CS Weekly Archive > The Big Picture > 1/27/06

The Best TV of 2005

edited By david michael wharton

To prepare you for the upcoming February sweeps, the writers and staff of Creative Screenwriting Magazine and CS Weekly turn our attentions to the small screen and give you a cheat sheet for what you should be watching.

It's hectic time for TV. Networks are scrambling for viewers in the face of falling ad revenues and competitive cable channels. Serialized storytelling is back en vogue, thanks to hits like 24, Lost, and Desperate Housewives. DVD sales, TiVo, and even iPods are changing both the ways we watch our favorite shows, and the way those shows are marketed and sold to us.

None of which would amount to the proverbial hill of beans if nothing good was on.

Lucky for us, the airwaves are brimming with smartly written shows, with talented writers and showrunners taking full advantage of a medium that empowers the writer to dole out doses of carefully crafted worlds, week after week.

Once again, the Creative Screenwriting braintrust have put our respective heads together to bring you our picks for the best TV 2005 had to offer. Now, if you'll excuse us, we've got some TV to catch up on…


Jim Cirile, columnist, "Agent's Hot Sheet," Creative Screenwriting
1) Lost
Created by Jeffrey Lieber and J.J. Abrams & Damon Lindelof
Another castaways-stranded-on-a-desert island show? Hey, little buddy! But Lost elevates its premise with terrific backstory segments and crackerjack character writing.
2) Boston Legal
Created by David E. Kelley
Another lawyer show? Yawn. But Shatner and Spader are the best comic team since Cheech and Chong. Denny Crane!
3) Commander in Chief
Created by Rod Lurie
Another female president show? Yawn. But CiC reminds us what having a human being in the White House would be like. Oh, and great writing, too.
4) Crumbs
Created by Marco Pennette
Another sitcom about a gay screenwriter? Hmm. New sitcom with surprising depth and Jane Curtin in fine form. Have only seen pilot so far but was impressed.
5) Grey's Anatomy
Created by Shonda Lynn Rhimes
Another doctor show? Yawn. But this one's a surprisingly thoughtful character drama.

Jason Davis, DVD manager, CS Weekly
1) Battlestar Galactica
Developed by Ronald D. Moore
Based on the series created by Glen A. Larson
The best show on TV.
2) The Inside
Created by Howard Gordon and Tim Minear
The best show to get axed after half a season.
3) Grey's Anatomy
The best new show of the year.
4) Doctor Who
The best 42-year-old new show.
5) Carnivàle
Created by Daniel Knauf
The best show to get cancelled after a respectable ending.

Jeff Dobberpuhl, legal counsel, CS Publications
1) 24
Created by Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow
Okay, I still want someone in the show to use the bathroom just once (who are these people?). But it's still entertaining, and extremely well written!
2) Battlestar Galactica
Some of the best TV out there. Wow. This show just keeps getting better and better with every episode. The special effects don't feel special -- a sign of pure craftsmanship. The acting is out of this world -- ahem -- but with plots that are clearly down to earth. Fear the evil we made, for it is us…
3) House
Created by David Shore
I really want to hate this show. I don't like any of the characters in the slightest. And yet, that is precisely why I keep watching. This show is so well written, so well acted, that you simply cannot afford to miss it. Sherlock Holmes with a scalpel. Who knew medicine (and medical mysteries) could be so much fun?
4) CSI
Created by Anthony E. Zuiker
The original only, please. I'll take my Vegas with a side of death anytime CBS wants to crank out a new episode.
5) XPlay (G4 TV)
It has taken over my life. Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb have such good writers and the perfect dryness to carry their acerbic wit to the review of video games. You don't even need to enjoy video games to enjoy this show.

Ari Eisner, writer, CSW
1) Rescue Me
Created by Denis Leary and Peter Tolan
Leary and Tolan's show transcends operatic television and procedural drama. It's a series about so much more than firefighters living in post-9/11 New York. It's about society living in a post-9/11 world. Writing at finest.
2) 24
Not since the show's first season have the adventures of Jack Bauer been this compelling, kinetic, and tension filled. There were more heart-in-your-throat moments this season than in any thriller to come out theatrically.
3) The Shield
Created by Shawn Ryan
A series that has lost none of the edge and grittiness that put it on the map four years ago. Glenn Close's Captain Rawling was far more than a spot for a guest celebrity. It was an opportunity to further deepen everything the show stands for.
4) Arrested Development
Created by Mitch Hurwitz
The best sitcom network TV has seen since Seinfeld. Like the best comedies, it outdoes everything out there in its medium, all the while redefining the form.

