long period of time, while also crafting the kind of memorable individual installments that distinguish TV from movies.

Breaking Bad travels step by agonizing step through Walt’s journey from lower-middle-class breadwinner to lord of his own crystal-meth empire…

By the end of the series, you’re left trying to figure out who to root for and wanting more:

The bonus here is that you can pivot straight into Better Call Saul.

Props to Rolling Stone for going with an animated classic in second place – The Simpsons:

What is there left to say about the best, longest running, most influential, most acclaimed TV comedy of them all?

Should we push back against the bogus sentiment that The Simpsons hasn’t been funny in decades, since even in its 32nd season, it was able to put -together an episode as sharp as the Comic Book Guy-focused Wes Anderson tribute?

….The Simpsons’ genius speaks for itself.

So does Homer’s, in his own unique way:

I’m delighted to see that number one is correct and cannot be disputed.

Yes, I’m talking about The Sopranos:

The winner — and still undisputed champion — from North Caldwell, New Jersey, coming in heavy at 86 medium-transforming episodes filled with whacking, psychiatric analysis, and cunnilingus and fart jokes, it’s The Sopranos!

Of course David Chase’s creation topped the list again, because we are still living in the new world of television ushered in by Mob boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini)… Chase’s unapologetically dark examination of turn-of-the-century America took a torch to every written and unwritten rule that TV storytelling had been governed by…

Dress it up however you like, but they’ve used the word ‘undisputed’ for a reason:

Scroll through the full list here and you may well find a few gems you didn’t know about.

[source:rollstone]