Believe it or not, the last ten years have been an incredible era for television. Sure there's a whole lot of crap, but there's also been a whole lot of really bright, shining moments. One could even argue that we're in a sort of Renaissance of good TV programming. There's so many channels these days that programming doesn't have to be made to appeal to everybody-- there's plenty of room for really good niche programming that 20 years ago just wouldn't have existed. And there's plenty of room for shitty reality shows, game shows and talk shows, but that's what comes with 1000 channels.

Overall, it wasn't that hard to narrow down to the final list, but I couldn't bear to comb through the list again and again to try and take off one more to make it 50, so I left it at 51, because that's just how I like to think that I may or may not roll. Here's one thing you may notice, though that may or may not be a bone of contention-- there is no Family Guy or Family Guy spin-offs or derivatives on the list. This may get me jumped in some parts of town, but I have to be clear and honest in my assertion that Family Guy just isn't funny or clever. Just because they throw in the off Peanut Butter Jelly Time reference doesn't make it a good show. It's the exact opposite of a good show. Maybe if the show was just about Stewie and Brian, it might be funny. Maybe. There, I've said it. Let the listing commence.

51. Queer as Folk (UK)

50. The Tick

49. Iron Chef

48. The Simpsons

47. Junkyard Wars

46. Battle Bots

45. Flight of the Conchords

44. Big Love

43. Chuck

42. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

41. Andy Richter Controls the Universe

40. Intervention

39. Dexter

38. Venture Brothers

37. Tim and Eric Awesome Show

36. Nip / Tuck

35. Aqua Teen Hunger Force

34. Arrested Development

33. Carnivale

32. Kings

31. Robot Chicken

30. The Office (UK)

29. Little Britain

28. Curb Your Enthusiasm

27. Monk

26. True Blood

25. The Colbert Report

24. Six Feet Under

23. Deadwood

22. Secret Diary of a Call Girl

21. That's My Bush!

20. House MD

19. Firefly

18. Rome

17. 24

16. Mad Men

15. Mythbusters

14. Chapelle's Show

13. Penn & Teller's Bullshit

12. Heroes

11. Torchwood

Doctor Who has had its fair share of incredibly awful spin-offs. So when in 2006, Russell Davies announced Torchwood (the name coming from an anagram of "Doctor Who"), the world pretty much had to take a "wait and see" attitude. And while Torchwood was at times a little slow to come into its own, at times in the beginning borrowing from its parent show a little too often, by the end of its third season, it was clear that not only was Torchwood a real show that could stand on its own two feet, but it showed the real possibility of outshiningthe time vortex from which it sprang.

10. Futurama

Matt Groening will probably forever and ever be known first and foremost as the creator of The Simpsons, but it was perhaps his most brilliant and brightest moment when he teamed up with David X. Cohen to devlop Futurama. To say that Futurama is merely a spoof of the sci-fi genre is to sell it short-- way short. Even if that was its original intentions, Futurama went well beyond what is normally required of mere satire in order to stand on its own as one of the smartest (often way too smart) and funniest shows on television.

9. Doctor Who

There's two reasons that Doctor Who has persisted with single hiatus since 1963. First is simply that it's easy to keep a series going when you've got a built-in device to conveniently replace the main actor whenever you want, but second is that the show is just so much god damn fun. When the show returned in 2005 under the command of Russell T. Davies, many wondered what exactly a gay Welshman, who at the time was best known as the creator of Queer as Folk, would bring to the show. What Davies brought, through two different Doctors, was a stunning level of emotional depth and complexity that had never really been fully explored.

8. South Park

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last 10 years, you know that South Park has been one of the defining aspects of 2000s pop culture, just as the 90s were partially defined by Beavis and Butthead and the late 80s were defined by The Simpsons. The four foul-mouthed kids from Colorado that started out as crude paper cutouts went on to be mega worldwide superstars that have thrilled children at heart as much as they've shocked conservative parents and decency advocatest to the core. Some have accused South Park of not being what it used to be, but that's just because Trey Parker and Matt Stone have simply numbed us to what used to be taboo.

