And audiences responded in a huge way, making it one of the biggest hits on TV for 222 episodes. What mattered was each show’s cast, and Craig T. Nelson, as later evidenced by The Incredibles, was pretty much born to be the harried father. It featured some funny supporting performances, especially from Fyvush Finkel as Jewish lawyer Douglas Wambaugh, but of all its little eccentricities I most enjoyed the bizarre fates suffered by the town’s mayors. There were prior examples on radio, but the first television sitcom is said to be Pinwright's Progress, ten episodes being broadcast on the BBC in the United Kingdom between 1946 and 1947. Michael Ironside replaced him and played the new, more militaristic captain, but ratings were bad, dooming one of network TV’s quirkier series. The series also became massively popular among the gay community for the perceived lesbian relationship or subtext between Xena and her companion, Gabrielle, played by Renee O’Connor. In the ’90s, the lead character was ostensibly Anthony Edwards’ Dr. Mark Greene, but it’s more likely remembered these days as “The Clooney Years.” The A-lister played pediatric Dr. Doug Ross at the height of his powers, a womanizer (of course) with an on-again, off-again relationship with head nurse Carol Hathaway (Julianna Margulies, years before The Good Wife). It was the exact sort of background that so often would have been given to a man in a sitcom, and it made everything seem so much more genuine. Voyager has a particularly cool initial premise—after a freak accident, the ship is stranded 75,000 light years from home, and even with access to warp drive, its crew is facing an estimated 75-year trip to friendly space. It’s pretty over-the-top stuff. Go back and watch an episode like part one of “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” from 1995 and the thing one can’t help but notice is how insanely fast everything moves—there’s literally a joke every few seconds, most of them brilliant. The stories weren’t really anything you hadn’t seen before, revolving around life and love in New York City, but the places they were coming from (gay culture/Jewish culture) were refreshingly new to many more conservative Americans. With a framing device about a man shot into space and forced to endure terrible films, the show made the best of its limited resources by employing great voice acting and even better writing to mock nearly 200 of the worst films ever made. On first inspection The Powerpuff Girls seems like a show simply conceived as “superheroes for little girls,” but you’d find just as many men of all ages as part of its nostalgic fan base in 2014. It’s hard to imagine a show like South Park coming along without a subversive cartoon such as Ren & Stimpy paving the way. Years: 1996-2002 Spin City was in many ways the last hurrah for Michael J. The fact that it was on a premium network was essential, allowing a much deeper (and more realistic) depiction of the horrors of incarceration in the United States. Years: 1994-1997 Hulu recently added all of the shows to their streaming service, Rent This Lisa Frank-Themed Apartment And Make All Your Childhood Dreams Come True. The subsequent 2001 live-action series returned to Fox but ran for only nine episodes, proving that The Tick was probably best left to a more colorful atmosphere. Protestors mobilized, awards were doled out in rapid succession, and the depiction of coming out of the closet on TV was never the same again. It was the finest pure legal drama of the ’90s. But for all the wholesome hijinks it filled its episodes with, the show's set was more than a … Scheider was particularly unhappy about the direction the show was heading and stepped down before the third season, which was oddly set 10 years further into the future. In terms of pure marketability, Friends was a juggernaut. At the time, Ling Woo was by far the most prominent and well-known character for an actress of Asian descent in TV history, so the calculating, man-eating character inspired quite a lot of analysis. This is the quintessentially dumb, cheesy but somehow entertaining sitcom of the 1990s. It remains one of the decade’s most enduring cult classics. By contrast, there were only two white actors on In Living Color, but its legacy as an important show in black culture was somewhat mitigated by the fact that one of those white actors was a young Jim Carrey, then credited as “James,” who went on to become the show’s biggest star before using it as a springboard to feature film fame. Years: 1996-2004 We use cookies to collect information from your browser to personalize content and perform site analytics. It could also be very topical at times, though, most notably in 1992 when a series of episodes tackled the ongoing race riots centered around