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编者语：

纽约时报近期评出了近20年来最佳的20部美剧。敬请阅读。

来源/纽约时报（the new york times）

1999-2006

the west wing

“thewest wing” is one of the great loves of my life, a show i obsessed over beforei became a tv critic, and maybe one of the reasons i did. i love toby. i loveleo. i love marion coatsworth hay. i love the little rocket ship gesture. thismeans something good has happened.

peoplecomplain that it’s a smug fantasy. but i love a fantasy where everyone issmart, no one wants a forever war and integrity exists. i love a fantasy wherecharacters have such a strong sense of purpose it rubs off on you just fromwatching them. my fantasy is that people are trustworthy, and that when theylet me down, they notice and they’re sorry. let’s all fantasize about havingethics — wouldn’t that be such a wild world? keep your swords-and-magic epics.i’ve got the bartlet administration to dream about.

thereare two “west wing”s: aaron sorkin created and guided it for four seasons, andjohn wells picked up and ran with it for three more. they both have theirstrengths. sorkin’s has his signature aspirational patter dialogue, obsessionwith minutia and operatic sense of hope. wells’s contains his momentum andnarrative heft.

thebest part of “the west wing” is that everything matters. not just the decisionsbeing made here on a genuinely global scale, but small stuff. lying to atherapist, remembering dates correctly, the clink of an ice cube dropped fromjust the right height. too much alliteration can cause genuine spiritual pain.one line in a budget bill can derail a whole career.

that’sa fantasy too, i guess: a fantasy about caring, a fantasy that any one of us isimportant, not just the president, and not just the people who work for him. acensus matters, a high school english teacher matters, the citizens of animaginary country matter, a guy trying to pay for his daughter to go to collegematters.

theacting is extraordinary, the stories surprisingly timeless. and that’s allgreat, and the music and the sets and and and … but the beacon here is caring,because you’re my guys, and i’m yours, and there’s nothing i wouldn’t do foryou.

now,what’s next?

——margaretlyons

2002-2008

the shield

“theshield” has a perfect pilot and a perfect finale. and everything in between ispretty great, too.

michaelchiklis stars as vic mackey, a vicious dirty cop — racist, sexist, violent,conceited and he never met a civil right he wasn’t interested in violating.shawn ryan didn’t invent the morally bankrupt cop archetype, certainly, but hemanaged to reinvent him in the modern antihero image, in ways that were oftensurprising not only in their depravity but in how they defined the narrative curveof the show. vic kills a fellow cop right in the pilot, as clear anannouncement as you’ll ever see on television of what a show plans to do andbe.

“theshield” believes in a fallen world, where sinners and saints suffer alongsideone another, and oh yeah, those aren’t saints — those are prostitutes who wereasked to wear saint costumes and paid accordingly. everything is grimy, everymirror is scratched. no one looks particularly good or well dressed. losangeles is a complicated place, where people from all over the world convene todisappoint one another, and “the shield” thrived on that conflict and chaos.

lotsof shows that seem to want to be “the shield” revel in making their viewersmiserable or appalled. and while awful things transpire on the show, and thereare episodes that will haunt me all of my days, “the shield” never jerks itsaudience around. that’s the part i wish its imitators would copy — not thebrutality or policing plot lines, but the attention to story, the care, thestructure. each season has a true arc. characters’ problems get worse. choiceshave consequences and there’s no such thing as “going back to normal.”

showswith complicated heists or with double-crossing agents often lose themselves orlose track of the emotional momentum of the story. not so here. there are fewthrills as gratifying as a show with a great memory — a show that can reallyhandle fan love and scrutiny. in its final episodes, “the shield” foreverlocked in its spot on these kinds of lists when it brought every corruptchicken home to roost. it’s masterly storytelling at its most gripping.

——margaretlyons

2002-2008

the wire

iwent into “the wire” like any newly budding actor: i was narcissistic. it wasjust about my career and how much screen time i had and blah, blah, blah.

season2 came in, the story line shifted to the docks where there were white actorsthat told that story. that shook me a little bit. i didn’t expect that. i cameout on the other side of that with gratitude to be a part of this. i saw howdavid simon [the creator] masterfully came back in to season 3 and it becamebigger than just a hood story.

itwas never about that. it was a social story told on an american tapestry. justhappened to be in the hood.

itwouldn’t just be people saying, “oh, that’s some good hood [expletive] on tv.”it was the way that the community was responding to the story. it was truthtelling. that’s when i realized that i’m a part of something way bigger than meor my career, and it made me really grateful to be just a small part in thatwheel.

isaw a lot of homophobia in my community. omar definitely helped soften the blowof homophobia in my community and it opened up a dialogue, definitely. there’sbeen more of a tolerance for alternative lifestyles in the community than priorto “the wire.” kima greggs [sonja sohn], felicia pearson. it wasn’t just omar,man.