7. The Office (US)

Here's a really good way to stir up a good shitstorm at work or on the internet, or even on a subway car-- stride into the room confidently and declare "The (US or UK) version of The Office is waaaay better than (the other one)!" It works every time. The fact is that they're both great shows, but even though they've got the almost all the same characters and the US version's first season is practically a word-for-word copy of the original UK version, like the words "biscuit" and "biscuit", they're two very different things. Ricky Gervais' original flavor is brilliant, but it's brilliant as a more or less realistic documentary of office life, not as an all-out comedy. And while US imports of British shows are usually crap, the US version of The Office has not only succeeded past its phase of directly copying the British version, it's absolutely thrived for six seasons, rarely, if ever getting stale. Every time you think the show's jumped the shark (like Michael Scott quitting to form his own paper company), it just comes back stronger than before.

6. Lost

JJ Abrams may have confused most people-- okay, everyone-- with his bizarre as hell story (if that's what you want to call it) of time-travel, alternate dimensions is either the most brilliant thing ever written for the small screen or the biggest hot mess of random science fiction elements ever assembled into one place-- I tend to want to take the optimistic view that Abrams knows exactly what he's doing and call it an expertly crafted piece of theater that just isn't fully appreciated yet.

5. The Sopranos

Since the era of Prohibition, stories of the Mafia have been engrained in the American mafia, and in the last 30 years, there's been two works of screen fiction that have redefined how the Mafia is portrayed. The first was The Godfather and the second was The Sopranos. The Godfather turned the Costra Nostra family into mythical antiheroes and The Sopranos made them real people, with real, mundane everyday problems and flaws.

4. Battlestar Galactica

Science fiction often use alien races to act as a metaphor of various human conditions and psychologies, but with BSG, the enemies are us and we are the enemies. There have been multiple attempts to revive this show that originated in 1978, but it wasn't until 2003 that the right team, the right actors and the budget made it possible, and it's arguable that the new series managed to outdo its 1970s-born original. The thing that makes BSG so much more than just any old sci-fi series is the fearlessness of the writing and the depth of the characters that allow it to be practically anything to anyone.

3. The Wire

In television, there's plenty of crime dramas to go around for everyone, but to compare The Wire to all the dozen varieties of Law & Order is grounds for a stabbing, back alley dirty Baltimore style. Often described as the best TV show ever created, The Wire does more than just put you in a gritty backdrop with scaaary graffiti on the walls-- it takes you through every aspect of the fate of a city, from the streets to the docks to the mayor's office and puts it together as a whole living, breathing place, where everyone's just as awful and just as wonderful. Part of The Wire's success was not just its beyond-outstanding writing, but its lack of big name stars, instead using little known character actors who just seem to fit comfortably in the roles that they're given.

2. Top Gear

Try and describe Top Gear to someone and the first thing you have to say is "It's a car show"... but to anyone who's even seen a single episode of this brilliant BBC series knows that it's much, much more than a car show. With brilliantly hilarious and sharp-tongue writing, an enormous budget, a perfect balance of three hosts and a penchant for the wildly creative and outrageous, Top Gear is TV at its best. Whether you consider yourself a "car person" or not is irrelevant when you see Top Gear's trek across the Arctic in a pickup truck or put together a game of compact car soccer.

1. The Daily Show

Just a little over 10 years ago, Jon Stewart was a brilliant comedian and actor that no one in New York or Hollywood could find a place for. That was until Craig Kilborn left The Daily Show to take Tom Snyder's place on The Late Late Show, leaving an opening for Jon Stewart to fall into his perfect niche. Since Stewart took over TDS in 1999, he's turned it from a sort of funny fake news show to the most trusted name in news and one of the funniest shows on TV. During the Bush Jr. years, when the real news at times was so awful that you just had to laugh and the "real" mainstream media became more like a Mexican wrestling match and less like actual news, The Daily Show stepped in and seemed to provide more meaning to this crazy world than any of the 24 hour news networks.