Okay, if people aren’t arguing to the death over this, we’ll know that the New York Times has squandered its readership and credibility.
I cut my NYT subscription a few years ago so I’m not sure if an accompanying article makes clear the occasion for this ranking of the 100 best TV shows of the 21st Century. Maybe it was because the first quarter of the century ended last year? Or maybe they’re just hoping to make themselves relevant with controversy?
These are the kinds of lists that people used to dwell on and discuss in bars. Top baseball players of all time, top movies. Do people still discuss such things in bars?
Or are we all sprawled at home, in front of our large screens, holding our small screens?
I’m not going to express many opinions on the list – at least the worthiness of the shows ranked – because I haven’t seen the topmost-listed shows. I don’t doubt that “Breaking Bad” – a show I’ve only watched the first episode of – is great. Or “The Wire.”
“Mad Men,” which I have seen all of, deserves to be right up there. If you look for the series on this site, you’ll find a lot of reviews of episodes.
“Succession” was probably effectively made, and I watched it all, but I guess the point was to make a multi-season series about very unlikeable people?
Of the top 10, “30 Rock” is the one I’ve watched multiple times, finishing my latest rewatch just a couple of weeks ago. What a funny show about lovably awful people. “Succession” should have gone to the “30 Rock” well.
I heartily endorse “Deadwood” and “The Crown” in the ranking. “Watchmen” and “Parks and Rec,” wholeheartedly yes.
A lot of people aren’t old enough to remember the years of “Star Trek” wandering in the wilderness. After the original series ended in 1969, following its third season, it was just barely beginning to catch the attention of the pop culture world at large. Before reruns had wound down from the original NBC run, the show had been syndicated. By 1970, Paramount was already bragging that reruns of the show’s three seasons improved the ratings for any station that aired it.
I became a fan of the show when an Indianapolis station began airing the reruns after the 11 p.m. newscast and the news anchors, through a video effect, “beamed” into the episode. Within a few years, Star Trek conventions had begun, a U.S. space shuttle was named after the Enterprise and plans were made for a “Star Trek Phase II” series. Then “Star Wars” was a huge hit in 1977 and Paramount shifted plans to the big screen and the Robert Wise-directed and enduringly controversial “Star Trek The Motion Picture” was released in 1979.
I’ll never forget watching Sunday morning reruns of the original series and seeing, during one of the commercial breaks, an ad for “The Motion Picture.” For an arrested adolescent in an Indiana Star Trek Club, it was a thrill. Finally, the long hiatus was over.
The movies followed, more TV series followed, and Star Trek became as much a part of our culture as superhero movies have been in the past few years.
Now, 60 years and a few days after the 1966 premiere of the original series, the future looks pretty bleak for Star Trek. We’re most of the way through the fourth season of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” a series that winds down after a truncated final season (most likely) next year and four seasons of some really good Star Trek and some really good television but too many episodes that left me wondering how more thoroughly the potential and very limited lifespan of the series could be wasted. And no, I haven’t watched this season’s puppet episode yet, and I might not. As far as I’m concerned, no TV series will ever top the mixing of a puppet character and live action characters as well as “Smile Time,” the 2004 episode of “Angel.”
So we’ve got a couple of episodes left this year, six episodes of the fifth and final season probably next year and a second and final season of “Starfleet Academy,” already canceled by Paramount Plus.
Will they ever make another movie? Will they make more series? Probably, at some point. Star Trek is an intellectual property too valuable to leave alone.
Should they? I’m not sure. As much as I like that Star Trek is still a part of our culture, even in this truncated form, I’m not sure of the direction of the series.
We don’t need:
Ten-episode seasons in which a third of the episodes are stunt episodes.
A Quentin Tarantino Trek movie.
More series or movies that are far removed – by hundreds of years, like the final seasons of “Star Trek Discovery” – from the world of Star Trek, ie Starfleet Command, the Federation, familiar ships and even familiar characters.
What we do need:
A reboot, in effect, of the original series featuring the cast introduced in “Strange New Worlds.”
Maybe a series featuring Seven of Nine and the cast of the “Picard” series.
