The best new TV show of the 2006-07 season.

The Pacific groans with technically preposterous battle scenes, but it is the minute behavior of ordinary men both in and after those extraordinary circumstances that takes your breath away and helps put The Pacific in a class of its own among war movies.

The perfect marriage of television and literature.

Boston Med operates at the edges of real life in a way scripted shows can only approach. It is the single must-see broadcast-TV show of the summer.

In so many ways, it's as good as television gets.

With the tormented Luther, it's sometimes tough even to identify who is the cat and who is the mouse. Writing and acting come together to produce characters, more than stories, who are powerful, surprising, ambiguous, and all that other stuff.

It's no lie to say you don't get this sort of stylish and challenging stuff very frequently on TV, adult subject matter treated maturely in a series that makes you squirm and think.

Sherlock strikes a perfect--and delicious--balance among comedy, pathos, murder, and mystery.

A wonderfully complex drama, with plenty of sly humor, that showcases slick performances from its two stars, and magically straddles the parallel universes of film noir and high school high jinks, while generously tossing out amusing asides. [22 Sept 2004, p.D1]

Foul-mouthed, violent and potentially depressing with its unvarnished characters, The Shield also shocks your heart with pounding action and tickles your brain by presenting a cops-and-robbers world where almost everyone is at least morally ambiguous, at worst corrupt. [12 Mar 2002]

Home Box Office has telecast several of the most scintillating series of this decade, notably The Larry Sanders Show, Oz, Arli$$, and Sex and the City. You can safely add The Sopranos to that glittering gallery. [10 Jan 1999, p.F01]

The sumptuous two-hour opener to Season 6 is a remarkable piece of work--beautiful, provocative, and deep. It's an unexpectedly exquisite distillation of the show's themes and aspirations.

Among the most stimulating and entertaining series of the last 10 years and far and away the best new network show of the 1992-93 season.

The first new drama series ever produced by Home Box Office, Oz, is a powerhouse. It will probably push the quality standards for television drama as far as HBO's masterful Larry Sanders Show has expanded the parameters of TV comedy series. [9 July 1997, p.C01]

This sparkling saga of an extended dysfunctional family has more laughs than regular characters.

The best sitcom this year, and one of the best in a lot of years.

This season's best new show.

This may be one of the most beautifully crafted and original TV shows ever to get fall consideration on a big network.

The monumental production is worth bragging about.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, whose pilot is the first feature-length film made in Botswana--a movie that starts off one of the most glowingly original, kindhearted, and genuinely engaging TV series of this fading decade.

The song and dance spills over everywhere, even onto the football field, in this season's best new TV show, Glee.

Justified itself stays on target all the time, too, an instant entrant in the best-new-show sweepstakes in a TV season that already has several solid candidates.

The Killing is also the least prepossessing, an eerily quiet, yet compelling and complex, tale of the way the murder of a teenager affects the lives of many people.

More than any of Burns' documentaries except The Civil War, Prohibition provides viewers with a real feel for the times as well as new and surprising information.

Another heart-stopping adventure show from "Alias"'s J.J. Abrams...Lost undertakes the ambitious assignment of developing 14 characters, including the usual tough guys and brave gals, as well as a rotund, lovable dolt, a 9-year-old boy, and a Korean couple who don't speak English, all suddenly thrust together to fight for survival. If anybody can meet the challenge, it's Abrams. [22 Sept 2004, p.D01]

It takes about 20 minutes for Lynch's TV debut, an eight-episode series, to wrap you in its clutches. After that, it's as easy to watch as a good Murder, She Wrote, but 100 times more interesting. By the end, you'll feel you know a lot less than you did at the beginning.

One of the best new series of the season. [30 Sept 2001, p.H01]

A stunning, richly textured, feminist existential epic.