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by hipparchus 1994 days ago
My issue with such a statement is that it most likely inevitably picks from a very specific subset of shows: that is, american and british shows (although the latter may even be quite a small subset of all british shows, if you are american), maybe with one or two other-anglospheric-country shows mixed in (probably a couple canadian shows, and maybe if we're lucky, one or two australian), and ignores the huge swathes of international tv production. That's without even going into the problem of age (most likely, your subset is composed mostly of shows of the > 1980s at best, probably a significant subset would be > 2000s). I don't mean to say that this is a "bad" subset, that is, I concede that it's inevitable that it contains great, and in some cases, sublime shows: we've gotten better at media production over the decades, and the financial and talent pools of the americans are nearly unparalleled. Yet I can't help but feel like the americano-centrism of the "Best shows of all times" list is worthy of criticism (I have similar criticisms for most "best album / songs of all time" lists), given that I've seen shows of extremely high quality from both european and russian media. (Of course, I myself am guilty of this, with respect to shows from asia and the middle east, for instance, which I've seen nothing of. It seems as though most westerners will consume media of the following categories: either american, or from their country, with at most a handful of what could be considered for them, a "foreign" show.) as I feel like tv in general seems to be a medium in which americans don't tend to really stray beyond looking at what's produced by their country, unlike say, films, where, perhaps because of the more "high-class" sentiment that comes with being a cinephile, there's a stronger push to look beyond the borders in an effort to stay informed and "cultured" about films around the world.