Movies drawing from the hugely rich history of the franchise.
New, creative blood. Like the original series, new movies and series should turn to experienced and knowledgeable science fiction writers. They should bring in people who love the series, characters and settings.
Maybe we need a break, but we don’t want a solid 10 years of wandering in the wilderness like we experienced from 1969, when the original series ended, to 1979, when the first movie was rushed into theaters.
This is ancient history – actually, that would be a good name for this site – but there was a time in the 1970s when “Star Trek” looked deader than one of Dr. Leonard McCoy’s patients. The original series had ended nearly a decade before, the show’s creative minds were waffling between making a new TV series and a big-screen movie – I don’t have to tell you how the success of “Star Wars” in 1977 made up their minds to produce a theatrical film – and it was not at all certain the franchise – which isn’t a word that was commonly applied to creative properties back then – would continue.
So Paramount’s decision to hire director Robert Wise to make “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” was a pivotal moment in the … well, franchise.
I can’t describe to you today what it was like to be watching a syndicated rerun of the original “Star Trek” series one Sunday morning on an Indianapolis TV station in 1979 and see a commercial for “The Motion Picture.” My friends and I in our local “Star Trek” club had been keeping up on the making of the film, of course, so it wasn’t a surprise. But it damn sure was a thrill. (Say what you will about the first movie, but we anticipated it like crazy.)
Fast forward to spring 2026 – it is spring, isn’t it? – and “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” has been canceled after its first season on the Paramount Plus streaming service. A second season has already been filmed and will air, I guess, on the streamer, as well the fourth and fifth seasons of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” which have already been made and which has already been canceled.
I’m not inclined to support Paramount because of its repugnant politics, but I gotta say I’ve stuck around with the service in part because of the chance to see new “Trek” episodes. These cancelations aren’t giving me many reasons to stick around longer.
I know plenty of people who are so sick of working in restaurants and stores and even patronizing restaurants and stores and hearing music from a half-century ago playing on the Muzak. When will Boomers die and take their music and their franchises with them? I’m at the tail-end of the Boomer generation and I wonder that sometimes too.
But we’ve reached a point here in which we might see an end to, or at least a hiatus of, some long-running franchises.
“Doctor Who” is at a crossroads with the latest season of the show, which began in the 1960s, ending (except for a purported Christmas special still to come this year) and Disney opting out of future involvement.
The “Star Wars” franchise – HOW MANY TIMES WILL HE USE THAT WORD? – had substantial success with the recent “Andor” series and some uncertain promise with the “Mandolorian” movie – or has interest in that story and the lil Yoda kin dude already faded? When will we get “Star Wars” stories that aren’t immediately adjacent to the Skywalker family saga? And will we accept them if and when we do?
I suppose it’s logical enough to ask how much longer Marvel movies and TV series will continue to be made, but while the Marvel Comics world has been around for more than 60 years the MCU hasn’t been around for 20 yet. And a big hit movie will clinch the MCU as an ongoing thing.
As a matter of fact, a big hit lifts all boats. And studios are loathe to give up on any intellectual property, which is why we’re going to see more “Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter” shows and movies. We’ll someday see more Indiana Jones, I’m sure, and we’re already seeing more Godzilla. And I did a whole piece for CrimeReads about the Universal Studios monsters and their undead – undying – popularity.
As for “Star Trek,” it’s a shame that things – a new series? a new movie? – are so up in the air this year, the 60th year of the intellectual property.
But I’m sure the franchise will be back with some hit and life beyond the grave at some point.
And we can go on saying “franchise” and “intellectual property.”
I grew up in the 1960s and `1970s – ha! I bet you thought I was a youngster, huh? – and TV was a huge part of our lives. Obviously. This was during a period when weekly episodic TV series had long seasons of many episodes, certainly by today’s standards.
I mean, “Star Trek” had 79 episodes over only three seasons (and some of those episodes were outright losers that I’m sure somebody is nostalgic about now) and “Trek” looked like a piker compared to many TV series: “Gunsmoke,” which ran for 20 seasons, aired 39 episodes in each of its first few seasons, although those were admittedly half-hour episodes. Yesterday I noticed that “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” also had 39 episodes some seasons.