[theessence of my character is in] the speech that he gave just before he pulledthe trigger on stringer bell [idris elba]. string tries to offer him money forhis life. omar says, “you still don’t get it. it ain’t about your money, bro.”it’s about loyalty. his boy gave him up. you know what i’m saying? money can’tbuy loyalty, man.

omarhad a code of ethics. you may not agree with his morals or his ideals, however,you could set your watch by him that he was not gonna break codes for anythingor anybody, or no amount of money. it’s code.

man’sgotta have a code, right? — as told to aisha harris.

——michaelk. williams, who portrayed omar little

2004-2009

battlestargalactica

evenin our current age of reboots, no show has surpassed its original incarnationas spectacularly as “battlestar galactica.” ronald d. moore and david eickreimagined a mystical 1970s space opera as a dark and epic tale of survivalthat for several seasons was a seamless combination of large-scale action,close-quarters character drama and pop-political philosophy.

thepremise would have been provocative at any time: a bitter race of robots getsthe drop on humanity (with the help of a human traitor) and nearly extincts us,killing all but about 50,000 survivors, who spend the series fleeing throughspace on a motley collection of ships led by the titular battleship. that theshow came along at the height of the post-9/11 “war on terror” gave an extraresonance to its pervasive mood of existential dread, and made its depictionsof religious fanaticism (on the part of the robots!), torture and massacreparticularly topical.

mooreand his writers moved their large ensemble from crisis to crisis with cinematicverve but also with careful attention to the emotional realities of relentlessflight and battle. (they also neutralized basic-cable censors with thebrilliant invention of the galactic epithet “frak.”) they lost some of theirgrip on the story in the final seasons, but their original creation took tvscience fiction to places it had never gone before.

——mikehale

2004-2006

deadwood

theobscenity-laden stuff seemed like it might be off the cuff, but it was reallycarefully crafted. ian [mcshane] used to say “you get one [expletive] in thewrong place, and you’re [expletive].”

david[milch, the creator] always said “this is the way they talked,” down to theobscenities. there was a formality to the language. as an actor, and then as aviewer, it transports you to that time quickly, and it shows you the kind ofcommunication and wordplay that was going on at that time, which can feel likea lost art now with all of our … we won’t go into that. but you know what i’msaying.

i’vedone shakespeare, so it was in my wheelhouse. but it is a different thing to bedealing with a mouthful of that kind of stuff on camera — rather than standingon stage and projecting it to 3,000 people — to make it tumble out and be aseffortless as possible.

asmartha, unfortunately, i did not get to indulge in the obscenity. she’s a womanof not as many words, but they are very carefully chosen. there was a scene inthe bullocks’ house, after martha becomes aware that seth [timothy olyphant]has been messing around with alma [molly parker], and she’s very angry. and i’mgoing up the stairs and i say something like, “i repudiate you.”

itwas so formal. but what she’s saying is “[expletive] you.” — as told to jeremyegner.

——annagunn, who portrayed martha bullock

2004-2010

lost

i’vespent a disproportionate amount of time talking about the beginning of “lost” —the pilot and first season — and then the final episode, an ending for which istill make no apologies. but i now have more perspective on the 119 hours thathappened between those two poles.

afterthe pilot, the thing that most people were saying, myself included, was, “howdo you keep these people on an island, and make that interesting to watch?” thelesson is to keep running, and i give myself a little latitude for justfinishing the marathon.

asfor my favorites, it’s a tie between the pilot, “the constant” [from season 4]and the season 3 finale — right now, the season 3 finale [which introduced theflash-forward concept, and revealed that the survivors make it off the island]is in the pole position. that was one of the most exciting things we ever did,and it was at a time when the show was starting to get written off as havingits best days behind it.

sothat was like the moment in the “rocky” movie where rocky gets up, and yourealize he’s still got some fight left in him. just that idea that we were ableto still pull off a satisfying emotional twist, with the shifting out offlashbacks and into flash-forwards. the line i hear quoted most at me is, “wehave to go back!” it’s an indelible moment in the show, and it seems to havestuck. it definitely stuck with me.

iget tickled when a show like “manifest” comes along in 2018 and people describeit as, “it’s like ‘lost.’” i was inspired by so many shows — “twin peaks,” “thex-files,” “the twilight zone,” “the prisoner” and a billion other things werein that stew as well. so the idea that “lost” gets to be an ingredient insomebody else’s stew is immensely gratifying.

thetheory that continues to drive me bonkers is the idea that they were dead thewhole time. that makes no sense to me because in the finale, as the charactersall come together in this church before they move on to whatever their next lifeis, there are characters there who were not on the plane — desmond and penny,benjamin linus, juliet. if they were dead the whole time, how would they havemet characters who were not even on oceanic 815?

itdefinitely creates some brow furrowing. but i’ve decided that on my tombstoneit will say: “here lies damon lindelof. he was dead the whole time.” — as toldto jeremy egner.

