"Skins" and "Friday Night Lights" Top the Ten Best of 2008

amp160In hindsight there were so many outstanding scripted series on television during 2008 that it is easy to forget the wideranging destruction of the Writers Guild of America strike Hence the crowded paragraph of runnersup at the end of this list not to mention the need for last weekamp8217s shout out to ten cool alternativesamp160Beginning with the bestamp160Skins BBC AmericaWhile other critics busily decide whether AMCamp8217s Mad Men ABCamp8217s Lost HBOamp8217s The Wire or FXamp8217s The Shield deserve special recognition as the Program of the Year Iamp8217m going to make an end run around them all and bestow the honor on BBC Americaamp8217s Skins This consistently profound drama about contemporary British teens most of them the offspring of utterly ineffective parents every one of them a complicated product of their environment is simultaneously heartwarming bonechilling uplifting depressing touching and troubling and always ontarget Indeed there has never been a television series that so openly and realistically deals with the issues and experiences teenagers face on a daily basis academic demands peer pressure family conflicts drug and alcohol abuse relationships sexuality mortality and so much more At first blush the characters here would not appear to be all that different from each other amp8211 after all theyamp8217re just kids amp8211 but they are as meticulously constructed and excitingly brought to life as those in the finest television dramas of recent years including The Sopranos and Mad Men Although most of them are very pretty the outstanding actors on this show always look as real as the young people at your local high school Blotchy unkempt rumpled and not quite comfortable in their own epidermises Their dialogue is similarly real The cumulative result makes the teen characters in popular American youth ensemble dramas of the last 20 years from Beverly Hills 90210 to Dawsonamp8217s Creek to One Tree Hill to Gossip Girl and back to 90210 amp8211 look and sound utterly plastic if not flatout false In fairness those shows wereare all made to comply with American broadcast television standards while the creators of Skins are allowed to cut loose Some might compare it to the many Degrassi series from Canada seen here on The N but Skins is much more graphic and therefore way more realistic While BBC America allows much of their Rrated realism to come through uncensored episodes of Skins as they ran in England are often filled with HBO or Showtimecaliber language nudity and sex Hereamp8217s an interesting fact Many of the creative folks who produce Skins had never before worked in television Maybe thatamp8217s why they had the balls to write all of the main characters out of their hit show in its Season 2 finale Will Skins be as rewarding in its third season without Tony Michelle Cassie Maxxie Chris Sid Jal and Anwar At least weamp8217ll still have Effyamp160Friday Night Lights DirecTVNBCThe one exception to my comment above about the unreal qualities that have permeated American youth ensemble dramas of the last 20 years is this terrific series that revolves around a high school football team in a small Texas town In fact had BBC America not debuted Skins this year Friday Night Lights would be my choice for 2008amp8217s Program of the Year Rescued from neartermination by a unique partnership between DirecTV and NBC Lights remains the most stirring drama on American television The secret is in its quiet attention to detail and intimate observations of simple human behavior Lights has been better than ever in its third season and Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton as Coach Eric Taylor and his wife Tami now the high school principal are still the most realistic and inspiring married couple on television Should DirecTV and NBC choose to not move forward with this franchise my hope is that it finds a home on cable where it might take on some of the uncensored realism of Skins That would make Lights a different show but surely no less a profound oneamp160The remainder of the list in no particular orderamp160Mad Men AMCThe first show on basic cable to be honored with an Emmy Award as Outstanding Drama Series Mad Men bravely and boldly went to places in Season 2 that were only hinted at in Season 1 especially where its female characters were concernedamp160Lost ABCTelevisionamp8217s most challenging show was far better in Season 4 than in Seasons 2 and 3 flashing back and flashing forward right up to the final moments of its season finale when Ben the Bad made both islands