That reinforcing of the idea that vintage TV series aired a boatload of episodes back in the day compares and contrasts to today, when it’s a shock when any new series runs more than 10 or 12 episodes per season. The excellent “The Pitt” is the exception with 15 episodes per season. (“The Pitt” is also the exception compared to many current series in that the seasons air only a year or less apart.)
Enter “3 Body Problem,” the terrifically entertaining Netflix adaptation of the science fiction bestseller (and Chinese TV adaptation). Yesterday news broke that the second season of the series would consist of only six episodes compared to eight from the first season. Forbes wrote that the third season is supposed to be even shorter. This as people note that author Cixin Liu’s three novels get longer with each book.
Oh, and also, it’s been two years since the first season.
Add to that the apparent circumstance that there’s no telling when the second season of the great series “Pluribus” will be produced or seen.
I don’t necessarily want to return to the days of 39 or even 22 episodes, the latter still a common number among some network series.
But I wouldn’t mind if other series followed the schedule of “The Pitt” and gave us a few more episodes in a slightly more timely manner.
Who doesn’t love a good year-in-review? Well, plenty of people. But here’s one anyway.
2025 was a shitshow for a lot of people, and I hope 2026 is an improvement. For me, 2025 was the year I self-published my 1984-set high school crime novel THAT OCTOBER, saw a bunch of short fiction and pop culture pieces published and joined with some friends in Constellate Creatives, where we’ll offer help to writers in the form of editing, publishing and marketing.
But like Milhouse from “The Simpsons,” you might be asking, “When are they going to get to the fireworks factory?” Or in this case, when is he gonna talk about something fun, like pop culture? Movies, TV shows, books.
I won’t try to tackle books here and I’ll note that some of my favorite books I read in 2025 haven’t been published yet. So that’ll wait.
In the meantime:
MOVIES: I don’t see a ton of movies in theaters. I catch a lot of movies on streaming services. So far this year, probably my favorite and best movie I saw, first in theaters and then on streaming, was SINNERS, Ryan Coogler’s story of race and vampires in Depression-era Mississippi. Just an absorbing, exemplary film and one that proves Hollywood can reach moviegoers/viewers with something daring and origiinal.
I think SUPERMAN should carry that definition too. Yes, we’ve seen sooo many takes on the classic superhero by now. But James Gunn’s SUPERMAN gave us one of the best, most original and fully-fleshed-out comic book worlds ever.
On the Marvel side, I really enjoyed CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD, THUNDERBOLTS* and FANTASTIC FOUR. The latter seemed really safe and un-ambitious but was the best-by-far adaptation of my favorite comic book heroes ever.
Among streaming series, I think PLURIBUS was the best I saw, maybe tied with THE PITT. The two series couldn’t be more different, but PLURIBUS was thoughtful and funny and THE PITT was like a shot of adrenalin.
IT: WELCOME TO DERRY was also outstanding, I thought, with some of the best scares and characters and most authentic Stephen King atmosphere of any screen translation and expansion in years.
PARADISE was a good end-of-the-world contrast to PLURIBUS. BALLARD was a very good continuation of BOSCH. LONG BRIGHT RIVER was also quite good, moody and solemn and endearing. MURDERBOT was brutally funny. TASK was somber and intense. THE HUNTING WIVES was looney fun. THE BETTER SISTER was grim and affecting.
I wanted more of most of these series but admit I felt a little cheated of a proper conclusion when they ended with another season clearly in mind (or hoped for). I really want more DERRY and PLURIBUS and don’t mind feeling used and teased.
This is definitely not going to be one of those posts about how TV was better in the old days or how TV was better when a season of a show consisted of 22 episodes or even more, although I think there’s something to be said about a season that has enough episodes to give the characters and the world they inhabit a little breathing room.
This is a post about how much I enjoy “Star Trek Strange New Worlds” and how much I’ll miss it when it’s gone after its fifth season. Paramount+ announced this week that the series, a prequel of sorts to the original “Star Trek,” would end after its fifth season.
