Break Out the Pastels and “Daisy Dukes” ...

I was just talking the other day with a friend of mine about the decline of modern American television, and how we have both come to rely on DVDs of older series for our entertainment. It’s sad, really. As a teenager, I was a card-carrying TV head, never missing an episode of The Rockford Files, Columbo, McMillan & Wife, The Magician, City of Angels, and--in the non-detective series category--Alias Smith and Jones, Thirtysomething, China Beach, Lou Grant, and more. (Too many more, according to my mother.) But over the last few years, network programming seems to have left me behind. With the cancellations of both The West Wing and Deadwood (two all-time classics, in my opinion), and with a ubiquity of CSI and Law & Order clones, I find myself tuning in less and less to the “boob tube,” though I do enjoy Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and NUMB3RS. Instead, on those comparatively rare occasions when sitting in front of the TV set is the only thing I can think to do, I slap in DVDs of movies or older series.

Which brings me (rather circuitously, I concede) to a list on the Brohans video blog of what its editors consider “The Definitive Top 20 Shows from the ’80s.” The rundown (which includes online clips from all of the series) features two seminal crime shows--Miami Vice and Magnum, P.I.--plus a couple more that might be broadly defined as belonging in this genre: The A-Team and Knight Rider. Among Brohans’ other selections: The Dukes of Hazzard, Night Court, Doogie Howser, M.D., M*A*S*H, MacGyver, Cheers, and its No. 1 “top show” of that decade, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Now, I can get behind most of the picks I just listed (though Dukes, Doogie, The A-Team, and Knight Rider were all pretty silly, in my estimation). But I’m surprised by some of the series Brohans doesn’t list among its exalted 20. I mean, why pick Mr. Belvedere over, say, Barnaby Jones? Or Growing Pains over Hill Street Blues? Or the sexist and idiotic Married … with Children over Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer? And what of Spenser: For Hire? Or Moonlighting?

OK, I confess it: I’m a bit biased toward TV crime dramas. But really, you’ve got to admit that any of the shows I just mentioned was better than the sitcom ALF. Yet it comes in at No. 16 on the Brohans memorableness scale. Sheesh!

(Hat tip to Bill Crider.)