In October 2021, the BBC released the latest list of the top 100 dramas of the 21st century voted for. The list is jointly selected by 206 film critics, drama critics, scholars and industry practitioners around the world, and the selection range is all TV or streaming dramas that have been broadcast around the world since 2000, each of which selects ten, and finally selects the top 100 dramas according to the number of votes.
The top ten are as follows:
1. FireWire (2002-2008)
2. Mad Men (2007-2015)
3. Breaking Bad (2008-2013)
4. London Life (2016-2019)
5. Game of Thrones (2011-2019)
6. I Can Destroy You (2020)
7. Watching the World (2014-2017)
8. American Spy Dream (2013-2018)
9. Office Laughing Cloud (2001-2005)
10. Battle of Succession (2018-)
The full list can be found on the official website and other reports, which are not all shown here.
British and American dramas dominate the screen, which is normal
Limited by the BBC's perspective, coupled with the fact that non-English dramas are difficult to cross the circle (TV series have higher language and cultural barriers than movies), this list of only 7 non-English dramas is not so much a global drama selection as an extra-editorial Emmy Award. So we don't have to worry about whether it can represent the world's TV series, just use it as an English drama list.
However, there are only a few non-English dramas, including three Danish dramas "Fortress of Power", "Murder" and "Bridge", two French dramas "Office Legends" and "Ten Percent", a German drama "Dark" and a Spanish drama "The House of Paper Money". Among them, "Dark", "House of Paper Money", "Fortress of Power" have Netflix publicity behind them, and they can smoothly get out of the circle among European and American drama critics, while "Murder" and "Bridge" have american remakes, resulting in the Danish original also receiving a lot of attention and successfully entering the list.
Fortress of Power (2010)
On the other hand, although Japanese dramas, Korean dramas and Chinese dramas have produced amazing output and developed rapidly in recent years, none of the Asian dramas in this list have been shortlisted, which shows that the list has a single perspective and objectively reflects the difficulty of Asian TV dramas to break into the Western world.
Although this list includes anime series such as "Bojack the HorseMan" and "Rick and Morty", it also does not include any Japanese animation that may achieve more, indicating that the latter is still limited to a small subcultural circle. However, since this list began to be selected in July this year, the recent hit "Squid Game" was not on the list. I believe that if it is selected now, this drama is likely to become the only Asian drama on the list.
Rick and Morty (2013)
In fact, the pollers for this selection come from all over the world, including South America, China, Israel and Northern Europe, etc., there is no shortage of small language countries or regions, but after carefully observing the list of each voter, it will still be found that English dramas still account for the vast majority, and even few people will list episodes from other languages (such as works from their own culture) in the list. Of course, this is directly related to the more mature and developed television industry in Britain and the United States. At the same time, it is also the final result of such a global export of British and American culture.
HBO was the biggest winner
In this selection, HBO is still strong, five of the top ten are from HBO, and 21 HBO dramas have been shortlisted for the entire top 100. In fact, the golden age of cable radio dramas began with HBO's Sopranos, but the series began airing in 1999, so it did not meet the BBC's shortlisting rules and did not make the list. However, in later generations, a large number of shorter and more sophisticated cable station dramas modeled after the production model of "The Sopranos", such as "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad", are on the list, which can also be seen in the spread of its influence later.
The Sopranos (1999)
The first decade of the 21st century was the decade of the rise of cable stations, and the high-quality dramas produced by HBO, AMC and FX occupied the vast majority of the top ten positions, and nearly half of the seats on the list, which shows that even today, cable stations are still synonymous with high-quality dramas.
The number one episode on the list belongs to the divine drama "The Line of Fire" from HBO, which has unquestionably won the reputation of the best drama series in the world since its inception. Over the years, only when "Breaking Bad" was at its hottest, its throne was occasionally shaken, but after the precipitation of time, it returned to its proper position.
The Wire of Fire (2002)
This series about the Baltimore drug enforcement team is a truly all-encompassing work. In fact, the core members of the series, the "Line of Fire" group set up to spy on Baltimore drug dealers, disbanded in the first season of the series. Subsequently, the series began to follow the former members of the anti-drug team into all aspects of Baltimore. Some of them continue to fight drugs, some have become roadside police, some have become teachers, some have become politicians and staff officers, and some have become port police.
It was these different characters of different occupations scattered across Baltimore that formed a grand group portrait narrative that allowed the series to transcend any single-theme drug drama into an encyclopedic series about how American society as a whole worked. After watching this drama, I will basically have a more systematic understanding of the operation mode and problems faced by American society.
Streaming dramas are one step away from reaching their peak
The new emerging streaming media platforms such as Netflix and Amazon have suffered from their late business development, and Netflix's first mainstream streaming drama "House of Cards" began in 2013 and has not yet developed for more than a decade. However, in recent years, streaming media such as Netflix, Amazon and HULU have also caught up, and their representative dramas "Bojack the Horseman", "Stranger Things", and "The Handmaid's Tale" have also been listed.
House of Cards (2013)
The highest-ranked streaming series on the entire list comes from "London Life" produced by Amazon. The series has a strong personal temperament of the creator and lead actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge. It is an emerging boutique drama with both authorial, entertaining and artistic value.
Life in London (2016)
In the series, Phoebe has created a character who is very similar to himself, and his works are also heavily based on his real life. In the play, the protagonist portrayed by Phoebe is a widow who has made mistakes in life and indulged in self-hatred and self-pity, but at the same time, she is also optimistic and humorous, which can be described as extremely contradictory. Each season is only six episodes long, and it takes almost three years to renew one season, but the set is a boutique. Such a creative mode is basically impossible to achieve in the era of traditional public stations or cable stations.