the beating of Rodney King. Years: 1995-2001 We all wanted to stay home … That was the bizarre thing about the show—it could go from a story about long-lost twins somehow finding their way back together into a segment about demonic possession or alien abduction at the drop of a hat. Looking at this series in the context of 1990, it’s funny to think that Will Smith was already sort of viewed as a “has-been” in his music career, a guy desperately trying to stay relevant by joining a sitcom. The definitive high school sitcom of the early 1990s, Saved by the Bell reflects the day-glo colors of the era perfectly. It was a decade of wholesome family sitcoms and subversive cartoons that flew under the radar and straight into cult fame. Years: 1994-2009 ER was on the air for so long that the different periods of the show bear almost no resemblance to one another, except for the fact that the 331 episodes are mostly set in the hospital and continued to draw Emmy nominations, a record 124 in total. The voice acting was on an entirely different level, to the point that the portrayals of both Batman (Kevin Conroy) and The Joker (Mark Hamill) have become the absolute defining sounds of each character in all animation since. Each episode’s individual continuity is striking, as some bizarre through-line was almost always carried out from beginning to end. Homicide: Life on the Street went on to become the first TV drama to ever win three Peabody Awards. Yes, The Sopranos is undeniably a 2000s show, but you can’t ignore the impact of its monumental first season on American TV culture. Years: 1995-2001 But even more than Michelle, what says “’90s” more than Stephanie Tanner leading a dance party to Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch? Years: 1996-2003 Dexter’s Laboratory is one of the crown jewels of Cartoon Network’s mid-’90s original series, created by visionary animator Genndy Tartakovsky, who would later go on to make the equally brilliant Samurai Jack. The show went through seven different mayors over the course of four seasons—they essentially had the lifespans of Spinal Tap drummers. To look at the show, you’d halfway expect something serious like The Wonder Years, but Fred Savage never had a “personal superhero” called “Artie, the Strongest Man in the World” as Little Pete does for no particular reason. Years: 1997-present The final years of Cheers were when all these characters got to shine, especially Rhea Perlman as Carla and Kelsey Grammer, who joined the cast full-time before spinning off into Frasier. Years: 1988-1993 Smits, meanwhile, (spoiler alert!) The story of a precocious teenager growing up with her musician father and annoying brothers, she became an icon as the “goofy girl” with weird fashion, particularly the big, floppy hats that became her calling card. After The New Beatles and American Bandstand on ABC the network scored a hit with Where the Action Is , a teen music show featuring the hottest acts in the country. I was born in 1986, which I would argue essentially makes me the quintessential ’90s child, coming into the decade as a four-year-old making some of my first television memories and leaving it as a jaded 14-year-old, certain that The Simpsons probably had “a season or two left, at best.” But one thing is certain: I watched a whole lot of TV. It sometimes seems like all the most influential shows of the ’90s were in the mold of My So-Called Life: Surprisingly mature, critically adored, and cancelled immediately. Years: 1993-1997 The show could make the most minuscule moments seem so momentous and use a small trait to infuse such deep humanity in its characters. Transformers Animated Bumblebee is the largest departure from Bumblebee’s typical characterization. A rare example of a series that carried out the exact number of seasons (five) it initially planned, it was as such well-planned from the start and featured deep continuity. There aren’t many comedies or dramas that have ever done more with 18 episodes (only 12 broadcast in the initial run) than Freaks and Geeks, one of the most influential cult shows in history. Bruce Campbell is an actor who never truly received a chance at the starring roles he deserved, and The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. is some of the better evidence that we all missed out on a guy who could have been much more than just a cult favorite in movies like The Evil Dead. Years: 1992-1998 The Larry Sanders Show was basically the result of a skilled stand-up comedian taking everything he knew about every facet of the entertainment business and throwing it into a blender set to “puree.” Gary Shandling played late night TV host Larry Sanders, just as he had done in real life as a Tonight Show guest-host. Years: 1990-1997 Saturday mornings on NBC were