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"Cast Of" Solution: List Your Favorite TV Casts

Ninja_Squirrel

Ninja_Squirrel

Regular
\"Cast Of\" Solution: List Your Favorite TV Casts

GKarsEye posted the link to Bravo's list of 100 Best TV Characters in another thread. It's a broad and thorough list, but a few entries have lumped together several characters as "Cast of...". Seinfeld, Friends, and Will & Grace are listed as casts, and a few of us have argued that Cheers should be too. And, if a few more shows were listed that way, it would solve the problem of some shows having more than one excellent character but only one making the list.

So, let's start our own list. What do you think are the best TV casts? And considering where we're at, feel free to make it sci-fi heavy (where Bravo's list is obviously more mainstream). I'll start off...

Babylon 5
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Seinfeld
South Park
Picket Fences
Star Trek: The Next Generation

...the following shows should count for being great at one time, despite some decline in quality of cast and/or writing as they aged...

ER
Buffy
Ally McBeal

...and the recent breakout hits that seem to be deserving so far...

Lost
Desparate Housewives
The O.C. (although I'm a little worred about season two so far)
 
Re: \"Cast Of\" Solution: List Your Favorite TV Casts

Is the goal to pick the best casts (as in aggregate acting ability) or best "casts of characters" (in which acting will certainly be a major component, but not the whole thing)?

A couple of large ensemble shows from the 1980's:

Hill Street Blues
St. Elsewhere

On the recent SF side, add Farscape.


On the sitcom side:

The Mary Tyler Moore Show (four individual characters on the list, including two who were eventually spun into their own shows, plus at least two or three others that were fully capable of stealing a scenes / episodes from all of them)
The Dick Van Dyke Show
M*A*S*H
All in the Family (I mean, come on. they placed two characters in Bravo's top 12 or 13; and spawned two others on the list who were eventually spun off into their own shows.)
 
Re: \"Cast Of\" Solution: List Your Favorite TV Casts

Ah yeah, casts! :cool:

Here's my list:

All in the Family
Cheers
The Practice
Seinfeld
Sanford and Son
Babylon 5
Frasier
Law & Order

Newer shows with good potential:
Deadwood
Boston Legal
Lost
 
Re: \"Cast Of\" Solution: List Your Favorite TV Casts

Is the goal to pick the best casts (as in aggregate acting ability) or best "casts of characters" (in which acting will certainly be a major component, but not the whole thing)?
Click to expand...

Not necessarily judging on acting ability of the cast members. More a judgment of the quality of the characters. For instance, the main actors on Friends aren't the best actors in the world, but I think the reason they're popular is how they play off each other. There is a lot of chemistry among them. With Seinfeld, none of them are impressive actors on their own, but it's the uniqueness of the characters that count (nobody else is like Kramer).

With Babylon 5, it's all about depth of the characters and the epic nature of the story. With Deep Space Nine, it's the wide array of racial, political, and religious backgrounds of the characters. With Lost, it's the mystery behind each character and what advantages and challenges they bring to the table for survival. With Ally McBeal, it's the unbelievable yet entertaining quirks & neurosis of each character.

Acting ability is very important, of course, but it's more about the writing, the chemistry between characters, likability, backstory, etc. I want to judge groups of characters, not necessarily groups of actors.
 
Re: \"Cast Of\" Solution: List Your Favorite TV Casts

In this order:

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Babylon 5
Star Trek: The Next Generation
La Femme Nikita
Stargate SG-1
 
Re: \"Cast Of\" Solution: List Your Favorite TV Cas

Twin Peaks, and X Files had fine casts. Most here probably haven't seen much of it, because it's pretty old, but the original Perry Mason had a fine cast, and guest stars. Many had acted for Orson Welles!
 
Re: \"Cast Of\" Solution: List Your Favorite TV Cas

I think the cast is one of the strongest points of both Farscape and the shortlived Firefly.
 
Re: \"Cast Of\" Solution: List Your Favorite TV Cas

Babylon 5 (big surprise there)
All in the Family
The Simpsons
Star Trek
Seinfeld
Farscape
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: Deep Space 9
Frasier
 
Re: \"Cast Of\" Solution: List Your Favorite TV Cas

I agree on:

Babylon 5
Star Trek TOS
Twin Peaks
Seinfeld
Cheers
Frazier
St Elsewhere
M*A*S*H*
The Mary Tyler Moore show

and I'd like to add:

Barney Miller
 
Re: \"Cast Of\" Solution: List Your Favorite TV Cas

Barney Miller, definitely. Most of the people here probably never saw that show, though. :)

Same with SOAP.
 
Re: \"Cast Of\" Solution: List Your Favorite TV Cas

Hey, I even remember the spin-off "Fish". :p

And Soap definitely should have occurred to me. I own the DVD's of the first two seasons.
 
Re: \"Cast Of\" Solution: List Your Favorite TV Cas

Barney Miller lasted longer than Fish, I think.

Did Soap last 3 seasons or 4?
 
Re: \"Cast Of\" Solution: List Your Favorite TV Cas

Barney Miller lasted longer than Fish, I think.
Click to expand...
Oh, yes, definitely. That was kinda my point. If I remember the very short-lived spin-off then I would certainly remember the classic hit that was syndicated for a fair while.

Hey, I even remember the when Barney's wife was a bigger character than the detectives under his command. That is how the show started, but that didn't last long. They figured out *very* quickly that the squad room stuff was working much better than the family life of a police captain stuff. :cool:

Did Soap last 3 seasons or 4?
Click to expand...
Four, but it definitely went downhill after the first two (in my opinion, and seeingly in most other people's as well). That corellates with Benson leaving for his own spin-off. How much that fact caused the decline, as opposed to the writers starting to have more trouble coming up with good ideas to satirize the genre that they hadn't already used and that weren't just silly/stupid/over-the-top (even relative to what they had been doing) is open for debate.
 
Re: \"Cast Of\" Solution: List Your Favorite TV Cas

Ah yes, the later seasons, Billy in the cult, Corrine's and the priest's possessed baby, the South American Revolution, Jessica's time in heaven. HEHE, it did get pretty far out there.
 
Re: \"Cast Of\" Solution: List Your Favorite TV Cas

The possessed baby was actually late in season 2 (I watched those DVD's within the last two months ;)).

You forgot Burt's UFO abduction (well, he gets "beamed up" in the last minute cliffhanger of the S2 finale; but all of his time on the space ship is in S3; although Sol is a cute character), "Alien Burt" impregnating Mary, Jody and the redheaded detective tracking Carol and the baby all over the country and falling in love (for a gay guy he sleeps with a lot of women), Burt being elected sheriff (it's nice to know that the people of Connecticut aren't prejudiced about arming people with a fairly recent history of significant mental illness and having them patrol the streets) and making Danny his deputy (no prejudice about arming ex-mob soldiers and having them on patrol either), and Jody being hypnotized into being an 80 year old Jewish man (and not being able to be un-hypnotized).
 
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