disappear and Lostamp8217s WTF quotient shot through the stratosphere It may be that this showamp8217s everexpanding mythology has finally gone too far but for now who cares The arrival of Season 5 is the most eagerly anticipated television event of the year aheadamp160The Shield FXMichael Chiklis and Walton Goggins gave the performances of the year as best friends turned mortal enemies Vic Mackey and Shane Vendrell as FXamp8217s groundbreaking cop drama breathlessly roared through its final season bringing tragedy to many of its characters and a future filled with misery to the luckier ones The closing sequence in which Mackey suffered in silence in a fresh hell of his own making as a paperpusher in a generic office cubicle was even more impactful than the ambiguous restaurant scene that closed The Sopranosamp160Dexter ShowtimeThe shocks kept coming as Dexter the astonishing Michael C Hall bonded with new Miami ADA Miguel Pardo played by Jimmy Smits the brother of a man Dexter accidentally killed making for a decidedly bumpy bromanceamp160Torchwood BBC AmericaNot unlike the muchadmired Buffy the Vampire Slayer this supercharged sciencefiction adventure can be the funniest comedy television amp8211 when it isnamp8217t the mediumamp8217s most moving drama or most exciting thrill ride John Barrowman is a marvel as Captain Jack Harkness the fearless leader of an elite team charged with monitoring a spacetime rift in Cardiff Wales and protecting the Earth from alien beings that pass through it The dashing Harkness is a bisexual adventurer whose lust for men and women is outdone only by that of his former lover the sexually insatiable rogue time agent Captain John Hart played by recurring guest star James Marsters Barrowman and his cast mates revealed at ComicCon that Season 3 will actually be a single episode that stretches over several hours Canamp8217t waitamp160The Wire HBOThe final season of HBOamp8217s unforgiving Baltimorebased drama about the urban decay that went largely ignored by politicians and the media alike during the gogo economy of recent years included the decline of the cityamp8217s leading newspaper in its ongoing examination of insurmountable crime and corruption A formidable bastion of journalistic excellence suddenly brought to the brink grievously compromised by pressures from without and incompetence from within Talk about prescienceamp160Leverage TNTMore Oceanamp8217s Eleven than Mission Impossible this sleek sexy sophisticated actiondramedy is the most entertaining new scripted series of 2008 and timely as hell As the leader of a team of thieves and grifters who work to bring down corporate malefactors on behalf of their victims Timothy Hutton has his best role since his Academy Awardwinning turn as a suicidal teenager in Ordinary People Christian Kane Gina Bellman Beth Riesgraf and Aldis Hodge round out the showamp8217s endlessly appealing castamp160Summer OIympic Games NBCOkay NBCamp8217s groundbreaking coverage of the Beijing Summer Olympic Games doesnamp8217t exactly qualify as a series but it made the dogdays of August the most exciting two weeks of television this year Despite its ongoing travails in primetime the Peacock gingerly reminded us that broadcast can still be the mightiest medium of allamp160Also worth mentioning as the year draws to a close TNTamp8217s The Closer and Saving Grace AMCamp8217s Breaking Bad Sci Fi Channelamp8217s Battlestar Galactica ABCamp8217s Boston Legal Desperate Housewives and Pushing Daisies NBCamp8217s 30 Rock USA Networkamp8217s Psych and Burn Notice Showtimeamp8217s Brotherhood and The Tudors HBOamp8217s John Adams Generation Kill and True Blood and CBSamp8217 The Big Bang Theory How I Met Your Mother The Amazing Race Survivor Eleventh Hour Cold Case The Mentalist and CSI Crime Scene Investigation How many years have passed since so many CBS shows were included in a Best of the Year review At a time when broadcast bashing has become a crossmedia sport it seems to me that CBS is doing something very right Long may it continue to unexpectedly kick ass

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"Skins" and "Friday Night Lights" Top the Ten Best of 2008

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Ed Martin

"About That with Carl Mayer:" Alaina Donnellon (Episode 6) - By Carl Mayer

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"Skins" and "Friday Night Lights" Top the Ten Best of 2008

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Ed Martin

"About That with Carl Mayer:" Alaina Donnellon (Episode 6) - By Carl Mayer

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