Derek Jacobi as the stammering emperor and Sian Phillips as Livia; the BBC's 1976 Rome.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a vice president surrounded by idiots; the best insults on television.
The Ministry of Silly Walks, the Dead Parrot and the giant foot; 45 episodes from 1969.
An English pilot shipwrecked in 1600 Japan and Lord Toranaga; the Emmy record-breaker.
The Marines from Guadalcanal to Okinawa; the harder companion to Band of Brothers.
Two KGB sleeper agents as a Virginia couple in the Reagan years; the best spy series.
Twelve episodes of John Cleese running a Torquay hotel badly; "don't mention the war".
The Shelby gang in 1920s Birmingham with razor blades in their caps; Cillian Murphy.
Tina Fey runs a sketch show under Alec Baldwin's executive; the fastest joke rate on television.
A station at a wormhole and the Dominion War; the Trek that did serialised drama first.
Tulsa 1921 and a masked police force; Damon Lindelof's sequel to the comic.
A Korean War field hospital for eleven seasons; the finale is still the most watched episode ever.
Upstairs and downstairs at a Yorkshire estate from the Titanic to the 1920s; Maggie Smith's put-downs.
Al Swearengen and the founding of a lawless gold town, in Shakespearean profanity.
A family funeral home in Los Angeles; the finale is the one everyone cites.
Vic Mackey's corrupt strike team in LA; the first cable anti-hero and the best finale.
Don Draper and a Madison Avenue ad agency through the 1960s; seven seasons of slow change.
An anthology in the Coens' Minnesota; each season a new decade and a new crime.
The last human fleet flees the Cylons; the sci-fi series that was really about the war on terror.
David Brent at Wernham Hogg in Slough; twelve episodes and a Christmas special that invented the form.
How Jimmy McGill became Saul Goodman; the Breaking Bad prequel many rate higher.
Dunder Mifflin, Scranton; nine seasons of Michael Scott, Jim and Pam.
Oceanic 815 crashes on an island with a hatch and a smoke monster; the mystery that changed TV.
Rust Cohle and Marty Hart in Louisiana; the six-minute tracking shot and "time is a flat circle".
Mulder and Scully, the truth out there, and the monster-of-the-week format.
Whimsical Italianate seaside village.
Eerie avenue of ancient beech trees.
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