The hit Baltimore-set crime series The Wire has been chosen by Entertainment Weekly as the greatest television show of all time in a recent poll compiled by the magazine. The HBO series, which ran for six seasons between 2002 and 2008, battled off competiton from comedies, sci-fi classics and fellow crime dramas to be singled out as the greatest show ever-made, with EW also ordering the greatest movie, album, book and stage play of all time too.



West starred as Det. Jimmy McNulty in The Wire



The David Simon-helmed police drama was described as the "most sustained narrative in television history" by EW as it beat off competition from The Simpsons, Seinfeld, the Mary Tyler Moorse Show and The Sopranos, who finished off the top five of the top ten countdown. Earlier this year, The Sopranos, which starred the late James Gandolfini, was chosen by the Writers Guild of America as the greatest television show of all time, but clearly the writers of EW had a different opinion. All In The Family, The Andy Griffith Show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mad Men and Your Show of Shows made up the rest of the top ten.

There were few surprises with the top half of the top 10 movie list, with Citizen Kane taking it's place atop yet another Best Movies... chart. A close second and third was The Godfather and Casablanca, with Bonnie & Clyde and Psycho finishing off the top five, with It's A Wonderful Life, Mean Streets, The Gold Rush, Nashville and Gone With the Wind rounding off the somewhat surprising top ten. The Arthur Miller play Death of a Salesman was awarded the honour of best stage play of all time (take that Shakespeare), although we're a little disappointed that The Wire; The Musical wasn't chosen instead.



Mad Men was ranked highly by EW



A top ten literacy list was also written up, with Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina taking the top spot. The rest of the list featured a selection of adult and adolescent titles, with Charlotte's Web and the Harry Potter series rubbing shoulders with the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

And what top ten list collection would be complete without a salute to the best albums of all-time, with The Beatles' Revolver taking the top spot in what will no doubt be a very divisive list. The Clash's London Calling finished off the top five, with Michael Jackson's Thriller, The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street and Purple Rain by Prince filling in the spaces between it and Revolver, but Nirvana's seminal Nevermind only reached number 10, whilst the Beach Boy's perfect album, Pet Sounds, only managed to make the number nine spot. Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy somehow managed to make the number eight spot, with Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and Aretha Franklin's Lady Soul came sixth and seventh respectively.

EW will release their list of the 100 greatest shows, albums, films etc as part of the July 5 issue of the magazine.





Revolver beat Sgt Peppers as the best album