My first 10-best list for Yahoo TV might benefit from some personal critical context, since I may be new to you in this neighborhood. As a TV critic, I see every new show and keep up with a slew of stuff in all day-parts (yes, I sometimes watch morning TV, I've been known to peek at The View, and I'm a cable-news junkie and a late-night talk-show hawk). To people who say, "Wow, you get paid to watch TV! What a great job!" I say: "You bet, and you don't know the half of it." Yes, it's a pleasure to draw a paycheck while watching any of the shows I love, such as the ones below. But now, do this: Think of all the TV shows you absolutely detest. I have to watch all those too. And find something useful to say about them, to help inform and guide you. What qualifies me for this Yahoo responsibility? I've been reviewing TV for about three decades now, which at the very least means I have a substantial knowledge of TV history to draw upon. And after all that TV-watching, I'm still enthused about the medium — the new and the old. And I still relish the challenge of figuring out why a show enthralls me, or how I should convince you another show is junk. As a consumer guide and inventor of theories, I'm here to help at a time when there is more good TV than at any time in the history of the medium. Now, on to the list.



10. The Knick (Cinemax)





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I confess it took me a little while to see The Knick for what it was, and to disassociate it from other recent, suspenseful period pieces such as the early-20th-century atmospherics of Boardwalk Empire and Tom Fontana's short-lived 19th-century Copper. What started out like ER-by-gaslight soon expanded outward to grapple with matters of medical theory, race relations, gender roles, and how the hell director Steven Soderbergh got his camera into all those tight spaces and lit those gloomy rooms so beautifully.



9. Veep (HBO)





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Selina Meyer's bid for the Presidential nomination unleashed a torrent of neurotically aggressive, ferociously ruthless behavior from the Veep and her entire staff. This series has always been much more than a satire of politics — or rather, it's not about White House politics, but about inter-office politics and sexual politics. Julia Louis-Dreyfus deserves every Emmy nomination she receives, because so much depends on the way she keeps Selina sympathetic and funny even as every plot turn is designed to make her appalling and sad.



8. Fargo (FX)



