The Opinion: The 25 best TV shows of all time, According to David Lester.

Recently I began a project to improve my writing ability. I chose to start writing at least 1 article every week. The topics of the articles would vary and I landed on topics like working from home vs in-office work and artificial intelligence in today’s workplace. I chose these topics because they are very familiar to me and something I deal with on a daily basis in my everyday working life. They were easy topics to research and I based all of those articles off of research and partial opinion.

Now, I am going to switch it up and write strictly off of my opinion. The next few weeks I am going to take a deep dive into the best TV shows of all time, in my opinion. A good buddy of mine inspired this. Every few years he updates his top 100 favorite songs of all time. Strictly his opinion, all of his favorite music in one excel sheet. The first week of this will be the official criteria for my ranking system. Originality of content, the storytelling of a show, character development etc. From then on, I will start my top 25 with 5 shows at a time, leading to the final article with my top 5.

I think the best place to start is what makes a great TV show to me. Whether you’re talking classic drama, hilarious comedy or intense action, all of my favorite shows have a few common themes. The number 1 thing that attracts me to a show is the characters. This might seem a bit obvious but let me explain my thought process. In my opinon, Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec, famously played by Nick Offerman, is the best character in TV history. I love this character to my core. Ron offers hilarious commentary and a semi-crazy take on the world. There are many layers as to why Ron is the greatest character in TV history, but his character’s development over the course of the show is historic! Ron begins a somewhat abrasive, grumpy and sort of lonely. The parks group changes that over the course of 7 glorious seasons. Ron ends the show with a large group of life long friends, a loving wife and children. Character development is my favorite aspect when I judge a show. Another great example of this, Richie from the FX hit show, Bear. At the start of this show, I remember texting a friend of mine, “I’m not going to make it another episode of this show because of Richie.”. ?I couldn’t stand his loud, obnoxious self-absolved attitude. His response to me was, “Trust me, you’ll love him by the end.” And he could not have been more right. He pulls a beautiful 180 degree turn, that still leaves a smile on my face to this day.

The story telling of a show matters to me about as much as anything when judging a show. I enjoy a good story, whether it be a classic love story or a moving documentary. The way a story is presented is one of the most important factors when rating a show against another. I can count on one hand the amount of shows that I can sit down and lose several hours because I have gotten completely enthralled with the storyline. The plotline of a story should be complex, almost hard to follow. I want to have to stop an episode and ask myself, “what the hell is going on here.”. I want to really have to break down episodes of a show to make sense out of things. Lastly, a great show has plenty of unexpected plot twists. I want my brain to be twisted up in knots trying to figure out the main plot. To me, that is the most exciting thing about watching a new show.

Originality is a major deal for me when ranking shows. You know how many versions of the King of Queens there are? I feel like the success of a few 90’s sitcoms, lead to a revolution of dorky guys being funny around their families. Here’s a spoiler for anyone interested in this group of articles, this genre of sitcoms, won’t be making a showing on this list. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the first of it’s kind, but an original idea goes a long way with attracting me to a show. Recently, there have been a plethora of really good, original content that I can’t get enough of.

Lastly, I’ll rank my favorite and least favorite characters in the show, along with my thoughts on why I think the show belongs in my top 25. There will be some fairly obvious occupants of my list, that I think are on a big majority of most American males age 30+. I am hoping that I am able to look back at this list in 10-15 years and its changed dramatically but I don’t see my top 10 changing a whole lot. There will be a few shows on the list that are not completely finished. There is still more storytelling to go. But I will reference the current seasons as it sits in late 2023 and early 2024. I also hope this sparks a healthy debate on the best TV shows of all time.