——damonlindelof, co-creator and co-showrunner

2004-2007

veronica mars

debutingon upn a year after “buffy the vampire slayer” left the air, “veronica mars”continued to prove that tv for a younger audience could be smart, sophisticatedin its storytelling and emotionally complex. its run was short, and its thirdand final season on cw, post merger, sagged a little. but while it lasted, itwas a peerless blend of neo-noir mystery and teenage romantic drama, eachaddictive in its own right — a type of synthesis that’s frequently attemptedand seldom perfected.

andit was surprisingly clear-eyed and unsentimental for a show largely set amonghigh school students. (the refusal of the show’s creator, rob thomas, to dumbthings down might have contributed to its relatively low ratings.) the venalityand viciousness of the upper-class southern california beach crowd veronica hadbeen exiled from wasn’t just played for laughs. the fiercely loyal, codependentrelationship between veronica and her father, the struggling privateinvestigator keith mars, had elements of desperation and sadness. well before#metoo, veronica was revealed to have been drugged and raped at a party, anungratuitous detail that helped explain her hard, sarcastic edge.

thatmight make the show sound like a slog, but it was a joy. that had to do withhow cleverly thomas employed the conventions of california noir, and with thedistinctive gallery of teenage characters he created. but it was mainly aboutthe deft, soulful performances of kristen bell and enrico colantoni as veronicaand keith, the damaged outsiders who shared a talent for sleuthing and a devotionto justice. playing an obstinate 17-year-old coming of age while coping withthe losses of her mother and her best friend, bell was a testy heartbreaker.

——mikehale

2005-present

grey’s anatomy

moretears have been shed over “grey’s anatomy” than any other prime time drama.it’s been on longer than almost anything else, and it’s also embraced tragedy,plucked heartstrings and leaned hard into wrenching monologues. “grey’sanatomy” isn’t just one of the best dramas. it is also the most drama.

planecrashes. ferry crashes. a crazed gunman. a train derailment. a sinkhole. everydisease you can imagine, and some you can’t. everything anyone could getimpaled on and then some. storms upon storms. a penis fish. grieving parents,frightened children, abuse survivors, traumatic births. but also sex andromance and love triangles, quadrangles and irregular polygons. “grey’sanatomy” elevates female friendship above all bonds and sees professionalexcellence as a baseline qualification. it understands grief.

“grey’sanatomy” was the first shonda rhimes show, and it remains her best (as acreator or as an executive producer). and try as they might, no othercontemporary doctor show comes close to the emotional depth or clever dialogueof early “grey’s,” or to the sustained melodrama and potency of its currentincarnation.

sometimeslead characters can be a little too perfect, but “grey’s anatomy” never hadthat problem: we buy from the get-go that meredith (ellen pompeo) might occasionallyfeel less-than, and that her “dark and twisty” insides might keep her from thehappiness she (everyone!) deserves. and then she — and the show, and theaudience, and the world, sort of — evolved and endured. for many years,meredith was not the most interesting character on the show that bears hername. but she is now, which is one reason the show feels viable and dynamicstill, 15 seasons in.

——margaretlyons

2006-2011

friday night lights

asthose of us who have evangelized for this show for years constantly tellpeople, “friday night lights” is not really about high school football. it’sabout dillon, tex.

dillon,tex., in turn, is totally about high school football. football is on the radioand in the yard signs and at the barbecues. dillon reminisces about football ofthe past and dreams about football of the future. it comes together overfootball, and it falls apart over football.

theway “f.n.l.” understood this — why a game can be so consuming to aworking-class small town, how the need for hope can be both sustaining anddangerous — is what made it one of tv’s best dramas, not just about high schoolbut about community.

community,in “f.n.l.,” can be a support and a burden. the players juggle game pressureswith family pressures — absent parents, illness, money troubles. coach erictaylor (kyle chandler) is celebrated when he wins, dogged and second-guessedwhen he loses. his wife, tami (connie britton), a guidance counselor andprincipal, wrestles with a system that would rather invest in a jumbotron thanteachers. (their gently sparring partnership, at home and school, should bemandatory pre-marriage-counseling viewing.)

inthe fourth season, eric and tami relocate to east dillon high school — a poor,largely african-american school across town — and “f.n.l.” becomes the rarehigh school show to actually get better as it ages, becoming as much a story ofthe chasms of opportunity as more overtly issues-minded stories like “thewire.”

ofcourse, there’s football, too, with hard hits and sidelines drama and more thanthe statistically likely percentage of games decided on the last play. but themost memorable moments are coach taylor’s locker-room speeches, which bring itback to honor, faith and the family watching from the stands: “those are thepeople i want in your minds. those are the people i want in your hearts.”

thisis a football story that cares as much about the spectators as the players,because it knows that none of them got where they are by themselves.

