Less AI and more AA in your search results.
The New York Times brought together “more than 500 influential stars, showrunners, and other notable names in the world of TV” to put together the definitive list of the 100 best TV shows of the 21st century.
The full results were released this week, and several sports-centric shows made the list.
The highest-rated sports show was Friday Night Lights, the TV adaptation of Buzz Bissinger’s seminal book about the high stakes of Texas high school football, which came in at No. 14. Despite low ratings that led to its move from NBC to DirecTV, it was critically acclaimed and featured a cast of actors who have since become major TV and movie stars.
“It didn’t get the respect it deserved: It was shunted to DirecTV to cut costs for its home network, NBC, and it received a single, consolatory outstanding-drama Emmy nomination for its final season,” wrote Mike Hale for the NY Times. “But Peter Berg’s series, based on a book by H.G. Bissinger, proved that a small town in Texas and its high school football team could contain the whole world. No show has been more poignantly realistic about the lives of American teenagers, and few have showcased better acting. Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton excelled as the adults, the married coach and principal. And a large cast, some of them future stars — including Zach Gilford, Michael B. Jordan, Minka Kelly, Taylor Kitsch, Adrianne Palicki and Jesse Plemons — played the kids who grew up, or didn’t, before our eyes.”
The next sports-centric show to make the list was Ted Lasso, coming in at No. 73 overall. The Apple TV series, which just returned for a fourth season after initially ending with its third, follows a folksy American football coach who takes over an English soccer club and somehow wins over everyone around him while also winning on the field.
“This sitcom, about an American coach (Jason Sudeikis) who moves to England and transforms a soccer club and others with kindness and folksy wisdom, has a sunny reputation,” wrote Jeremy Egner for the Times. “But the outstanding first season, especially, is shot through with bitterness and despair as characters cope with crumbling marriages, bad dads and other traumas. Their confronting and eventual conquering of the darkness gave a very funny sports comedy surprising depth and gravity, and a kind of soul-nourishing power in the dark days of the pandemic.”
So long as you consider chess a sport, you can include The Queen’s Gambit, which came in at No. 81. Netflix’s drama about an orphaned chess prodigy navigating the male-dominated world of the game while battling her inner demons was a breakout hit, solidifying Anya Taylor-Joy’s status as an actress who can carry a show.
“Possibly the biggest thing to happen to chess in popular culture since Bobby Fischer, “Gambit” offered a troubled wunderkind so believable, many viewers assumed it was a biopic,” wrote Leah Greenblatt for the Times. “As Beth, the shy, prickly orphan who discovers she has more than an ordinary knack for the game — and that it’s also her ticket out of 1960s Kentucky — the actress Anya Taylor-Joy employs her watchful gaze and fierce intelligence to carry us through the complicated journey of a natural-born genius who is also a fanatical competitor, a pill-popping addict and, ultimately, a lost soul finding her purpose in knights and bishops.”
Also making the cut was Eastbound & Down, the acerbic HBO series about former MLB pitcher Kenny Powers, which came in at No. 90.
“Kenny Powers: Great American or greatest American?” asks James Poniewozik, writing for the Times. “In his HBO comedy, created with Ben Best and Jody Hill, Danny McBride sketched one of TV’s most memorable jackasses in the form of this washed-up ex-Major League pitcher, a colossus of mouthy, mulleted overconfidence who burned out in the midst of his success. (“Sometimes when you bring the thunder,” he narrates, “you get lost in the storm.”) After alienating fans and teammates from New York to Seattle, Powers drags himself to his hometown to teach middle school and try to orchestrate his comeback. A fizzing 40-ounce bottle of pure hubris, McBride’s portrait of unrepentant obnoxiousness knocks it out of the park.”
Sorry, Chad Powers. You’ve got some work to do.
