Awards Season Has Begun

The AFI Top Ten TV programs of the year were:

Battlestar Galactica
Dexter
Elizabeth I
Friday Night Lights
Heroes
The Office
South Park
24
The West Wing
The Wire

Not a bad list. The panel of critics, AFI trustees, academics, and industry professionals chose from the best fictional narrative programming of the year to compile their ten best. The discussions for the list are secret in order to preserve the list and allow the panel to debate freely. That's probably why the list includes only the best-- and not weird calls like the Golden Globes and Emmys can have.

Speaking of the Golden Globes, the major TV-related nominations were:

Best Drama Series
24
Big Love
Grey's Anatomy
Heroes
Lost

Best Actress in a Drama:
Patricia Arquette
Edie Falco
Evangeline Lilly
Ellen Pompeo
Kyra Sedgwick

Best Actor in a Drama:
Patrick Dempsey
Michael C. Hall
Hugh Laurie
Bill Paxton
Kiefer Sutherland

Best Comedy:
Desperate Housewives
Entourage
The Office
Ugly Betty
Weeds

Best Actress in a Comedy:
Marcia Cross
Felicity Huffman
America Ferrera
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Mary-Louise Parker

Best Actor in a Comedy:
Alec Baldwin
Zach Braff
Steve Carell
Jason Lee
Tony Shalhoub

Supporting Actress:
Emily Blunt
Toni Collette
Katherine Heigl
Sarah Paulson
Elizabeth Perkins

Supporting Actor:
Thomas Hayden Church
Jeremy Irons
Justin Kirk
Masi Oka
Jeremy Piven

And here we see some of the problems with a five-nominee process with an eventual winner: you just can't win. Where's Deadwood? Sally Field? The Shield? Kyle Chandler? Michael Chiklis? Scrubs? My Name is Earl?

I think the AFI has it right by picking ten shows to say were the cream of the crop for the year-- many of which need a little recognition.