It was a very good year for television viewers.
There, I said it. I can't believe it either. After years of looking back and grousing about the medium, I have to acknowledge that television gave us one of the best years of our viewing lives on a variety of programming fronts in 2001. And that's saying something for a year that included the premieres of "Temptation Island" and "Chains of Love."
Here are 10 primary programming categories or genres and the shows within them that brightened the television year.
1. Drama. It was a somewhat uneven season for HBO's "The Sopranos," but the highs were still sublime. Any year with "The Sopranos" is a good year.
Many of my colleagues are picking the "Pine Barrens" episode as the best of the year. The hour featured Christopher (Michael Imperioli) and Paulie (Tony Sirico) taking a Russian mobster for a long walk deep into the New Jersey woods and then bungling their attempt to kill him.
Part "Fargo" and part "Waiting for Godot," it was a brilliant hour of television, but my pick as the best episode is "University," which took us inside the awful life of a young dancer at the Club Bada-Bing. Her brutal death at the hands of one of Tony's (James Gandolfini) lieutenants is one of the most powerful moments of television ever seen. This is "Death of a Salesman" for the small screen.
2. New series. HBO struck gold again in Sunday-night drama with "Six Feet Under," an exquisitely offbeat series about the Fishers, a family of Los Angeles undertakers. Richly multidimensional and culturally provocative, it breathes the same rarefied dramatic air as "The Sopranos."
Created by Academy Award winner Alan Ball ("American Beauty"), the series dares to look death cold in the eye, and, in so doing, brings a new kind of existential energy and sense of postmodern edge to prime time. As with "The Sopranos," you have to go beyond television to find an apt comparison. This is Joseph Heller doing the family drama, a study in dysfunction.
There were several other signs of new and intelligent life that deserve mention: "Smallville" (WB), "Undeclared" (Fox), "The Bernie Mac Show" (Fox), "Alias" (ABC), "24" (Fox) and "The Education of Max Bickford" (CBS). None is a breakout hit. In fact, "Alias," "24" and "Undeclared" are struggling to find an audience. But "24" and "Alias" still deserve praise for taking the big risk of trying to do network drama in new ways. As for "Max Bickford," I'm not quite ready to renounce my less-than-enthusiastic review of the pilot, but I have to admit I find myself returning to the show almost every week.