Jason Fogelson, writer, CSW
1) Little Britain
Written and performed by Matt Lucas & David Walliams
The funniest British sketch comedy since Monty Python.
2) My Name is Earl
Created by Gregory Thomas Garcia
Inventive, probing comedy with great characters and a real point of view.
3) House
Maintaining a misanthropic main character through a full season, while still allowing us to admire his genius and follow the medical mysteries.
4) The Daily Show with John Stewart
Created by Madeleine Smithberg and Lizz Winstead
Still sharp, often hard-hitting, almost always funny.
5) Breaking Bonaduce
The most compelling train wreck of a reality show ever. If this wasn't scripted, it should have been.

Jeff Goldsmith, senior editor, CS; CS Screening Series; CS Podcast
1) The Comeback
Created by Michael Patrick King and Lisa Kudrow
Barely watched during its run, one of the year's most original comedies used well-written scripts to parody the plague of cheesy reality TV, meshing nearly every joke with the characters, episode, and even season arc.
2) The Shield
So good that David Mamet himself had to finally get involved with TV's most character-driven cop drama.
[Ed. note: Ryan and Mamet team up for The Unit, premiering in March on CBS.]
3) Lost
Flashback structure and character-driven drama keep me in awe every week.
4) Arrested Development
Ensemble comedy has never been better -- hopefully it finds a new home soon.
5) Battlestar Galactica
It ain't just for geeks anymore, as these TV writers prove the genre can be about a lot more than space battles.

Sam Hayes, writer, CSW
1) Frontline
The coverage is always amazing and I think it's one of the best sources of journalism out there right now. You can even catch past episodes on their website. I recommend The Storm about Katrina and FEMA.
2) South Park
Created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone
Nobody does social satire as well or nearly as funny as Matt and Trey. The show is as good or better than when it started.
3) The Office
Developed for American television by Greg Daniels
Based on the BBC show created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant
As good as the original BBC show.
4) Family Guy
Created by Seth MacFarlane
So glad they brought it back.
5) The Daily Show
No commentary necessary, is there? Just watch it!

Deirdre McGill, editorial intern
1) Malcolm in the Middle
Created by Linwood Boomer
Always clever, inventive, a show that knows how to push buttons without being offensive, or demeaning its audience with silly jokes.
2) Cold Case Files
I love the way it weaves back and forth between the past and present. It makes good use of plot twists to show how crime can really mess up a family.
3) The Law & Order series
Created by Dick Wolf
And it's not because I like Criminal Intent's Vincent D'Onofrio a little too much. It's a show that can occasionally tell a pretty good yarn -- even if it is often ripped off from last month's headlines.
4) Desperate Housewives
Created by Marc Cherry
Here's to the ladies who are not June Cleaver. Keep the juicy storylines going.
5) 24
It does a pretty respectable job of pretending to be a movie with good story lines and solid production values.

Lauren Mongrain, Teen correspondent, CSW
1) Friends
Created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman
My favorite show this year is Friends. I think it's really funny and has a good story to it.

Den Shewman, editor in chief, CS and CSW
Having not had much time this year to watch the tube, I'll throw in a few boxed TV sets that kept me going.
1) Boomtown: Season One
Created by Graham Yost
An incredibly written show, ostensibly about crimes and cops but really a finely detailed multiple-chapter television novel about people trying to overcome: the bad guys, themselves, and whatever God and L.A. throws at them. All the more shocking that Yost is best known for slam-bams like Speed and Broken Arrow, but listen to his commentaries (there are many, thankfully) and see the other side to this writer.
2) Sealab 2021
By Adam Reed and Matt Thomspon
Based on the 1972 13-episode TV series Sealab 2020, directed by Joseph Barbera and William Hanna
Cartoon Network's blackly comic revamp of an old '70s environmental cartoon stays true to the cheesy style while throwing in near-Dada-ist curveballs that include episodes about the captain trapped under a Jazzy Cola soda machine getting addicted to scorpion venom and the undersea lab's pirate radio station under attack.
3) Profit: The Complete Series
Created by David Greenwalt and John McNamara
Shakespearean intrigue in the corporate world. Jim Profit (Adrian Pasdar) does it all in this short-lived, controversial series -- theft, blackmail, and of course, the ever-popular murder -- as he climbs the corporate ladder. The show's amoral protagonist can send an innocent man to prison for a murder he didn't commit, yet shows an odd propensity for mercy for anyone not standing in his way to the top. Oh, and he sleeps naked in a refrigerator box every night in front of the TV. What's not to like?

