TV of The Year 2011, You list them Options

[Sostie]

You know what to do. Tell us about your favourites (and least favourites)

[maian]

I forgot to mention that Justified and Louie were two of my highlights this year. Both followed up great first seasons with even better second ones, with the former deepening its world nicely by introducing Jeremy Davies and the magnificent Margot Martindale as the season's villains. It also maintained the mix of action, snappy dialogue and light but moody tone that made the first season such a joy.

Louie was just marvelous, with each new episode pushing the boundaries of what television can do. Louis C.K. is the closest thing that American television has to a true auteur, and I loved seeing the little absurdist shorts he produced every week, offering illuminating, often painful insights into his life as a single father whilst also remaining funny and inventive. The episode with Doug Stanhope was particularly great.

I did rewatch all of the Sopranos this year, which is something I think everyone should do, it's easily the greatest tv show ever, it's quite possibly the greatest work of art of the electric media, it's only weakness being that of television, although this does offer it a few advantages over film. By the end, I actually felt appreciation for how good it was and the fact that it even exists in the first place, which is something that tv very rarely inspires.

I did that as well and it is, indeed, pretty astonishing. I also liked the last two seasons more this time around, probably because I knew where they were heading, which helps when they are more digressive.

Working lots of nights meant that I could use the days to catch up on a lot of series that I either hadn't seen in a while or ever. I watched all of The Shield, which is one of the few television series I can think of that actually got better as it went along, with the last season remaining one of the most visceral and tense thirteen hours of television I've ever seen. The last two episodes, in particular, are pretty strong contenders for the best finale to any show ever. I'm slowly working my way through The Twilight Zone and The Larry Sanders Show, both of which deserve their status as classics of the medium. I also somehow managed to fit a rewatch of The West Wing in (which makes my...fifth or sixth viewing of it in its entirety, I think) which remains one of my favourite television shows, and it was joined in that distinction by Sorkin's other late '90s show, Sports Night, which had more teething troubles than The West Wing but reaches many of the same heights.