From Lucy to Lt. Buntz . . .

TV's best shows are filled with innovative characters who were pioneers in their time.

By ERIC DEGGANS, Times TV Critic

© St. Petersburg Times
published April 27, 2002

Here's my list of the five best classic TV series:

1) I Love Lucy (Oct. 15, 1951, to Sept. 24, 1961)

Why: Forget that star Lucille Ball, husband Desi Arnaz and co-stars Vivan Vance and William Frawley were the most potent cast in TV history. Forget that the show's scripts were so funny, the humor holds up 40 years later. I Love Lucy set the standard for modern sitcoms, pioneering the live, taped-with-multiple-cameras format that TV comedy still uses.

2) The Mary Tyler Moore Show (Sept. 19, 1970, to Sept. 3, 1977)

Why: A co-star on Dick Van Dyke's self-titled '60s sitcom, Mary Tyler Moore stepped into the spotlight with The Mary Tyler Moore Show just as women throughout the country were finding new freedoms of their own. Moore played WJM-TV assistant producer Mary Richards, a thirtysomething single woman who didn't really need a man to be happy, surrounded by the funniest workplace family in TV history -- including Ed Asner as crusty father figure-news producer Lou Grant and Ted Knight as dim-witted anchor Ted Baxter. It became the most successful in a string of "independent woman" sitcoms that also included Marlo Thomas' That Girl and The Doris Day Show.

3) All in the Family (Jan. 12, 1971, to Sept. 21, 1983)

Why: Inspired by British series Til Death Us Do Part, All in the Family was a show that dared to shock -- rejecting the sanitized, '50s-era vision of American sitcom families by centering on bigoted, right-wing Queens dock worker Archie Bunker (Carol O'Connor). Blessed with a crack cast -- including Broadway stage actor Jean Stapleton as Archie's "dingbat" wife, Edith and Rob Reiner as his liberal "meathead" Polish son-in-law Mike Stivic -- All in the Family encouraged the audience to laugh at its ignorant hero, who couldn't understand a postsegregation, postfeminist America.

4) M*A*S*H (Sept. 17, 1972, to Sept. 19, 1983)

Why: Yes, it was set in a mobile surgical hospital during the Korean War (like the Robert Altman movie on which it was based), but make no mistake: M*A*S*H the series was a bruising anti-Vietnam War polemic. In a showbiz miracle, TV actors such as Alan Alda and McLean Stevenson proved funnier than movie originals Donald Sutherland and Robert Duvall, balancing grisly operating room scenes with a fatalistic, screw-the-authorities attitude that perfectly reflected the times.

5) Hill Street Blues (Jan. 15, 1981, to May 19, 1987)

Why: As one of the first police dramas to try presenting more realistic, morally ambiguous stories, Hill Street Blues stands as one of the best TV dramas ever made. Stalwart, earnest commander Capt. Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti) kept the lid on a police precinct in an unnamed Eastern city full of oddballs -- including feral, hygenically-challenged Detective Mick Belker (Bruce Weitz). Developed by producer Steven Bochco, Hill Street Blues presaged the handheld camera work, ensemble casts and high-quality scripts in later series such as NYPD Blue, St. Elsewhere and The West Wing.

Sources: Total Television, by Alex McNeil; The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable Shows, by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh; Times files.

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