——jamesponiewozik

2007-2015

mad men

iwrote the pilot of “mad men” before i started as a writer on “the sopranos,” sothere’s seven years between the pilot and writing the second episode of “madmen.” whatever i had intended the show to be when i wrote that pilot was verydifferent after seeing how seriously david chase took human behavior. real humanbehavior.

soinstead of having a potboiler with people stealing each other’s folders andtrying to get each other fired, and that sort of office intrigue — not that“mad men” didn’t have any of that — you have peggy [elisabeth moss] with apsychic scar for the entire show, after giving away that baby. that’s the kindof thing that would have never occurred to me before i was on “the sopranos.”

itwasn’t like i didn’t have those thoughts or feelings. i just didn’t know theaudience would respond to it.

there’snothing allegorical in “mad men,” as far as i’m concerned. no one writes withthose things in mind. i don’t believe it, if they say they do. literally you’relike, “i want a story, this is what happens, this is what it means, these arethe repercussions, this is the scene of aftermath, this is the feeling it’sabout for these people.”

ofcourse i was into the aesthetics. but half of what the show was about was tosay, “these people have the same problems we have right now.” don [jon hamm] isnot part of the rat pack. these are not the ring-a-ding years. they’re a bunchof veterans, and they are walking around a little haunted. and the women aredissatisfied, and they’re facing horrible consequences in the workplace.everything was supposed to be an irony between the way it’s been portrayed inmovies and advertising, versus the way it really was.

whichstill exists. instagram is basically you creating an ad for yourself to makeyour life look better, and everyone assumes that no one else has any problems.that’s what advertising is.

“maidenform,”in the second season, is the first episode of the show where i was like, “thiscannot be done on any other show.” because it’s so psychological and it’s aboutan idea, which is, “how am i perceived by other people?”

it’sthematically hammered over and over — in the ad campaign, in don and bobbiebarrett’s [melinda mcgraw] relationship, don versus sally [kiernan shipka],betty [january jones] in the bathing suit. at the time, i was like, “is anybodygoing to understand this?” because we’re telling a story here that probablylooks like something about don’s busted romance, and conflict in the office,and peggy trying to get ahead. but what it really is, is “i look in the mirrorand i don’t like what i see. what do other people see?” and that’s because i’vecreated this false self.

justthat sentence that i gave you right there — i would have never thought that wasthe subject of a tv show if i hadn’t sat in a room with david chase for fouryears. even though it
瘟神带你学英语美剧精讲系列视频课官…来自麦田里Maitalen…插图
is the substance of our lives. — as told to jeremy egner.

——matthewweiner, creator

2008-2013

breaking bad

skyler’sability to lie, to don the persona of the ditzy accountant to get what shewanted — she’s really good at it. as the show goes along, everybody has thosekinds of things revealed. it’s always in moments of crisis that human beingsshow their true character.

inthe beginning, vince [gilligan, the creator] told me “i see her as carmelasoprano, but in on the crime.” he was going to have her take a similar path towalt [bryan cranston], in that she would become her own heisenberg. she did insome ways but she didn’t fully, and that was really smart to keep her on herown trajectory. she continued to catch herself and go “wait, what? no, no, no.this is not who i want to be.”

skylerwas pilloried as the nagging wife — there was this runaway train of skylerhatred. it was kind of freaking vince out and it was freaking me out, too. iwrote about it [in the times] and went through that whole thing.

iget it: she’s the bummer. she’s bringing a crashing dose of reality to thatkingpin trajectory. the show was constructed in such a way that your sympathieslie with walt, as a viewer. what was surprising is that when he continued alongthat path and did truly awful things, people were still going “yeah all right!he’s the man!”

idon’t know. obviously there’s a deep sexism there, and dare i say misogyny withit. because if skyler had been a male character, it would have been perceiveddifferently.

butit’s shaken out so that people — women and men — come up to me all the time nowand tell me how much that character meant to them, or that she got them throughsomething in their life. i think there’s much more awareness, in our currentclimate, about how women are seen and what women have been battling. it’ssomething that was not particularly examined at the time, but now people arelooking at it much more honestly, and that’s great to see.

thefirst time we saw a screening of the “breaking bad” pilot, as a group, we satin a stunned silence for a second afterward, thinking “this is extraordinary.”but you still wonder: it’s so out there, are people going to connect to it? isit actually going to see the light of day? and then it did. — as told to jeremyegner.

——annagunn, who portrayed skyler white

2009-2016

the good wife

malecreators and critics, especially, can sometimes confuse violence or darksubject matter with importance. some of the purple dialogue in “true detective”felt like white suburban boys pretending to have some real darkness.

on“the good wife,” there was very rarely any violence. we didn’t do any of thosecbs things of showing people being killed and slaughtered. the battle was morein words, and that feels more like the violence we see these days. it’s moreconnected to reality.