marked by Saved By The Bell, its new class, and the crooners on California Dreams, but there were a few other shows we remember watching during the rockin’ TNBC (which stood for Teen NBC) '90s block. For plenty of Bible Belters, Will & Grace was likely the first television exposure they had to characters of this nature. The individual moments are so incredible that it’s not even necessary to watch the episodes—you can just enjoy the snippet of an old man in a wheelchair being pushed down the stairs into a pool , completely out of context. Before Mayim Bialik was sucked into the CBS comedy void that is The Big Bang Theory, she was the early ’90s star of Blossom. Taking place in the small town of Rome, Wis., it followed a sheriff played by Tom Skerritt who generally found himself investigating situations well outside the normal purview of rural police work. Both Frasier and his brother Niles can be infuriatingly snobbish, but audiences soon found that when their petty jealousies were directed at each other, they could also be hilarious. Murphy Brown even ended up in the news it so often mocked when Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the show’s depiction of single-parent households in a 1992 speech, leading to an entire episode dedicated toward refuting him. MacGyver himself, Richard Dean Anderson, takes over the role that Kurt Russell played in the film, but the greatest role is probably Teal’c, the “warrior race” alien (let’s be honest, they were thinking “Klingon”) with a rather disturbing biological secret: He’s an incubator to a parasitic monster that gives him enhanced abilities but will one day kill him. The most popular ones are out there but I want to see the ones no one really talks about. The title characters are moronic teenagers with absolutely no sense of empathy or social consciousness, whose only goals in life are to watch TV, eat junk food and hopefully “score” one day. I’m not sure how this came as a shock—they’re dinosaurs, after all. Years: 1994-1995 ER, however, remained a beast in the ratings until well into the 2000s, making it one of the most successful medical shows that has ever aired. Most of the individual sketches are likewise timeless, not bound to pop culture or whatever was in the news. Choose from real life raids, alternative history adventures and race car heists as TopFilmTip brings you the best films on TV for Saturday, 2 January, 2021. This essentially gave the writers a blank check to embrace any part of the Star Trek mythos they wanted, because any time a new alien species was introduced it was always simply a denizen of the uncharted space lanes where they were traveling. Years: 1995-1998 Similar in many ways to Freaks and Geeks but a little grittier and less artistic, My So-Called Life was like a refutation of all the school shows that had come before it, both comedies and dramas. Al Bundy is a simple man, and he has few redeeming characteristics: He’s cheap, he’s a loser, he’s a depressed would-be philanderer, but damn if people couldn’t identify with the sad sack and his quest to simply put meals on the table with enough money left over for beer. The show featured some of the best-developed characters of any sitcom, especially owing to the trademark narration by Daniel Stern, which examined all the events with the knowledge of age. It was as big a challenge for Danes as it was for her character, and at the end of its first season she expressed doubts about returning for a second. Years: 1992-1999 Years: 1998-2005 Years: 1998-2003 There was a freedom to this show, a sense that anything could and would happen in the boy genius/scientist’s realm, which is immediately implied by its classic, wordless opening sequence with its gothic, Danny Elfman-sounding music. Get up to the minute entertainment news, celebrity interviews, celeb videos, photos, movies, TV, music news and pop culture on ABCNews.com. Even when they were successful, these cops rarely got to bask in any sense of glory or accomplishment. Years: 1993-2005 Wakko’s song about state capitols set to the tune of “Turkey in the Straw” is particularly well remembered, but that’s nothing compared to the complexity of Yakko’s “Nations of the World” number. The fact that Sam decides not to get married and stays with the bar is the right decision—it is of course his “one true love.”