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Shouldn’t There Be a List of the Top 10 Top 10 Lists?

If so, I’m not sure the American Film Institute’s top 10 TV shows of 2009 would make that list, but it’s still worth a look. Here are the choices, in alphabetical order:

  • The Big Bang Theory
  • Big Love
  • Friday Night Lights
  • Glee
  • Mad Men
  • Modern Family
  • The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
  • Nurse Jackie
  • Party Down
  • True Blood

The jury that picked the shows includes some interesting names, too:

The TV jury was chaired by writer-producer Neal Baer and included producer Stanley Brooks, Arizona State’s Bambi Haggins, UC Santa Cruz’s L.S. Kim, Variety’s Brian Lowry, writer-producer David Milch, UC Santa Barbara’s Lisa Parks, actor C.C.H. Pounder, journalists Matt Roush and Maureen Ryan, USC’s Ellen Seiter, TV Academy president John Shaffner and Syracuse University’s Robert Thompson.

The list is sort of a helpful snapshot of what shows are “in” at the moment, either in terms of critical acclaim or industry cred, or both. True Blood, while kind of trashy, is obviously one of the in things right now (it has everything: vampires, ratings, and a lot of buzz at a time when HBO shows are buzz-deficient). And Modern Family and Big Bang Theory are in their own different ways the “in” comedies; critics are wild over both of them — Ryan and Roush, who were on the jury, are both huge fans — and they’re well respected by their industry peers.

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