“thegood wife” was about soft power — the use of power that is not announcingitself as power. i think alicia [julianna margulies] got really distraughtabout power and how she utilized it over the seven seasons, and i think by theend she needed a rebirth of some kind. she probably went on to be involved inthe metoo movement, and on the front lines of the political resistance.

whenwe were starting the series, all of these wives were forced to stand by theirmisbehaving men. then as the show took off, they kind of stopped needing to dothat — by turning a tv spotlight on it, we pointed out what a cliché it was. ifthe show has a positive legacy, it’s probably that we helped women not have tostand by their scandalized husbands. (edited from a joint interview with jeremyegner)

——michelleand robert king, creators

2010-2018

adventure time

youmight well ask, why put a cartoon on a best drama list? i would answer, whynot? if pendleton ward’s sprawling, postapocalyptic saga were live-action,rather than gorgeously rendered animation, it would be classified with “lost,”“buffy the vampire slayer” and other dramas that balance fantastical storylines with humor and bursting heart. that it did so in kaleidoscopic, 11-minuteepisodes for audiences of all ages is a credit, not a demerit.

thestory of finn, a foundling in the magical and once-devastated land of ooo,“adventure time” evolved from a whimsical action-adventure into a sprawlingstory of abandoned children, surrogate families and self-discovery. it grew upas its protagonist did, teaching its viewers that while the battle of goodagainst evil can be thrilling, it’s rarely simple. it had the vast, well-imaginedcast of a saga like “game of thrones,” along with a stunning visual languageand a through sense of empathy.

ifyou still need convincing, let me direct you to the season 4 episode “iremember you,” which begins to reveal the back story of the series’ originalmad villain, the ice king. once a mild-mannered human named simon, he saved ayoung girl (now marceline, the goth-punk vampire) by embracing a magic thattook his sanity and memory. as marceline pieces together the story and hegrasps at the fragments of his past — a story with familiar echoes to anyonewho’s seen a loved one fall to dementia — the episode’s 11 minutes build to anemotional climax, a villainous character reframed and given depth on the spot.

surreal,wise and often heartbreaking, “adventure time” may look like kids’ stuff. (itis, in fact, outstanding kids’ stuff.) but under its confectionery surface liesthe material of great drama. it’s a wonderland of broken, misfit toys learningto fix one another.

——jamesponiewozik

2011-2013

enlightened

manyof the post-“sopranos” dramas listed here attempted to understand evil (“theshield”) or people sliding toward evil (“breaking bad”) or the moral conflictsof people engaged in evil deeds (“the americans”). this entire era of drama, ina way, was a response to an earlier era of tv in which moral issues weresimple, clear and settled in an hour with commercials.

“enlightened,”in its 18 half hours, stood apart by engaging with what it means to be good,and the difficulty of getting there.

wemeet amy jellicoe (laura dern), a low-level office worker for a slicklyexploitative megacorporation, on the rebound from a nervous breakdown. she’sembraced the language of conscience and consciousness, but she’s still rackedwith resentment and envy. she wants to change the world but do well for herselfin the process, and, at first, she uses her do-gooderism passive-aggressively,as a cudgel.

butthat’s life; that’s morality. the urge to do right doesn’t just drop fromheaven. it can come from ego and regret and anger as much as from altruism andself-denial. if the world is to get better, it has to come through the fumblingefforts of those of us, who, like amy, are no bodhisattvas.

poetic,meditative and generous, the series manages in its short span to delve into theinner lives of amy’s recovering-addict ex, levi (luke wilson), her awkwardco-worker tyler (mike white, who created the series with dern), and herdisappointed mother, helen (dern’s real-life mother, diane ladd).

“enlightened”has elements of cringe humor, but it takes amy seriously. her feelings arechaotic, and sometimes na?ve. but they’re real, and over two seasons, she getscloser to becoming the person she fantasizes about being, blowing the whistleon her company’s shady practices and accepting that there are causes largerthan herself. in its finale, facing the aftermath of having exposed heremployer, amy asks levi a question that’s hung over the series, “am i crazy?”

no,he says, “you’re just full of hope. you’ve got more hope than most people do.”

——jamesponiewozik

2013-2018

the americans

atan early table read, joe weisberg came up and told me that they plan to havemartha marry the man she knew as clark [matthew rhys], and that it was based onreal relationships these women had. these secretaries, they would get marriedand sometimes have children, and these relationships might last years and yearsbefore the deception was ever revealed.

soi figured [my job would] be safe for a little while, if i married the guy.

personally,i see my friends in situations every day where i say, “how can she not seewhat’s going on here?” we all have denial and blind spots about loads ofthings, especially when it comes to our love lives. joe and joel fields [theshowrunners] did a great job of writing a complicated woman, and they obviouslymade it believable at some point. it felt like most people were eventually onher side.

shewas an innocent, but she still did naughty things. she stole a lot ofinformation and she could have cost people their lives. she just did it forlove. maybe because her intentions were not nefarious, we give her a littleforgiveness.

whenthey told me martha was going to be sent to the soviet union, i was horrified.and joe was like, “what are you talking about? she’s still alive.” but i thinkthat’s a fate worse than death. how painful that would be to survive everythingshe’s gone through, and do it in a place like that. in a time like that. ithought it was a death sentence for her soul.

ilike to imagine that somehow she met up with anton baklanov [michael aronov].remember him? the physicist who was kidnapped? i always thought he and marthawould make a great couple. sitting depressed together.

butif she saw clark in moscow, i’d like to think she would stop and stare at himfor a little while, and turn around and walk the other way. especially sincehe’d probably be there with his wife. — as told to jeremy egner.

