65 thoughts on “All-Time Greatest Television Shows..Statistically Speaking”

1. Hi Bruce, of the 350 TV shows listed on the chart there are 95 of them I know I’ve seen 10 episodes or more. That includes shows I watched as a child such as Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Addams Family and The Munsters.

   Popular shows I don’t think I’ve seen more than 4 or 5 episodes include – Dallas, Dynasty, Baywatch, Cheers, ER and The Sopranos.

   Thanks for adding The Avengers and The Prisoner to the chart. “I’m not a number I’m a free man!”

   Also good to see Fawlty Towers on there, it was once voted the UKs best ever sitcom.

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   1. Hey Steve….no problem adding in your two suggestions.Hmmmm tally counts. So going with shows I watched a lot…..I am at around 80 shows…..many in reruns. Growing up I would watch shows like Hogan’s Heroes, The Andy Griffith Show, The Brady Bunch….and had no idea the show had been off the primetime airways for years. I have fond memories of watching Ron Howard as Opie in The Andy Griffith Show in the afternoon, and seeing Ron Howard as reaching Cunningham in Happy Days. Fawlty Tower got on the list (breaking my 3 season rule) because it kept getting mentioned as one of the best shows of all-time. Good stuff as always.

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   2. HI STEVE: 95 shows of 10 episodes or more – wow! – and there’s me thinking that all you ever watched were stuff relating to horror/sci-fi/ageing muscle-bound guys. Congratulations on some of the TV series you have watched.

      As on this site we are almost totally preoccupied with movies we almost forget at times that down the years there have been great TV shows and TV mega-stars as well. Most of us movie buffs are familiar with the complete ‘cradle to grave’ trajectory of the careers of the movie Greats like Chuck/Mumbles/Al Leach/The Duke; but it would be great fun if someone could do a comprehensive “where are they now” rundown of the big TV stars of the past.

      From the late 1950s thru the mid-1970s my own main TV preoccupations were with the small-screen cowboys who had in effect replaced the Autry/Rogers stars of the old big screen westerns. We are all aware of course that Clint [Rowdy Yates of the Rawhide series] and Jim Garner [the small screen Brett Maverick] became very successful cinematic stars with Clint in particular becoming one of the All-time Legends up there with the likes of Mumbles/Gable/Cooper.

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2. Accordingly if Cheyenne didn’t make the cut under your well-thought-out publicised criteria so be it. Indeed possibly a statistical ‘weakness’ of Cheyenne was that despite its long run there were [in contrast to the 268 episoded of the 7 season Alfred Hitchcock Presents for example] only 107 episodes of Cheyenne in total because as the Wiki extract in Part One of this post explains Cheyenne was the pioneer of the hour-long western shows [and indeed ALL dramatic series] and its producers aired just around 15 of them a year so that they would retain their freshness.

   It seems to have worked because according to Wikipedia “In its last season, Cheyenne still drew good enough ratings to force the cancellation of the new comedy/drama It’s a Man’s World on NBC, co-starring Glenn Corbett, Michael Burns, Ted Bessell, and Randy Boone. In the spring of 1960, Cheyenne outdistanced singer Kate Smith’s return to television on CBS’s The Kate Smith Show, which was cancelled after some six months on the air”

   IMDB gives Cheyenne an overall rating of 79%; and of course Clint personally has already received ‘Cogerson glory’ with his own page and tributes on this death in 2018 aged 90. I never saw anything of him in his later years which is probably just as well. I recently saw a photo of Randolph Scott just a few years before his death: a stooped frail and shrunken little old man who had to be helped into a room by men on either side of him holding his arms. [Randy died in 1987 aged 89 surviving his old pal Al Leach by just 4 months].

   “Cheyenne! Cheyenne!
   Move along Cheyenne, the next pasture’s always so green.
   Drifting on Cheyenne, don’t forget the things you have seen.
   And when you settle down where will it be, Cheyenne?
   Cheyenne”

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   1. Hey Bob….Sold…Cheyenne with a Clint Walker UMR Link is now on the table.

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      1. HI BRUCE: Nice to see Cheyenne getting credit in your valuable table. Cheyenne Bodie wouldn’t have been a fave of mine as much as say Jim Garner’s Maverick or James Drury as The Virginian who my personal TOP favourite – though maybe THAT was just reflecting a geographical preference!!

         Drury’s Virginian was so morally upright and perfect in every respect that in real life he has never existed [if we can forget about Joel for a moment]. In one episode Trampas goes looking for The Virginian and finds him back in the bunkhouse lying on his bed reading Shakespeare which even though I was just about 22 at the time I couldn’t take seriously. Nowadays I might though because I’ve come to realise that those Virginians are a exceptionally-well educated a cultured breed of people.

         Anyway it was because back in those days Cheyenne was so massive – both physically and in terms of professional popularity! – that his original omission from your table was the one that immediately struck me. However you had done such a marvellous job in assembling that mega table on the basis of a sensible criteria that I had no intention of disputing individual selections/rankings with you had Anonymous Mike’s mention of the omission not encouraged me to do mention the Cheyenne omission.