If you’re not scoring at home, the third season of the series will begin streaming on July 17. The fourth season will follow, probably in about a year, and the fifth season after that.
This is a post in part about how Paramount+ said the fifth and final season would consist of only six episodes, fewer than the 10-episode seasons we’ve seen so far.
I’ve got lots of thoughts about the series, which has focused on the Enterprise under the command of Captain Christopher Pike. Those who remember the original “Star Trek” know that Pike was presented as a man who was left shattered after rescuing a group of cadets from a horrific accident. Pike was left disfigured and paralyzed and in a motorized chair for the rest of his life.
“Strange New Worlds” has already addressed this, with Pike having received the gift of seeing his future in an episode of “Star Trek Discovery,” the series from which “Strange New Worlds” was spun off.
Key to Pike’s journey is that he’s accepted his fate and made peace with his future, so even though “Strange New Worlds” has already played with the timeline as established by the original series, it would feel like a cheat to have Pike escape that fate in the final season of this show. Even though we like Pike, as played by Anson Mount, and might want him to go on adventuring forever.
The fact that the final season is projected to include only six episodes would indicate 1.) the showrunners have a very set plan for the final season and needed only six episodes to tell it or 2.) Paramount+ only gave them enough budget for six episodes, which would be a pretty ignominious way for the series to go out – on the cheap – but really, we don’t expect much of Paramount anymore.
There’s another “Trek” series in the works, one based on Starfleet Academy, and there could be others announced in the next two years.
But I’m wondering if “Strange New Worlds” might not morph into a new version of the original series, with most of the players – Kirk, Spock, Uhura and others – already in place on the current series.
So what do you think will happen? Will we see a revamping of the timeline and Pike’s fate? Will we see some new adventure? Will we see a reboot of the original series?
While in Indianapolis with my family, we found ourselves on Bluff Road on the city’s south side.
Bluff Road didn’t mean anything to them, of course. My wife didn’t grow up in Indiana and my son is too young to remember the address.
For those of us who do remember, we know the address from our childhood: 3490 Bluff Road.
For a couple of generations of Central Indiana residents who paid attention to the “fine print” of television broadcasting, 3490 Bluff Road was, for decades, the Indianapolis home of WTTV Channel 4.
Nowadays, WTTV is CBS 4. For a year or so, it’s had a network affiliation and big-league status after decades as Indy’s premier independent station.
For decades beginning in 1957, WTTV broadcast from 3490 Bluff Road. The address was uttered on the air countless times and included in title cards that were broadcast.
Although I’ve been to a couple of Indy TV stations, I’d never been to the home of WTTV 4.
I thought about it a lot, though. During the station’s heyday, in the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s, it was easy for my imagination to populate the station with its biggest on-air personalities.
Kids show hosts Janie and Cowboy Bob. Sports broadcaster Chuck Marlowe. Station owner Sarkes Tarzian, whose name my young mind turned into Circus Tarzan.
And the dean of midwest TV horror hosts: Sammy Terry.
Sammy Terry – embodied by Bob Carter from around 1962 until his death in 2013, now played in personal appearances by his son, Mark – was perhaps the best known of WTTV’s on-air personalities.
But 3490 Bluff Road was an iconic address. So I had to seek it out.
It’s not easy to find, the little building that is the focus of so many memories. Sure, there’s still a TV tower, but no sign, no historical marker, to designate the station that WTTV used until the 2000s.
There are a few indicators, to be sure. I walked all around the building until I found this one.
And there’s this forlorn remembrance of the station’s years as a WB affiliate beginning in 1998.
Overall, there’s not much left there, not much to see considering all those years the station babysat, entertained and terrified us.
According to real estate websites, the main station building is only about 19,000 square feet and made of concrete block. One website lists the total value of the building and surrounding acres of land as $276,000.
For those of us who grew up Monster Kids in the Monster World, this marked the epicenter of that world.
Shock – also known as Shock Theater.
I saw this ad bouncing around the internet recently and wanted to share it here. Regular readers of this blog know I’ve written a lot about Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and what an influence it had on a couple of generations of kids. FM came decades after the movies it celebrated – including the classic Universal monster films – so the 1960s monster craze might have seemed unlikely.
