Guaporense certified great TV series

Edit on August 2014: now I "inflated" the ratings to full ratings because the distinction between great and masterpiece is in fact rather juvenile as the desire to rate different works of art differently. I will do like Roger Ebert who gave full ratings to everything he though it was great.

Today we live on a golden age of television. While the quality of hollywood movies appears to stagnate or even decline the quality of television programming has never been higher, thanks to cable to dvd/blu-ray sales that provide the incentives for channels to invest into high quality TV shows. As result TV is now on the position that movies were in the postwar years: peak economic demand which gives artists a greater degree freedom. Many masterpieces were made in the 1950's because those days the negative box office effects of TV weren't fully active, during the 1960's, in Europe, US and Japan, real theater box office declined greatly and never fully recovered, even to the present day.

Still, since there aren't remotely as many TV series as there are movies I am posting here TV series that watched that I think deserve a full blown masterpiece rating: .

Masterpieces of TV:

1) Breaking Bad (2008 - 2013)
3) Fanny and Alexander (1982)
6) Rome (2005-2006)
9) Babylon 5 (1994 - 1998)
10) Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011)
12) The World at War (1973 - 1974)
14) Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-1996)
16) Haibane Renmei (2002)
17) RahXephon (2002)
19) Serial Experiments Lain (1998)
22)Saikano (2002)
2) Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009)
4) Seinfeld (1989-1998)
5) Band of Brothers (2001)
7) The Sopranos (1999-2007)
8) Lost (2004-2010)
11) Game of Thrones (2011 -)
13) Future Boy Conan (1978)
15) Legend of the Galatic Heroes (1988-1998)
18) Aria the Origination (2008)
20) Texhnolyze (2003)
21) Shinsekai Yori (2013)
23) Clannad: After Story (2008)
24) Trigun (1998)
25) Gurren Lagann (2007)
26) Kaiba (2008)
27) Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (2013)
28) Now and Then, Here and There (1999)
29) Ping Pong: The Animation (2014)
30) Detroit: Metal City (2008)
31) I Claudius (1976)
32) Shirobako (2014-2015)

1) Breaking Bad (2008 -)



Boasting some of the finest acting I ever seem on TV combined on many of the most entertaining and tense situations I ever experienced while looking at a screen, it is hard to not to think that Breaking Bad is not a pinnacle of TV.



Breaking Bad boasts some of the finest cinematography ever seem on TV as well and a surprisingly low amount of filler material, given it is a multi-season TV series.



Focused on the life of a overqualified school professor who becomes a meth cook after a life changing experience (i.e. cancer), Breaking Bad is also one of the most visceral and aggressive TV series ever made, since the main characters are always trying to not only prosper among the highly lucrative market of methamphetamine but also survive against the very aggressive players that interact on that market (including the police).



One of the very few TV series that are a must watch.

Breaking Bad can't be a masterpiece for me because both wives are insanely annoying and Junior's dialogue generally consists of either ".jwAHTT" or "I want a muscle car!"

But aside from that it's pretty good.

2) Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009)



This is post-apocalyptic science fiction TV series about a journey of a small fleet of survivors from the genocide of a whole interstellar civilization, whose objective is to find an habitable planet and to escape destruction from the threat of a race of sentient machines. A race that they had previously created themselves.



This show is epic in its scope (as it can be easily noticed from the paragraph above) and deals with a huge variety of themes, from religion, war, human rights and the role of technology in society. It still suffers from flaws, the two most severe are: it's long running time, which lead to a significant amount of filler episodes that do not contribute to the overall plot and the atrocious ending.



Despite it's numerous issues, Battlestar Galactica comes close to being a candidate for the title the best science fiction series produced in English of all time (in fact, I think it is the second best English science fiction TV show I ever watched).

3) Fanny and Alexander (1982)



Fanny and Alexander is Ingmar Bergman's 312 minute TV series that aired in four parts (also edited for theatrical release as a 188 minutes film). If one compares Fanny and Alexander with Battlestar Galactica the difference in average quality per minute is enormous, given that BSG lasts for over 3,000 minutes, it is almost impossible for every minute to be gold. Fanny and Alexander, however, attains near perfection, being perhaps one of the top 5 TV series of all time in terms of average quality per minute.



However, again if compared to BSG, the lack of an epic and complex plot makes in some aspects a less viscerally compelling series that BSG was for me. Though on the whole there isn't any comparison between the two, clearly Fanny and Alexander is a superior work of art. In fact, one can even argue that it is the greatest TV series of all time.



This series essentially reflects Ingmar Bergman's childhood, not factually but in terms of spirit, in an analogous way to Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro (though on the second case the execution is much more visceral than the more contained "nordic" notions of repressed childlike behavior, though that also might be a consequence of the limited acting skills of the child actors).



Anyway, the TV version of Fanny and Alexander is a must watch and is even better than the reduced film version (for quite obvious reasons).

4) Seinfeld (1989 - 1998)



Possibly the greatest sitcom of all time, Seinfeld is a must watch for any true lover of screen entertainment. Less grotesque than the trio of highly popular comedy cartoons (The Simpsons, Family Guy and South Park) also smarter and much more subtle (though not so subtle in some jokes).



Seinfeld called itself "a show about nothing at all" but I might say that it is a show about all aspects of life that can make life itself a funny experience. Truly the work of genius.



It was even called the greatest show of all time, but I personally do not consider it to be among the top masterpieces of television (but it is perhaps one of the top two or maybe the best comedy series I ever watched). Given that I don't rate comedy as highly as others do, I might say it is the masterpiece of the genre.

I usually don't see Fanny and Alexander included on TV lists, but props for including it here.

