What the Hell... everybody else has got a Top Ten
    I’ve written to all the movie studio chiefs complaining about the quality of their products. No response yet.
    How so many smart, rich, talented and resourceful people can produce so much trash is beyond me? The movie business has two parts to it (1) Movie (2) Business. The first part only works intermittently the second part is always firing. For every Jack Nicholson there’s about five thousand bean counters. So the bean counters and brand builders and marketers get involved. When was the last time a movie created a brand? Can't remember? Neither can I!


     But when was the last time a movie borrowed a brand and hung a big name cast and big production budget on it? The bean counters say ‘hey, it’s worked before, it’ll work again!’ Superman, Spiderman, Batman, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Poseidon Adventure, King Kong, Dukes of Hazzard, Miami Vice . . . the list goes on.  
    Television often becomes the garbage compactor of failed cinema but then it occasionally excels itself well beyond celluloid. I once told a Brit how impressed I was that so much quality comedy came out of the 'Old Dart'. She agreed some great programs make their way out of Britain. Sadly for Brits, she lamented, the other 90% of abysmal programs remain trapped inside British television sets.
    Same anywhere, there’s lots of shows, lots of bad ones, some good ones and, unlike so many other pursuits, human nature allows us to actually focus on the good and forget the bad.
    The great thing about television programs is that we get spoilt by being able to watch our favorite characters in our favorite shows every week and enjoy it. See a great movie and you’ll come away knowing it could be two or three months (maybe years, depending on your disposition) until you see another good one.
   In the absence of any decent motion pictures here’s my top ten TV shows and why:

10. The Sopranos
In a world of rapidly declining beliefs there’s appeal in a family that believes in something. So what that it believes crime pays and that anybody who rats out the family should pay with their lives. Outside of the family, members seek solace from shrinks or the parish priest. Others sought counsel from the FBI — one was given the sentimental cement shoes treatment, the other shot in the woods.    

9. The Larry Sanders Show
A television show about a television show must start and end up at the same point — the truth (and then it has to be funny). A very real look, at a very fabricated late night television program, with real guests, played by real celebrities playing themselves. Done properly it works. Garry Shandling is a real actor and a real talk show host – that’s why it works. Does a talk show host really need a sidekick? Probably not. But Jeff Tambor plays it so well as Hank Kingsley it’s hard too see this show working without this sidekick.  

8. Dave Allen
Brilliant, brilliant comedy, from a brilliant, brilliant man. To be Irish and Catholic and to make a life from ridiculing Irish Catholics without ever offending them. A great dead-pan comedian, great sketches and a great television show. People often said he was that Irish comedian with half a finger — I'll always remember him as the Irish comedian with nine-and-a-half fingers. 

7. The Simpsons
Take a genre that hitherto was directed solely at kids, make the main character a kid and aim it at adults. Then let it move ahead. That's the secret to why adults, like me, like the Simpsons. The characters actually develop along the way, like cartoons they don't get old but like people they change. Just take a look at how many giants have lent their voices to this show. People love The Simpsons for a variety of reasons — one of them is its social spin that’s the antithesis of everything we’re fed on Fox News Channel for example. Funny thing they both come out of the same studios and they’re both really entertainment programs.

6. Parkinson
Strictly speaking not a TV show but a talk show. However, if reality TV claims dibs on legitimate programming it doesn’t get any more real than Parkinson. When I watch somebody being interviewed I don’t give a flying duck’s ass about the interviewer’s political or social agenda — by all means have one but save it for dinner parties. A great interview is about the interviewee not the interviewer. Michael Parkinson is quite simply the greatest television interviewer there’s ever been.  
  
5. Blackadder
I could never bring myself to accept Mr Bean as anything special because, despite his rubbery face, Rowan Atkinson is one of the greatest masters of the verbal quip. The only period-piece television comedy I can think of. Series One is set in 1485 and Series Four in 1917. Edmund Blackadder transforms from a prince; to a valet; to a Lord; to a World War I British Army officer on the Western Front. Very funny one liners. The short lines get remembered, not the lengthy diatribes.   

4. Boston Legal
It’s a big call to put a show only it’s second season on an all time greatest list. Even though half the cast got wiped out by the end of season one, Boston Legal still works. William Shatner is Denny Crane. That’s “Denny Crane.” James Spader’s Alan Shore touches both the light and darkness of the human heart. A great foil to Denny Crane’s maniacal gun toting (but loveable) arch conservatism. Brilliantly written and a fine ensemble cast that doesn’t stuff up great lines. It is, in many ways, the M*A*S*H of today. Very funny, an off beat cast of characters, ridiculous scenarios played out in believable settings. Its content is very timely. Dick Cheney shoots his best friend on a hunting trip and it makes its way on to Boston Legal within weeks. The musical score is brilliant — best of any shows in my top ten.   

3. Seinfeld
Along with M*A*S*H, Seinfeld is probably most nominated on most top ten lists. It’s in rarified air as a long running hugely successful show to start and end with the same ensemble cast. The fact that they were all getting paid a bomb to stay there really helped. Very smart. Very funny. Very true. And really about nothing.    
3a. Curb Your Enthusiasm 
Once Seinfeld finished, its co-creator (and inspiration for most of George Costanza's antics), Larry David ran off to HBO and created a priceless gem in Curb Your Enthusiasm is . For want of a better description, it is a follow up series to Seinfeld. And it's the only follow up in the history of the medium to be as good as, and in a whole lot of ways, better than the original. As with Jerry Seinfeld Larry David plays himself, the ensemble cast are actors; while celebrities play themselves. It is a bit of an acquired taste and it's something that could never work on network TV only on HBO (thanks to its edgy subject matter and colorful uses of expletives). Once you’re into it you really don’t want out.

2. Hill Street Blues
Sentimentality makes me push Hill Street Blues so high on the list. Tough and gritty but it was the first cop show I can remember that wasn’t about cops it was about people. There was no homogenous characterization of a cop which was transposed onto different actors. They were people, they had money problems, marriage problems, some had drug problems, some drank, some were corrupt, some made the right choices others made the wrong ones. Like I said — they were people. Hill Street Blues broke the mold on cop shows. 

1. M*A*S*H
Hardly an original choice at number one, but a remarkable television program and a triumph in so many ways. The Korean War, of course, only lasted three years; the TV series about that war went for eleven. Robert Altman’s film of the same name was the catalyst. The film and television casts, and the way they played their characters, differed greatly but both were brilliant. The exception to the different comment is Gary Burghoff who played Radar in both the film and TV series. 
    The final episode of M*A*S*H is still the highest rating television program of all time — no wonder.  
    Any ensemble cast needs a leader and for M*A*S*H it was Alan Alda, who’s character ‘Hawkeye’ Pearce had a profound influence on not only myself but my two closest friends from childhood. True story. One was so inspired he became a surgeon. The other inextricably marked by the decency and humanity of  ‘Hawkeye’ chose a less glamorous path in medicine but one with a far greater human touch – he became a pharmacist. To this day he remains the social conscience of my circle of friends (particularly directing that conscience my way).
    I, on the other hand, was the only one of our three to realize that Alan Alda was in fact an actor and a writer and that he wasn’t really a doctor. So I thought I’d become a writer and I spent almost a decade doing it for television.
    First time I ever cried watching a screen was when Radar O’Reilly walked into a small tent, masquerading as the 4077th operating theatre, and told the world that Henry Blake had been killed. Twenty-five years later when I watched that episode again I still cried. And I laughed. And I learned. And I thought about life. And I enjoyed every bit of it.