It is believed that with the passage of time, streaming media continues to grow, and more web dramas will join this list.
High-rated episodes and comedies are absent in large numbers
Looking at the entire list, it can be found that the overall interest in the BBC is more serious and serious, while comedy and a lot of entertainment are higher-rated dramas, which rank lower in the list or are not on the list.
Some of the viewership masterpieces in the past two decades, such as CBS's "Crime Scene Investigation", AMC's "The Walking Dead", "Prison Break" and "Suspect Tracking", are not on the list, and all the works of Disney+, a streaming platform that focuses on entertainment and big IP, are extinct in the list.
Crime Scene Investigation (2000)
These dramas have achieved ratings success in their own era and have set off a global boom, but because of the mixed word of mouth and lack of deeper interpretation space, they have been deliberately ignored by voters, but they actually represent the popular and entertaining side of the American television industry, and they also have their value, and it is a pity that they are not on the list.
In addition, in the top ten, only "Office Laughing Cloud" can be regarded as a traditional comedy ("London Life" is a semi-comedy and semi-regular drama), which also reflects that after the current series of high-quality dramas, the development space of comedy has shrunk, and traditional sitcoms are also in the low position in mainstream reviews. In the past decade, phenomenal comedies such as "Modern Family", "Kominsky Theory", "Bankruptcy Sisters" and so on have not been on the list, and the unique comedies such as "The Big Bang Theory" are not very high. Voters are still more inclined to comedies with strong authorial overtones such as "Vice President" and "Deflation".
Office Laughing Cloud (2001)
The overall seriousness of the list also makes superheroes, a major category of dramas that have risen in recent years, have no place on the list. Since Netflix's "Night Devil", super British dramas have become an important entertainment category in the contemporary era, and even many have genre innovation and speculation while taking into account entertainment.
"Black Pickets", as the most watched streaming drama last year, reflects on how abnormal superheroes will occur if superheroes really exist in the contemporary traffic society.
Black Pickets (2019)
This year's "Wanda Vision" integrates sitcoms into superhero genres, both as a tribute to the history of television and as an extremely creative exploration of comedy and superhero. Such a high-quality drama, absent from the list, is undoubtedly the embodiment of the BBC's short-sightedness.
Follow the trend of equal rights
As a list produced in 2021, we can also be pleasantly surprised to find that a number of dramas launched in 2020 and 2021 have begun to enter the list, which shows that the BBC has kept pace with the times. These include "I Can Destroy You," "Little Axe," "East Side Nightmare," "The Common Man," "Subway," and "Rear Wing Deserters," plus some episodes that last until the 2020s or aren't finished.
I Can Destroy You (2020)
Looking at these works, they also represent some important currents of thought. "I Can Destroy You", which ranked sixth, is the biggest discovery of the entire list, and it is also the most different from the mainstream list. Filmed in 2020 and self-directed by Mikaela Cole, this 2020 miniseries is one of the few serious dramas about the plight of contemporary black women.
The series involves rape, sexism, racial discrimination and other multiple threats facing contemporary black women, which makes people shudder, and can be said to be the most important work that speaks for the affirmative action movement at the moment. Although the drama received multiple nominations at this year's Emmy Awards, it did not win awards, and the BBC selected it as the sixth in the top 100 works, which is also its biggest position statement.
"Rupaul's Drag Queen Show" is the only reality show work on the list, and this transgender reality show can be listed, which shows that the BBC's choice is actually not conservative. The new dramas "Little Axe" and "Underground Railroad" are equal rights dramas that tell the history of black people and the struggle of black society. "East Side Nightmare" and "Rear Wing Deserter" have women as the protagonists, with a certain feminist color, the latter is placed in the 100th place, and it is also the BBC's women's declaration.
Rupaul's Drag Queen Show (2015)
There are also some slightly controversial choices on this list, with two "bad artists" Kevin Spacey's House of Cards and LouisEy Scott being brought down in the MeToo movement. CK's "Louis Not Easy", all on the list, will undoubtedly put the BBC under pressure from certain affirmative action people. But it is undeniable that these two dramas have important significance in this century, one is the pioneering work of streaming media dramas, which laid the production mode of Netflix, and the other introduces talk shows into the mainstream vision and leads the huge talk show comedy industry. Perhaps abandoning these two for the sake of political correctness would be the wrong choice.
What did the Chinese voters choose?
Among the 206 voters who participated in the award, there were eight Chinese, and the more well-known fans included: Taiwanese producer Jiao Xiongping, Zhejiang University scholar Fan Zhizhong, Beijing Film Academy Hao Jian, "WatchIng Movies" editor-in-chief Ah Lang, and film critic Zhou Liming.
Among them, Jiao Xiongping ranked "Game of Thrones", "Breaking Bad", and "Sherlock" in the top three, and in her list, there were also "Great Changjin", "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an", "The Distance Between Us and Evil", and "Ren Doctor", which was almost the only voter with an Asian perspective among 206 people.
The Great Changjin (2003)
Fan Zhizhong's top three are "Breaking Bad", "Six Feet" and "Silicon Valley". Hao Jian's first three are "Ice Blood Storm", "Sin Night Run", and "Breaking Bad". Alang's first three are "London Life", "Battle of Succession", and "Game of Thrones". The episodes selected by the three voters are all English dramas and do not involve Chinese dramas. Zhou Liming's first three are "Breaking Bad", "Secret Story Nine" and "Mad Men", in addition, he also put last year's iQiyi Mist Theater hit series "The Hidden Corner" in the tenth position, and the ninth is "Towards the Republic", which only Chinese can feel strongly.