I have already said that two of the things I love are lists and television. There have been many variations on a theme when it comes to looking at the great deal of fantastic television that has come our way in the last decade. Greatest single episodes, greatest series, most under appreciated, and so on. With the popularity of TV on DVD that exploded, and cable networks starting to let a singular creative force become responsible for television shows, entire seasons of television shows have become there own entity. In that vein I am going to list the top 15 seasons of television in my viewing lifetime.
First what fun would a list be without some rules? The rankings are very personal to how I first took in the show. In some cases, I watched them week to week as they aired, in others I picked up the series and watched them in rapid succession on DVD or some other form of on demand viewing.
Second, this list is personal in that while I may have watched way too much television in my life but I have not watched all of the television, so if The Shield, Firefly, Deadwood, or the British Office would appeal to what I like and produced some of the best seasons ever... well I still haven't seen them.
Third, I picked one season per series, mainly to spread the accolades around and to acknowledge some shows that may not be quite built for this list.
Finally, I believe what defines this era of television is that watching shows in a serialized form is that seeing each installment adds to the greater tapestry. A show will be ranked higher if the season had a greater payoff as a whole then its individual episodes. For example of a show that is not on this list, every episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show in season 2 might have been the greatest comedy episodes ever, but viewing the final episode before the first episode of the season has no bearing on your enjoyment of the episode, so as a season, it does not really qualify for this list even though it might be a great season.
So without further ado...