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"Puns are the highest form of literature." -Alfred Hitchcock

I love Seinfeld and Breaking Bad. George Kastanza is my idol.

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I've only seen TV version of Fanny and Alexander. Don't want to watch the theatrical one. Even Bergman said to watch only TV version because the other one is a piece of crap!

5) Band of Brothers (2001)



Much superior to any recent Hollywood movie about WW2 (think Pearl Harbor and Windtalkers ), Band of Brothers is among the best HBO TV series an impressive feat given the high quality of HBO series.



Despite a few flaws (in my opinion it glorifies war and the importance of the GI Joe too much: the fact was that individual infantryman were responsible for a very small fraction of battle casualties in WW2, most casualties were caused by heavier weapons).



Despite this small flaw the series also represents one of the most realistic depictions of warfare on screen, in fact more realistic than WW2 films such as Saving Private Ryan. And some episodes can be very touching in fact, the one where the kid makes his first kill and then becomes a casualty is one of the greatest moments of a TV series.

6) Rome (2005-2006)



Rome is the best depiction of Classical Antiquity that I have seen, in fact superior to any movie about ancient Rome that I have watched (such as Gladiator or Ben-Hur).



The series created an ancient world with uncompromising realism. Instead of the Rome of white marble we usually see at Hollywood productions we got a Rome of dirty and poorly painted wooden and brick buildings. The sets are among the most ambitious ever build for a TV series:



Featuring huge amounts of sex and violence, Rome is also a very visceral TV show and was my favorite show of all time when I watched it over six years ago.

It's seen not seem.

Breaking Bad and Rome are quite good. Battlestar Galactica and Band of Brothers are not my cup of tea (don't like Sci-Fi, don't like War). I've not seen any of Fanny and Alexander though it looks like something I might enjoy. I've seen several episodes of Seinfeld and I'm completely baffled as to why the show is so insanely popular. I didn't laugh a single time.

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7) The Sopranos (1999-2007)



Called by some the greatest TV series of all time, though I might disagree, it is excellent overall. One thing that bugs me about the gangster genre is the idea that beating innocent people up and exploiting the flaws of the legal system is "cool". So these genre elements prevent me from saying that The Sopranos is a masterpiece, though others like these genre elements and find the series cool.



Another flaw (also shared with multi season series such as Battlestar Galactica) is that there are many filler episodes that don't serve to develop the plot. But still despite those flaws the Sopranos I still think that the Sopranos can be considered a great TV series.



It is consistently entertaining, with very well developed characters which are more human and less like the caricatures of the mafia as portrayed in most Hollywood films. Fundamentally, the Sopranos is a drama series about family, just like the movie The Godfather.

8) Lost (2004 - 2010)



Perhaps the most flawed series that I consider great but also one of the richest TV series in terms of characters and mythology. All these fantastical elements only add to the fascination that this TV drew on it's viewers.

Though, the complexity of the series' mythology was so great that the writers themselves became embroiled in it and in the end failed to give satisfactory explanations for everything that happened earlier. However, I still think that the ending was good and the whole series can be regarded as a flawed success.

It suffers from a lot of filler material, but special episodes like The Constant, keep this series on "great" on my scale.

9) Babylon 5 (1994-1998)



While Battlestar Galactica is great, for me, Babylon 5 clearly remains the best English science fiction series of all time. The Star Trek TV series were all second rate, episodic series that lacked any actual character development and long running story arks.

Babylon 5 remains one of the most innovative TV series being one of the very few US TV series that had all of it's story written before they began shooting the first episodes, so this TV series play out as an integrated whole, something lacking in almost any other multi-season TV series I have ever watched (see Lost, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad for examples of series with plots made up as they go).

Babylon 5 remains a masterpiece of TV storytelling, nothing I ever watched comes close to it's scope.

I miss Lost. The ride is always more fun than the destination and Lost was a great ride.

Seinfeld was a great sitcom. I try to catch an episode every now and then.

I'm waiting to see if one of my favorite shows comes up on this list. Hint:It's animated.

Ditto. Seinfeld was hugely funny. Admittedly, humor is highly subjective, but clearly lots of people got it.

There's no arguing that Seinfeld is one of the most influential sitcoms ever.

I'm also waiting to see if my favorite series makes this list. Hint: it's a drama and it's HBO.

Madoka Magica is indeed a great one. It was the anime hit of 2011.

Funnily enough, my two only experiences in the field of magical girl anime are both original screenplays (which is worth of notice since most of TV anime are manga adaptations) and deconstructions of the genre; in different ways though. One of them is this sadistic and twisted work with very misleading innocent looks, and the other one is 2002's Princess Tutu. I recommend this one too, it is my favorite out of the two and one of my top5 ever series. Unlike Madoka, it is still a shojo, and it is still pretty girly at many points, starting with a premise that mixes magical girl imagery and ballet, while the comedy is the innocent slapstick type; however this appearance hides one of the most complex and well-delivered storylines in anime format, which explores points of conflict that seem very unlikely in these kinds of stories, and develop the characters in quite unique ways, while the plot gets darker and more complicated. Its fairytale symbolism and the emphasis on the aesthetic embellishment of the ballet pieces are some great points too.

Breaking Bad, Seinfeld, and The Sopranos are all in my fave 5 shows. I would rate them all as . I would also include Mad Men and The Shield in that category. Band Of Brothers is also perfect imo. I personally would put mini-series in a different category but I consider The Pacific, Lonesome Dove, and John Adams perfect as well.

I have yet to see the television version of Fanny And Alexander but am looking forward to it. The theatrical version was great, but the couple of issues I had with it I feel could be resolved with a couple of the characters being more fleshed out. I am very interested to see if this is the case in the longer version.

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