Election leads top 10 for 2008

DAVID KRONKE; Los Angeles Daily News
Last updated: January 1st, 2009 11:57 PM (PST)

It also made it tougher than usual to put together a top-10 list. But we managed to find some memorable achievements from the past year anyway.

1. The presidential election: A sprawling drama and comedy, it was the gift that just kept giving, including these moments: Barack Obama’s soaring rhetoric, reminding us that some politicians actually can string a couple of sentences together without sounding incoherent. Sarah Palin’s phoenix-like rise from obscurity and subsequent floundering in interviews, inspiring Tina Fey’s brilliantly funny impersonation.

MSNBC’s on-air bickering during the Democratic Convention, followed by its premiere of “The Rachel Maddow Show,” which offered thoughtful and wry analysis and commentary without the usual bluster.

Fox News labeling Obama’s fist-bump as a “terrorist fist-jab” and CNN giving time to a crackpot Web site that posited Obama as the Antichrist. And, of course, the way “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” took it all in. It was maddening, inspiring, surreal, compelling and wildly entertaining.

2. “Mad Men”: Suffused with melancholy amid the snappy, epigrammatic dialogue, Matthew Weiner’s brilliant drama about ’60s mores suffered no sophomore slump and, if anything, perhaps improved, as Don Draper (Jon Hamm) went to the dark side and his wife Betty (January Jones) faced, for probably the first time in her life, something significantly less than a rosy future.

3. “Generation Kill”: An elite Marine unit leads the charge in the opening days of the war in Iraq and sees the chaos to come. Both hyperkinetic and intelligently humane, HBO’s miniseries felt like the most authentic filmed depiction of war ever.

4. “Breaking Bad”: What a run AMC is enjoying – first, “Mad Men,” and then this drama, which chews up and spits out words like “edgy” and “gritty.” Bryan Cranston justly won an Emmy for his empathetic yet wholly unsentimental portrait of a man so beleaguered by life’s exigencies his only response can be to cook and sell crystal meth.

5. “John Adams”: HBO may be struggling to find its must-see post-“Sopranos” series (though “The Life and Times of Tim” is a deadpan delight), but their miniseries are nonpareil events. Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney’s performances as John and Abigail Adams contributed mightily to this unromanticized depiction of the birth of our nation.

6. “Torchwood”: BBC America’s most popular series is a raucous and frenzied thriller, following the exploits of a team that routinely saves the world from alien marauders – and has a heck of a good time doing so.

7. “30 Rock”: Truth be told, Sarah Palin was only a small part of the reason Tina Fey emerged as 2008’s Associated Press entertainer of the year. There’s also her smart and playful NBC sitcom, featuring Alec Baldwin as Jack Donaghy, TV’s No. 1 alpha dog (sorry, Don Draper).

8. “The Middleman”: Tragically, this delightfully silly ABC Family series about a staid superhero (Matt Keeslar) and his plucky sidekick (Natalie Morales) investigating cases out of a Mad magazine parody of “The X-Files” never found an audience. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t wildly entertaining, though.

9. “An American Crime”: This quiet but effectively disturbing docudrama was too grim to win theatrical distribution, so it wound up on Showtime. Catherine Keener was sublimely creepy as an unhinged single mother who took in a couple of teen girls (including Ellen Page, a long way from the winsome wit of “Juno”) while their father worked on the road.

10. “This American Life”: Essentially Ira Glass’ NPR show transposed to Showtime, its low-key intelligence and quirky insights as to what makes this country tick are as enjoyable on television as they are on radio.

Originally published: January 1st, 2009 11:57 PM (PST)