Sean Siska, writer, CS
1) Gilmore Girls
Created by Amy Sherman-Palladino
You may just dismiss this as a weekly chick flick, but if you do you'll miss the funniest, tightest, and most emotionally engaging writing you'll find on a screen of any size.
2) Battlestar Galactica
Ronald D. Moore and his staff really know how to ratchet up the tension in this superior update of the SF original.
3) House
All of the characters on this show are interesting and their conflicts keep what could otherwise be a standard medical procedural fresh and exciting.
4) Deadwood
Created by David Milch
David $!#%ing Milch. Does anything else need to be said?
5) Wonderfalls
Created by Bryan Fuller and Todd Holland
Technically this show went off the air in 2004, but Fox released the complete series on DVD (including nine unaired episodes) last February. This show about a young woman who has to fulfill the requests of talking animal figurines is quirky and clever without ever being too precious.

Tom Stempel, CS editorial board
1) The West Wing
Created by Aaron Sorkin
The episode in which Toby tells C.J. he was the leak and in which we see the immediate aftermath of that was the single best hour of television in 2005. It was beautifully structured and paced, with the President's daughter's pregnancy used as a perfect counterpoint. The writer brilliantly used our knowledge of the characters and his knowledge of how much those actors could deliver. Over the year the last months of the Bartlett administration and the presidential campaign have been nicely counter-pointed.
2) Out of Practice
Created by Christopher Lloyd and Joe Keenan
How I Met Your Mother got more immediate critical acclaim as one of the best new sitcoms, but Practice had a simpler setup and much sharper characterizations. The writers use their dazzling cast's skills very effectively. The "New Year's Eve Party" episode was the best half-hour episode of the year, a perfect piece of screwball comedy. Look at how many laughs they get out of very few words when Crystal's dad shows up.
3) Arrested Development
The most accurate and realistic view of American family life on television, with only possibly the exception of The Simpsons. AD is also the most surrealistic and densely packed sitcom on television, one of the few that you have to pay close attention to to appreciate.
4) Desperate Housewives
My vote here is for two different time periods in the show. The first is the last half of the first season, which answered most of the questions raised in the main storyline, but which also set us up for the second season. The second is how the writers have finally, in this season, brought Lynette into focus as a character. Felicity Huffman was working at half speed the first season, but is in overdrive this season.
5) Law & Order
Isn't it amazing that a show that has been on the air 1,352,763 years still comes up with relentless plot twists in every episode that you cannot see coming?

David Wharton, managing editor, CS Weekly
1) Battlestar Galactica
Compelling, detailed, deeply flawed characters. Nail-biting suspense. Spectacular SF action. And even a wickedly bleak sense of humor. Each week, Ron Moore's "re-imagining" strives to single-handedly drag SF television out of the genre ghetto and into the realm of Just. Damn. Good. Television.
2) 24
Talk about a comeback. After stumbling through aimlessness and just-plain-silliness (cougars, anyone?), 24 turned things around with a season that mixed balls-to-the-wall action with solid characterization and even an all-too-relevant moral quandary or two.
3) The Shield
No show more compelling sketches the psyches of the men and women who walk the edge of darkness so the rest of us don't have to.
4) Veronica Mars
Created by Rob Thomas
There's a reason people like Stephen King, Damon Lindelof, Joss Whedon, and Kevin Smith are singing this show's praises. But even if you can't stand any of them (*coughcoughdencough*), this show excels without need for celebrity shout-outs. Crackerjack dialogue, truly inspired twists, and the best female protagonist on television (you heard me). The show's first season was a model of how to balance ongoing storylines against episodic plotlines, and wrapped it all up with a bow and a helluva cliffhanger, to boot!
5) The Office
Want a compelling argument for all the ways this could have gone wrong? Look no further than NBC's thankfully aborted Coupling Americanization a few seasons ago. The Office succeeds by not trying to top the original, but by taking the core of that show and repopulating it with the assorted madmen and misanthropes peculiar to cubicle farms on this side of the Pond. Plus, the best will-they-or-won't-they romance since David and Maddie.

When not slaving away in the salt mines as managing editor of CS Weekly, David Michael Wharton somehow finds the time to write for publications such as Creative Screenwriting Magazine, Cinescape, and CinemaBlend.com. He hangs his hat in Texas.

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