——alisonwright, who played martha

2013-2016

rectify

watching“rectify” will turn your soul into a pensive cello song, and your hands intothose of an aged person mourning their youth. you’ll discover an oldhandkerchief in the back of a drawer, behold it briefly in the dusty sunlight,then collapse onto the corner of the bed, weeping at the fragility of all humanlife — how fallible and wonderful it all is, how damaged and dark.

butit’s worth it, because “rectify” isn’t like any other show. unlike lots ofthematically dark shows, it’s visually bright and sunshine-y, with a humiditythat borders on fecundity. its slowness is ethereal — season 1 takes place overjust six days — but its plot does move forward, more than some other moretraditionally paced dramas out there.

thecriminally underseen series, created by ray mckinnon, stars aden young asdaniel holden, who was wrongly convicted as a teenager of raping and murderinghis girlfriend. he spent 19 years on georgia’s death row before being releasedon a technicality. he was raped and tortured in prison, robbed of his dignity.freedom doesn’t undo that damage. if anything, it brings it into starkerrelief.

aswith all human tragedy, daniel’s story isn’t only his. his siblings andstepsiblings have spun into individualized realms of dysfunction, and sometimesit feels like the entire small town where they live has a raw and unresolvedcentral wound.

“rectify”puts its characters under a powerful but loving microscope, and we get to seetheir full humanity, from the way they say or don’t say “i love you” to the waythey impatiently and loudly chug water. this meticulous, miraculous sense ofspecificity is sharp and dense enough to cast a powerful shadow, and the biggertale becomes one about what fills in society in the absence of justice.

——margaretlyons

2014-2017

the leftovers

kevinhad an existential crisis: how do i fit in the grand scheme of a post-departureworld? but he didn’t really lose anything palpable.

norais the one who lost everything. she lost her cheating husband and her twochildren, so she’s moving through her life sort of wondering, “what did i do todeserve this?” and then like, “this was just a random happenstance.” bouncingher between “there’s nothing to be done” and “i have to do something” was anincredibly difficult thing to pull off as storytellers, and an even moredifficult thing for carrie coon to pull off as an actor.

wegot into the third season of the show, and it became very obvious to us thatthe finale was going to be largely nora-driven. kevin was going to be in it,but it was her story. i don’t know if that means that the series writ large washer story, but it just felt like that was the only way to end it with somedegree of satisfaction.

theidea of her putting herself into some sort of self-imposed exile — that is theclassic hero’s journey. every rambo movie is rambo at some thai monastery, andthen the united states government has to track him down and say, “we need youto do one more job, john.”

wewere kind of like, “what’s the emotional version of that?” one question theshow was always asking was, “how can you emotionally invest in anyone, if youthink that they could just slip out of existence in a second?”

obviouslythat’s something we contend with in a nondeparture world, because people die.but that feeling of, “i now have an excuse to not emotionally connect toanyone” gets magnified in a world where 2 percent of the world’s populationjust slipped out.

showrunnersdo have favorite episodes, they just won’t admit it. i’m very partial to thefirst “international assassin” episode.

westarted with a version that was very trippy and kubrickian, and a littleobtuse. it was feeling super self-serious and not fun to watch. the only thingthat survived that version was the manifestation of patti as a little girl.then it was like: oh, kevin’s got to kill that little girl in order to get ridof the adult patti.

that’sa good challenge for him, but the world and its rules were so artsy fartsy. wejust couldn’t get invested in it.

sowe were in the writers’ room and someone said, “i wish it was just like ’threedays of the condor,’ and someone told him he had to assassinate senator pattilevin.” and everybody laughed. then there was a five-second moment whereeveryone was looking at each other like, “wait a minute, can we do that? whatdoes that look like?” and then we were off to the races. — as told to jeremyegner.

——damonlindelof, creator

2014-present

transparent

we’reworking on the finale so i’m asking this question of, “what does it need towrap up this story?” a few things have always been present. one is this bigquestion: will you still love me if … ? and this question that people andfamilies ask each other: “will you still love me if i come out? will you stilllove me if i’m an alcoholic? will you still love me if i have an affair? willyou still love me if i set a boundary?”

ithink the action of this family, for me, has always been this idea [that] thesecret is the boundary. now that the secret is gone, where do you start, wheredo i end?

inthe pilot they think maura is giving them the house. they showed up at thatbarbecue dinner in the pilot to say “we want our inheritance.” but it turns outtheir inheritance is one of queerness, and trans-ness.

wheni’m really old and i’m in a nursing home and i feel lonely i think i’m justgoing to watch the whole series on repeat over and over again and say “aah,these are my people, this is my family, these are my friends.” they feel soreal to me. when i watch it, it feels like i’m dipping into a movie version ofa photo album of a family and i know i’m loved.

thingsthat i really loved about “the sopranos” were the kitchen scenes and the wayfamily life was portrayed on that show, these beautiful little family moments.they would take something like a horrific mafia murder and put it right next toa really banal conversation about red sauce pasta. we do the same thing in“transparent,” but it’s the holocaust and a conversation about a bagel.

that’sone of the things i got from david chase: the proximity of great tragedy andgreat food. — as told to aisha harris.

