Television right now is in a
vastly different space than it was when the 1990’s ended. Thanks to
shows like Oz and The Sopranos on HBO to House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black on Netflix, T.V. has gone through a drastic
revolution. The Golden Age of Television and the spark and cause of this
revolution is detailed in the incredible book The Revolution Was Televised
by Hitfix.com’s TV critic Alan Sepinwall. I recently wrote about the shows responsible for television’s second revolution in this current Silver Age of Television. However, during the past 16-20 years or so, television has given us
some incredible shows that haven’t risen to the level of transcendent. Mr.
Sepinwall discusses shows like Lost, The Shield, and Deadwood and I discussed shows like Game of Thrones and True
Detective. Shows that are both incredible on their own and helped define a
generation of programs. But in a tier underneath those programs are a handful of shows
that are excellent in their own right, but didn’t quite rise to the level of
revolutionary. These are the shows that we would be speaking more about if it
weren’t for the Golden and Silver Age shows. These shows deserve a lot more respect
than they’ve gotten so far, and I’m going to give them their just due.