. On occasion, we also use cookies to collect information from our toddlers, but that’s a totally different thing. The supporting cast here was extremely strong, from the season that was anchored by Robert Downey Jr. as Ally’s boyfriend to the breakout character of Ling Woo, a star-making vehicle for Lucy Liu. O’Brien, however, grew quickly into one of television’s most respected talk show personalities. The original is of course the best and most classic of the series, one of the all-time influential police procedurals/court shows and one of the longest-running live action series of all time—it practically made the faces of Jerry Orbach and Sam Waterson synonymous with the show. It certainly performed well critically, racking up nominations in all the major awards and taking home a few Emmy’s and Golden Globes during its five-year run. The story of a widowed father raising his three daughters in San Francisco with the help of his brother-in-law and goofy best friend, it was pure sap, but a guilty pleasure for plenty of viewers who wouldn’t have watched anything else in the same genre. This wasn’t just a show for geeks—jokes range from sports and movies to politics or simply memorable TV commercials. A bit of a blowhard and a paper tiger, Martin is a funny guy who likes to act tough, but is secretly a softy on the inside, a characteristic only rarely seen by his more serious, long-suffering girlfriend, Gina. Years: 1987-1994 I suspect that you do not.). Certainly, there could be no Key & Peele or Tim and Eric without the revolutionary, absurdist format that Bob Odenkirk and David Cross pioneered here, along with help from lots of great bit players such as Tom Kenny. Years: 1993-2004 The episodes have aged pretty well, and there’s just a stupid pleasure in watching the pair wreck the lives of everyone they come across. It’s a little odd to think of The Wonder Years as an ’80s or ’90s show specifically because it was set in a perfectly evoked 1960s, but at the same time, just hearing Joe Cocker’s take on “With a Little Help From My Friends” immediately makes me think of watching the show with my family in my childhood living room. Rather, DS9 was an advanced but static outpost where emissaries of various alien races came to congregate, trade and conduct business. Watch the episodes and reminisce—The Simpsons was the finest show of the 1990s. Hamill alone would make this the best Batman series—his Joker is gleefully maniacal, quite different from the psychotic aspect of say, Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. As a former alcoholic and current single mother, that was enough to make her stand out, but for most of the show’s early run she was also a blue-collar worker, just an average “Joe” working pipelines at a local oil refinery. But in the end, Hank always fundamentally does the right thing, even if that does involve threats to “kick your ass” on a disturbingly regular basis. It’s easy to imagine the average viewer being completely perplexed by The Tick the first time they laid eyes on the animated series. Its fatalism was deep, dark and often hilarious, and one got the sense that few shows have ever actually captured the zeitgeist of their subjects more accurately. His Late Night was patently unlike the shows of Leno or Letterman, with a wilder, absurdist streak that focused more on comedic sketches than interview segments and weird, recurring characters like the infamous “masturbating bear,” among many others. Today, the show is often remembered as one of the leading innovators of the “very special episode” format, which was already well established by shows such as Diff’rent Strokes but expanded into an art form by Blossom. Years: 1993-1999 Deep Space Nine was an experiment in a different type of Star Trek property, one not built around a spaceship/warship traveling and exploring the edges of the known universe. Its frightening imagery, harsh language, toilet humor and out-of-nowhere sexual innuendo sent parents into fits, but its influence was equally pervasive. The show could be exceedingly goofy at times, especially from season five onward when Steve would occasionally use his scientific know-how to transform himself into suave alter-ego “Stefan” in an extended Nutty Professor tribute. Still, it was a rather close shave. Years: 1999-2000 The series benefitted from a few great villains that ended up becoming as popular as the Powerpuff Girls themselves, primarily the simian Mojo JoJo and the bizarre hillbilly monster “Fuzzy Lumpkins.”. Years: 1989-1993 L.A. Times entertainment news from Hollywood including event coverage, celebrity gossip and deals. Unlike so many other Star Trek series that were about exploration, this one was the inverse—exploration gone awry. Ratings declined sharply, but during its first few seasons, Grace Under Fire was something refreshingly different. Its impact is vast—would anyone even know about Manos: The Hands of Fate today without MST3k? Few series projected a sense of mystery as well as The X-Files, which had fans literally begging for any scrap of information on where its central story was going for most of its run. There were plenty of other people doing great things on In Living Color, though, from all the significant musical acts (Tupac Shakur, Mary J. Blige, Public Enemy) to the dance team, which featured a young, unknown Jennifer Lopez. Years: 1998-2004 Rather, it was all about relationships, dating and assertiveness in dealing with the opposite sex, presenting four very different women as they tackled many of the same issues from differing perspectives. Years: 1994-1998 Instead, the show was all about its bizarre characters and just the general freedom of seemingly being able to do whatever it wanted on a weekly basis. It may have even inspired some Venture Brothers episodes, seeing as a good number of episodes revolve around a mysterious artifact from the future called “the orb.” Critical praise was strong for the show, but like so many others on Fox, the ratings didn’t hold up and The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. was filed squarely into the “cult” folder after its cancellation after one season. And ultimately, that was all ABC needed to hear as justification to cancel it. Examples on Blossom include the time her best friend Six (that’s her name, yes) is dating an older man who turns out to be married, or the traumatic occasion of Blossom’s first period. Lucy Lawless was the main reason why, a certifiable badass with an awesome, chakram-like weapon that seemed to delight in defying every known law of motion. Unusually, there was also a single, black male character in the office—although the show still fell into the racial trap of making him an ex-con (even if it was a crime he didn’t commit). 90. Years: 1993-1996 Here, then, is a ranking of the top 90 shows of the 1990s. The sheer breadth of the show’s humor is practically unparalleled. The cameos by Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel (voicing themselves) were particularly hilarious, even devoting an entire episode to the two breaking up and courting Lovitz’s Jay Sherman as possible replacements. Its combination of deadpan humor and “behind the scenes” setting made it an obvious influence on series such as The Office and 30 Rock in particular, because no joke was “too meta.” One of the first great successes in original programming for HBO, it remains the standard by which many comedy series on premium TV networks are judged. This Joker is truly about the joke, and nobody has done a better maniacal Joker laugh than Hamill—ever. It’s probably the best pure cast in terms of acting talent that any entry in the series has ever had. The show had a bit of an odd conclusion, as a sexual harassment lawsuit from Tisha Campbell resulted in her being absent through a good portion of the final season. Nevertheless, Beavis and Butt-head always had the ability to be oddly astute at times, especially when the boys would deconstruct MTV music videos with an unexplainably expanded vocabulary. Years: 1988-1997 The ’90s were a crazy, transitional period for Cartoon Network, which came into the decade showing classic Hannah Barbera and Warner Brothers cartoons as their main content blocks and left it with their flagship evening program, Adult Swim, more or less fully formed. Helen Hunt in particular really grew into her character over time, going on an unbroken streak of Emmy wins from 1996-1999. The flipside is, of course, that it could be frustrating at times, whether it was because of the central story or a weak “monster of the weak” entry. Most beloved opening theme song of the 1990s? Its accompaniment was the steely voice of Robert Stack, who would reel off quite the list of disturbing “mysteries” each week, from unsolved crime cases and conspiracy theories to terrifying dips into the supernatural. Years: 1993-1998 Animaniacs is unlike anything that came before or has really come again since, a series that truly blended sophomoric, silly humor with surprising wit and even some educational aspects. Years: 1989-1998 Family Matters is the perfect example of a show that would have been nothing special without a single exceptional character, but the really amazing thing is that this break-out character, Steve Urkel, wasn’t even part of the initial show design. In each episode, he leaps into the body of another person (man, woman or child) in a different historical time and must “put right what once went wrong” before jumping into a new body. It received an absurd 83 Emmy nominations throughout its run, and each of the four main stars won an individual Emmy, making it one of only three sitcoms to achieve that feat. Spinning off from Beverly Hills 90210 (some folks don’t remember that most of the 90210 characters appear in season one), Melrose Place was originally supposed to be a different kind of a show that would follow all the different characters in an apartment building, with self-contained episodes that would focus on one resident at a time and wrap up by the end of the show.