         I would write and thank Mike if I knew who he was. He’s bound to intrigue Steve who likes guys with aliases and secret identities such as Clark Kent/ Bruce Wayne/Peter Parker. That kind of thing can apparently be infectious; and the famous Brit journalist and author Malcolm Muggeridge who during the war years was actually in the British Secret Service said once that most of his colleagues in the Service eventually became so paranoid that they followed each other about to see who each other REALLY WAS and what he/she was up to! Anyway I hope the Cogerson Clan had as good a weekend as can be expected in the circs.

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         1. He Bob…Our weekend was a good one…back to reality…after a week off for Spring Break…online school starts in a few minutes. Mike/Anonymous is a regular contributor….one day…I will go back and change all his Anonymous to Mike….and you will see him skyrocket up the top commentor leaders lst. Good mini breakdowns on those classic western shows. Good stuff as always.

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   2. I know in it’s first season Cheyenne alternated with 2 other series, all based on Warner Brothers films since it itself was a Warner’s series. One of the others was Casablanca (not the David Soul one), In its second season it alternated with Sugarfoot with Will Hutchens which was on 4 seasons and made only about 65 shows. It also alternated with Bronco, similar length of its run and episode counts as Sugarfoot.

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3. HI BRUCE: Anon Mike’s [is he a spy who is desperate to keep his identity hidden?!] 12:30 PM post today caught my attention as it mentions the omission of the Cheyenne western series. When I first saw your list on Friday Cheyenne Bodie was the one omission that did surprise me.

   It ran for seven seasons from 1955-63 and was regarded at the time as the “jewel in the crown” among the droves of western shows that were flooding our TV screens at that time – the “Brando of TV western series” if you like because it was regarded as highly influential being the inspiration as it was for later shows like Jim Garner’s Maverick and Ty Hardin’s Bronco. For a brief period it made a big screen cowboy movies star of Clint Walker in Fort Dobbs/Yellowstone Kelly/Gold of the Seven Saints

   WIKIPEDIA
   Cheyenne was an American Western television series of 108 black-and-white episodes broadcast on ABC from 1955 to 1962. The show was the first hour-long Western, and was the first hour-long dramatic series of any kind, with continuing characters, to last more than one season. It was also the first series to be made by a major Hollywood film studio which did not derive from its established film properties, and the first of a long chain of Warner Bros. original series produced by William T. Orr.”

   However since those days there have been many highly successful TV shows of all kinds and I think that you have done a wonderful job in assembling so many of them in your mega-comprehensive table and the selections and ranking positions are all credible in my opinion regardless of what this individual or that one may personally think about them.

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   1. Hey Bob…..I think Mike would be on the top commenter page if he would use his name versus anonymous….good stuff.

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      1. Thx

         Please add the following short lived TV shows

         Female comedy shows
         “Gidget” with Sally Fields
         “The Patty Duke Show” with Patty Duke
         Sci Fi
         “The Invaders” with Roy Thinnes
         Female Private Eye
         “Honey West” with Anne Francis
         Horror Comedy
         ” The Addams Family” with Carolyn Jones
         Male Comedy
         “Bosom Buddies” with Tom Hanks
         Thx
         Mike

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         1. Hey Mike. Generally I tried to use shows that had at least 3 seasons….with 5 seasons being the original cutoff mark I used. I looked at countless Top 100 lists…..and if a show continued to be listed on list after list I included it….that got shows like Fleabag, Fawlty Towers and others on the list. The Addams Family was already on the table….and I added on The Patty Duke Show. The rest…..like one of my all-time favorite shows, The Greatest American Hero will not make the list….mainly because there are 1000s of shows that only played 1 or 2 seasons and it is a safe bet they would be at the bottom of the rankings. Good stuff as always.

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         2. You haven’t lived till you’ve suffered through both Gidget and Honey West as I have (both shows in my collection).

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4. Hi Mr. Cogerson,

   Western “Cheyenne”,”The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp”
   Space “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, “Stargate SG-1″,”Andromeda”
   Underwater” Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”
   Adventure “Mission: Impossible”
   Comedy “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”, “Silver Spoons”,”Father Knows Best”
   Action”Xena: Warrior Princess”,”Hercules: The Legendary Journeys’

   Just a few for review
   Thx
   Mike

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   1. Hey Mike…just added Cheyenne to the table….Father Knows Best and Mission Impossible were already in the table. Working on the rest of your suggestions.

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   2. Added all of these shows to the table…think Stargate SG-1 ended up with the highest rating….just outside the Top 100. Thanks for the suggestions.

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5. My favourite TV shows, regardless of where they are ranked or included;

   Perry Mason
   Columbo
   The Andy Griffith Show
   Dragnet
   M*A*S*H
   The Facts of Life
   CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
   Carol Burnett Show
   Hogan’s Heroes
   Star Trek TOS

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   1. Hey Flora. Thanks for checking out our television experiment. All of your favorites made the list with the exception of the Carol Burnett Show. That got excluded because it was a variety show….but it would have been in the Top 10 if I had not thrown it out at the last moment. I also lovd MASH, CSI and Hogan’s Heroes. Good stuff as always.

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