Except for Shock.
In October 1957, Columbia Pictures’ TV subsidiary, Screen Gems, released a package of 52 horror films – including the classic Universal horror films like “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” – to TV.
The Shock package was a huge hit. Usually airing late at night – as was the case, a few years later, with host Sammy Terry on WTTV Channel 4 in Indianapolis – but sometimes airing at other times, Shock popularized the old Universal pictures once more.
Everything that followed came because of this. Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, horror hosts, the wave of monster toys, cartoons, comics and novelties that began in the 1960s and continued for decades.
For a few years in the 1980s, I stayed up every night and watched “Late Night with David Letterman” on NBC. But I didn’t just watch it. I also videotaped it.
And cut out the commercials.
That’s right. I was making my own commercial-free David Letterman video library.
I watched the show from its start just after 12:30 – following the Johnny Carson “Tonight Show” – until it went off an hour later. And, obviously, I loved the show enough to want to preserve it in that manner.
Letterman. Paul. Larry “Bud” Melman. All the rest.
The Alka-Seltzer suit. Dropping things off the tops of buildings. Interrupting other shows, like the bullhorn assault on the “Today” show.
My god, what fun.
Letterman, a fellow Hoosier who I remembered from his time on Indianapolis TV and – kinda – his time on my local radio station, had a masterful grasp of ironic comedy long before others followed. He was funny and absurd and disrespectful and everything anyone would want in a late-night talk show host.
I haven’t watched Dave in a while. The draw of “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” was too great. Well, that and having to get up at 6 a.m. to deal with the demands of real life.
I’ve seen a little more of his show lately, since Dave’s departure was imminent. I wouldn’t have missed Bill Murray last night. And I’ll probably be watching tonight, for the final show.
Dave was ahead of his time and of his time. He was the late-night talk show host we deserved and needed. He ranked right up there with Carson in my book and always will.
I might not watch a whole lot of tonight’s 40th anniversary special for NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” and not just because, as someone else pointed out, the actual anniversary is sometime this fall.
And not just because I’ll be watching “The Walking Dead” and “Talking Dead” during the middle couple of hours of this marathon-length SNL fete. (And don’t even get me started on “The Walking Dead” right now, because I’m not gonna be another of those people who goes on about how the show has become an endless march through an unending storyline with the only mile markers being the death of characters great and not-so-great and I don’t know how much longer i’m gonna watch it … because I’ll keep watching it, almost without question.)
And not because I haven’t been a fan of “SNL” since virtually the beginning. One of my friends had a record album – an LP, a vinyl disc you played at 33 and a third RPM, for the young folks – of bits from the show’s first season. He would bring it to school and one of our teachers was cool enough to let us listen to some of it on a turntable. We all watched the show every week, but these were the pre-VCR, pre-online days when you couldn’t see it again unless NBC decided to replay it. So we were riveted to the audio soundtrack of the show.
No, I might not watch a lot of tonight’s special because, as I was watching last night’s replay of the very first episode, hosted by George Carlin, from 1975, I was struck by how much of it I remembered so well.
And it struck me: “Saturday Night Live” has been on eternal replay pretty much for the past two decades-plus.
NBC and show creator Lorne Michaels have relentlessly rerun episodes and bits and pieces of episodes over the decades. The show has been cut down to fit hour-long timeslots (and I think half-hour slots as well) and repackaged into so many anniversary shows on NBC and retrospectives on VH1 and elsewhere and so many “Best of Chevy Chase” and “Best of Will Ferrell” specials … sheesh, this material has been run into the ground.
Still, there are bits that I want to still want to see. Anything with that genius Phil Hartman (the unfrozen caveman lawyer skits especially, or his Bill Clinton in McDonald’s), for example. Or Ferrell’s “Get on the bag!” sketches.
But I don’t need to see more Chase, who I can’t believe we ever thought was funny, or even more Aykroyd or Belushi, who indisputably were.
And if I do, I’ll look ’em up online. Or maybe check various shelves and boxes in my house to see: Did I ever buy that old album?
