Metacritic is probably the premier resource for collecting critical judgments about various media. For the end of the year, they've collected a great deal of critics' top-ten lists for both
film and
TV. For their film coverage, they've included a
histogram showing how many top-ten lists each film pops up on. But there's no such summary for their TV page, so I thought I'd rectify the omission. A histogram, however, isn't a great way to show what the most acclaimed works really were, since it gives the same weight to a first-place vote as it does to a tenth-place. So I took a cue from baseball MVP voting, giving 14 points to a first-place finish, 9 points to a second, 8 points for third place, and so on. For lists that are arranged alphabetically, each show gets 5.5 points. Here are the point leaders for 2006:
1. The Wire 132
2. 24 81
3. Friday Night Lights 78.5
4. The Office 61.5
5. Battlestar Galactica 58.5
6. Dexter 55
7T. Heroes 52
7T. Ugly Betty 52
9. The Sopranos 45.5
10. Rescue Me 37
And, in comparison, here are the leaders for
2005:
1. Lost 119
2. Arrested Development 71
3. Veronica Mars 52
4. Battlestar Galactica 48
5. My Name Is Earl 44
6. House M.D. 42
7. The Shield 40
8. Rescue Me 38
9T. The Colbert Report 36
9T. Entourage 36
I think the comparison sort of indicates how fickle critics can be, with only two shows (
Battlestar Galactica and
Rescue Me) appearing on both lists. I mean, the third season of
Lost has been a little subpar so far, true, but (especially considering how strong the second half of season 2 was) enough so to drop it from being by far the most acclaimed show on the air into a tie for fourteenth?
