Top TV Readers Share Their All-Time Favorite Television Shows

With a stirring sense of eclectic fervor, the 71 readers who responded to our call for their Top Ten all-time favorite television shows came up with a list that nearly defies description.

It boldly bounces back and forth where no one has bounced before, from the operating table of a Korean War mobile hospital to the bare-necessities apartment of working-class New Yorkers, from the range of the Ponderosa to the living room of the Arnaz family.

It boasts such characters as Lou Grant, Archie and Edith Bunker, an android named Data and a bar-owner named Sam. It follows life on the mean streets of a big city and in the back corridors of federal agencies, amid the desks of a television newsroom and along the passageways of a Federation starship.

This varied list of readers’ favorites offers thrills and laughter. It mixes serious with silly. It spans the history of the very medium itself.

And still, it misses so much.

For one thing, our list is heavily oriented toward science fiction. Two of the top three vote-getters boast “Star Trek” pedigrees, with a third Trekkie spin-off tied for 10th. Rod Serling’s 30-year-old exercise in serial weirdness, “The Twilight Zone,” is contrasted with today’s Fox network exercise in serial estrangement, “The X-Files.”

The Cartright boys from “Bonanza” are the only cowpokes among the top vote-getters, but fans of TV oaters shouldn’t be too disappointed. Both “Maverick” and “Gunsmoke” received mention.

Then there are the comedies, “M*A*S*H,” “Mary Tyler Moore,” “I Love Lucy,” “All In the Family,” “Cheers” and “The Honeymooners.”

Which leaves us with the dramas, “Hill Street Blues” and “ER,” and the sole variety selection, Ed Sullivan’s “Toast of the Town.”

Several big holes still remain, of course. Westerns ruled the airwaves for better than two decades, and yet where are “Wagon Train,” “Cheyenne,” “Sugarfoot” or “The Big Valley”? Variety shows were, if anything, even more durable than Westerns, yet where are “The Dean Martin Show,” “The Lawrence Welk Hour,” “The Dinah Shore Show,” “Sonny and Cher” and all those Andy Williams Christmas specials? Girls still wanna grow up to be Vanna White, yet where is “Wheel of Fortune” or any of the other nighttime classic quiz programs - “21” or “Name That Tune” or “What’s My Line?” or “To Tell the Truth” or “The 64,000 Question”?

And what about today’s television offerings, those still on the air and those from the immediate past? Where is “Home Improvement” and “Murphy Brown” and “Designing Women” and “Roseanne” and “Seinfeld” and “Frasier” and “NYPD Blue” and “Melrose Place” and “Picket Fences,” etc?

Well, OK, nix on “Melrose Place.”

Still, most - even “MR” are either on the air or in syndication. And doing just fine.

They’re just not on our list.

What IS on the list is hardly indicative of the Inland Northwest at large or of Spokane in particular. What are 71 opinions out of some 350,000 potential respondents?

Still, the shows that are highlighted here are worthy choices. None are embarrassing in the way that, say, “Who’s the Boss?” “Full House” or “America’s Funniest Home Videos” would be (these are, after all, meant to be all-time favorites, which pretty much rules out anything starring Bob Saget).

So without wasting any more time, because something you want to see might be playing on television right now, let’s get to the list (they’re presented in order of votes cast, high to low, with the cutoff being anything less than five votes):

No. 1 (21 votes) - “M*A*S*H” (1972-83). The television adaptation of Robert Altman’s Korean-era movie, which mixed intellectuality with Vietnam-era irreverence, still has its fans.

No. 2 (19) - “Star Trek” (1966-69). Never a top 20 show in its original run (its high was No. 52 during the 1966-67 season), this original Trekkie feature spawned an entire industry unto itself.

No. 3 (17) - “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987-94). The new crew of Federation starship troopers (including the android Data) was hired to carry on its five-year mission throughout the galaxy.

No. 4 (15, tie) - “Bonanza” (1959-73) and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (1970-77). For 11 years (1961-72), “Bonanza” was the rock of NBC’s Sunday-night schedule. The main question: Which of the Cartright boys - Pa, Hoss, Adam or Little Joe - would be the first to have a marriage that lasted? The question was different for the cast of “Mary Tyler Moore,” which included Ed Asner (“Lou Grant) and Gavin MacLeod (“The Love Boat”): They wondered what would happen first, Mary getting married or news anchor Ted Baxter (Ted Knight) screwing up the night’s telecast.

No. 6 (14, tie) - “I Love Lucy” (1951-61) and “The Twilight Zone” (1959-65). Both these shows had later variations, with different cast members doing the same kinds of stories. But when most people speak of Lucille Ball, they speak of the original show that matched her with then-husband Desi Arnaz and co-stars Vivian Vance and William Frawley. Rod Serling’s creation was, and remains, one of the eeriest anthology series ever - introducing viewers to the works of such fine writers as Ray Bradbury and, of course, Serling himself.

No. 8 (10) - “All in the Family” (1971-1983). Based on the British sitcom “Till Death Do Us Part,” this Norman Lear-produced series introduced America to the notion of lovable racism. The joke, though, invariably ended up on head-of-the-house Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor).

No. 9 (9, tie) - “Cheers” (1982-93), “Hill Street Blues” (1981-87), “The Honeymooners” (1955-71) and “The X-Files” (1994-present). Sam Malone (Ted Danson) ran his Boston bar seemingly as an excuse to meet women, and he met his share, including Shelley Long and, later, Kirstie Alley. But this truly was an ensemble cast, including George Wendt, Rhea Perlman, John Ratzenberger, Woody Harrelson and Kelsey Grammer.

“Hill Street Blues” brought creator-writer-producer Steven Bochco to prominence, mingling its intriguing mix of characters and hard/ comic street stories to prime-time notice. Main characters included those played by Daniel J. Travanti, Veronica Hamel, Michael Warren, Bruce Weitz and James B. Sikking.

Jackie Gleason, Audrey Meadows, Art Carney and Joyce Randolph portrayed the two original working-class couples of Gleason’s “The Honeymooners,” which evolved from a sketch created for his variety show. They remain bona-fide television classics.

“The X-Files” is pure ‘90s television, mixing a bit of anti-government paranoia with “Twilight Zone” sensibilities. It doesn’t hurt, too, to have a romantic pull between the two main players, David Duchovny (as Fox Mulder) and Gillian Anderson (as Dana Sculley).

Other shows receiving honorable-mention status:

(8) - “Ed Sullivan,” “ER,” “Maverick,” “Gunsmoke,” “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”

(7) - “The Carol Burnett Show,” “Jeopardy,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “St. Elsewhere,” “Star Trek: Voyager.”

(6) - “Bewitched,” “Dallas,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “Have Gun, Will Travel,” “Home Improvement,” “Perry Mason,” “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.”

(5) - “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Columbo,” “Dragnet,” “Law & Order,” “Little House On the Prairie,” “Mission Impossible,” “Newhart.”

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