——jillsoloway, creator

2014-present

jane the virgin

ireally think of it as a true hybrid. we make sure that every episode has comicset pieces, but the big beating heart underneath the show is dramatic. i thinkour seasons really take shape around the more dramatic elements of the show.

thegreatest pain comes with a lot of laughter and vice versa.

jane,xiomara and alba — that’s 100 percent the central relationship that we’retracking and that i think changes and evolves the most. who jane’s going to endup with is certainly a central thread and central to the genre and central toromance, the telenovela and all of that. but the central love story in the showis the three women.

theyare the heart of the show. that really became clear to me in the secondepisode, when jane was unpacking the trauma of the accidental insemination withher mom and grandmother on the porch swing. that is the thing we have to alwayscome back to. that porch swing, that relationship and the way that they supporteach other, love each other, disagree with each other, fight with each other,but ultimately have each other’s backs always.

we’relike, “o.k., it’s a porch swing moment.” we go to that a lot in the writers’room.

ihope the legacy of “jane” is how it shows that people who want to be good canbe interesting, too; as a show that introduced the world to gina rodriguez, whoi think is such a gift in so many ways; and a love letter to telenovelas,ultimately.

ihope also that it’s remembered for the way that it makes political statementsin a very personal way, and that hopefully it has increased empathy andcompassion and helped push us forward, helped give a little bit of light inthis darker time. — as told to aisha harris.

——jenniesnyder urman, creator

2016-present

atlanta

idefinitely think of it as a drama; it’s how i approach it. i found itinteresting that it was billed as a comedy, initially. there is a lot moretonal nuance to the show than i think what we associate with sitcoms or thegeneral definition of comedy. and i find when i watch the show on my own, idon’t laugh that much.

thinkingback to when we were shooting last season, i think it was [season 2, episode3], when i am coming home and we’re looking through the mail. and i am talkingabout where we end up going out later that episode. it’s kind of a funny scene.

wewere improvising and i started saying, “ugh, i’m not going to be able to comeup with anything funny right now.” and [the director] hiro [murai] said, “don’tbe funny, just be truthful” — which is a general rule for improvising, but ithink it was just another reminder: the show doesn’t have to land jokes, itjust has to land truth.

peoplehave been raised to generally associate black tv shows with comedy. and becauseour show is being advertised as a comedy, it might not have the same commercialweight as being evaluated as a dramatic performance.

butit is both. life is both, and i think that “atlanta” is trying to captureelements of both of those things. — as told to aisha harris.

——zaziebeetz, who plays vanessa

2014-2017

halt and catch fire

“computersaren’t the thing,” says the tech executive joe macmillan (lee pace). “they’rethe thing that gets us to the thing.” this amc drama spanned thepersonal-computer revolution of the early ’80s to the dawning of the web in theearly ’90s, the period in which people found that what they thought of asoffice hardware was in fact the printing press of a new culture.

“halt”was one of tv’s best stories about work, the medium through which itscharacters communicate, fall apart and come together again. in particular, theturbulent collaboration between genius programmer cameron howe (mackenziedavis) and venture capitalist donna clark (kerry bishé) was a platonic romance.this wasn’t a story of big hits and mega-riches; in fact, the characters keptmoving from one failed project to the next. but “halt” found life in thatmovement, the unstoppable, optimistic drive to scroll on to the next page.

wouldswap out: “the west wing” look, i’m not made of stone; despite its occasionalsoapboxiness, i loved this show’s romance with public service. but despitearriving several months after “the sopranos,” it feels like an artifact of aprevious era, when tv sought to simplify the complexities of life and moralityrather than vice versa.

——jamesponiewozik

2016-present

queen sugar

i’dnever seen anything like “queen sugar” on tv before. a slow-burner centered onmultiple generations of a black southern family tied together by the loominglegacy (and tenuous future) of the recently departed patriarch’s sugarcanefarm, the series expertly walks the line between high art and sudsy melodrama.is every actor on this show impossibly gorgeous, their brown skin lit toperfection in every scene? sure — but it also remains a crime that rutinawesley, dawn-lyen gardner and kofi siriboe have yet to receive emmy nominationsfor their poignant performances as the bordelon siblings.

“queensugar” has unraveled a sprawling narrative as vast as its luminously shot rurallouisiana landscapes and woven in an array of relevant cultural topics,including black disenfranchisement and mass incarceration. yet the attention todetail in the characterization and interpersonal relationships has never beenlost — these stories, these people, ring true.

wouldswap out: “mad men” i admire the series, but midway through its run, i grewfrustrated and bored with don draper’s neuroses and terrible behavior, whichdidn’t seem to evolve much beyond his respect for peggy olson.

——aishaharris, assistant tv editor

the toughest omissions

2014-2017

halt and catch fire

“halt” was oneof tv’s best stories about work, the medium through which its characterscommunicate, fall apart and come together again. in particular, the turbulentcollaboration between genius programmer cameron howe (mackenzie davis) andventure capitalist donna clark (kerry bishé) was a platonic romance. thiswasn’t a story of big hits and mega-riches; in fact, the characters kept movingfrom one failed project to the next. but “halt” found life in that movement,the unstoppable, optimistic drive to scroll on to the next page.

would swap out: “the west wing”look, i’m not made of stone;despite its occasional soapboxiness, i loved this show’s romance with publicservice. but despite arriving several months after “the sopranos,” it feelslike an artifact of a previous era, when tv sought to simplify the complexitiesof life and morality rather than vice versa.

——james poniewozik

2016-present

queen sugar

i’d never seenanything like “queen sugar” on tv before. a slow-burner centered on multiplegenerations of a black southern family tied together by the looming legacy (andtenuous future) of the recently departed patriarch’s sugarcane farm, the seriesexpertly walks the line between high art and sudsy melodrama. is every actor onthis show impossibly gorgeous, their brown skin lit to perfection in everyscene? sure — but it also remains a crime that rutina wesley, dawn-lyen gardnerand kofi siriboe have yet to receive emmy nominations for their poignantperformances as the bordelon siblings.

“queen sugar”has unraveled a sprawling narrative as vast as its luminously shot rurallouisiana landscapes and woven in an array of relevant cultural topics,including black disenfranchisement and mass incarceration. yet the attention todetail in the characterization and interpersonal relationships has never beenlost — these stories, these people, ring true.

would swap out: “mad men”i admire the series, but midway throughits run, i grew frustrated and bored with don draper’s neuroses and terriblebehavior, which didn’t seem to evolve much beyond his respect for peggy olson.

——aisha harris, assistant tv editor

2010-2015

justified

based on anelmore leonard short story, “fire in the hole,” “justified” was a clever andliterate crime drama, a pungent celebration of regional folkways and humor anda showcase for one of the most talented, idiosyncratic acting ensembles tv hasoffered. timothy olyphant and walton goggins starred as a deputy u.s. marshalin kentucky and his one-time best friend, now a rural crime kingpin, and theirsupporting cast included nick searcy, natalie zea, joelle carter, damonherriman, jere burns, stephen root and margo martindale, to name a few.

would swap out: “rectify” or “the leftovers”i’ll take the pure pleasure of“justified” over the feel-bad profundity of those shows anytime.

——mike hale

2009-2013

southland

“southland” isthe only worthy heir to “the shield,” but it has so much more light in it, somuch more texture. it’s extraordinary, and even though i think “the shield” isprobably a better show, “southland” is my favorite cop show of the modern era.

i also wouldhave added “wonderfalls,” a teeny-tiny show from 2004 that has only 13 episodes— they didn’t even air them all when the show was briefly on fox. but those ofus who caught it then and bought the dvds later know it to be enchanting andperceptive. jaye is a frustrated young woman with a failure to launch, toilingaway at a niagara falls gift shop when a little lion tchotchke suddenly startstalking to her. is she going crazy, or is this something supernatural? does iteven matter, if she’s finally finding some sense of purpose? this was bryanfuller’s precursor to the also superb “pushing daisies,” which i adore almostas much.

would swap out: “atlanta”because it’s a comedy! it’s anastounding comedy, and it would be on my 20 best comedies list in a heartbeat.

——margaret lyons

2011-present

game of thrones

i suspect plentyof people scrolled or swiped through this list with increasing agitation,wondering how a team of tv watching professionals could pass over a show thatis not only a three-time emmy winner for best drama, not only the mostobsessively tracked story on the planet, but is inarguably the single mostambitious endeavor in the history of the medium.

to those readersi can only say: i totally agree.

even as “game ofthrones” has piled up more emmys than any other drama ever, the knock has beenthat it’s not the best show on television, it’s the most show on television.fine. but its reputation for spectacle, sexposition and shocking twistsovershadows the excellence of its storytelling, which has woven roughly 400compelling subplots (and a few that were less so) into a grimy allegory aboutthe world-shattering wages of unchecked ambition and cycles of vengeance. allof it presented at a scale and with a technical virtuosity that demolished theprevious parameters of television like a zombie dragon laying waste to an icewall.

would swap out: “the west wing”while i admire its craft andidealism, scorching straw men with stagy oratory does not a defining dramamake.

——jeremy egner, tv editor

文章来源：纽约时报（本文观点仅代表作者个人观点）本篇编辑：杨苑

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