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This decade seems destined to be remembered for its great cable dramas, which proved that there is indeed an audience for complicated fare that doesn’t necessarily provide an answer at the end of an hour (or even at the end of the series itself, as The Sopranos showed). Narrowing the best dramas of the decade down to just a top ten, or even a second ten, was a tough task, but it provided a chance to reminisce on some of the best shows of all time. Topping my list is HBO’s least recognized classic: 最近这十年似乎注定会因其出品的伟大电视剧而被我们记住。这说明确实有一批观众喜欢复杂的电视剧，即使一个小时之后（甚至是整部电视剧结束之后，比如《黑道家族》）不给他们答案也无妨。把近十年的最佳电视剧的数量缩减到前十名，甚至是前二十名的范围都不是件容易的事，但这使我们有机会对有史以来的最佳电视剧进行回味。登上我的列表榜首的是HBO（美国家庭影院频道）最不认可的经典之作。 1. Deadwood: No series has ever been such a pleasure to just listen to — assuming one is not offended by profanity in all its splendor. There’s a little bit of real history in this story of the legendary boomtown, but creator David Milch was most concerned with examining how this collection of dreamers, whores, and losers, many of whom were considered utterly beyond the pale4 even in a much wilder time, could find common cause as America sought to bring them to heel. 《朽木》：没有哪部电视剧一听起来就能让人有如此愉悦的感觉——只要你不厌恶其中的一些脏话，瑕不掩瑜。这部电视剧讲述的故事发生在一个充满传奇的新兴城市里，具有一定的历史真实性，而创作者戴维·米奇最想做的是，仔细审视这么一群梦想家、妓女和失败者，看看他们在美国试图使之屈从的时候如何找到共同的事业，他们中的许多即便是在一个狂野得多的时代里，也完全不为社会所容。 2. The Sopranos: A mob drama with little of the glamour we’ve come to associate with the genre; a deeply psychological study of a man whose lack of self-knowledge was epic: this was The Sopranos, a series that began with ducks in a pool, ended with a family pizza dinner, and in between changed our very conception of what TV drama could do. It’s safe to say none of the other shows in my top five would have existed if Tony and his crew hadn’t come first. 《黑道家族》：这部讲述黑社会的电视剧没有我们所认为的同类作品所特有的刺激性，它对一个极度缺乏自知之明的男人进行了深刻的心理分析。《黑道家族》开篇是池中鸭子戏水的场景，结尾是一家人吃比萨的画面。它的播出改变了我们对电视剧能够做什么的传统认知。可以说，要是没有托尼和他的剧组成员进行的这番开拓，我这个列表中除《黑道家族》之外的前五名电视剧都不可能存在。 3. The Wire: If Deadwood dealt with how society pulls itself together, but The Wire, set in our own time, concerned itself with how a great American city falls apart. The bleakness of its core message — that the country is going to hell and that only small, personal triumphs are still possible — made the show a difficult sell, but those who bought in were treated to the television equivalent of a great, sprawling social novel. 《火线》：如果说《朽木》展示的是整个社会如何齐心协力，那么《火线》，这部将背景设置在我们这个时代的电视剧讲述的却是一个伟大的美国城市如何分崩离析的故事。它的核心寓意令人备感凄凉暗淡——国家行将崩溃，唯有个人的小小成功仍然还有可能——这种基调令这部电视剧很难被接受，但是那些接受它的人却有幸欣赏到了一部犹如规模宏大的社会小说的电视剧。 4. Mad Men: The 1960s has been all too glorified, but nostalgia5 is hardly what Mad Men had in mind, even though its period touches are amazingly vivid. A country finds itself beginning to question the way things have always been, and an enigmatic6 advertising man who has reinvented everything about himself tries to stay afloat. No series says more in so fewer words. 《广告狂人》：20世纪60年代（对美国来说）是一个非常荣耀的时代，但《广告狂人》所要展示的并不是某种怀旧的情绪，尽管该剧中的时代元素的确出奇的生动。在剧中，国家开始质疑自身一直以来的运作方式，而一个神秘的广告人对自己的里里外外进行了彻底的改造，试图成功地生存下去。没有哪部电视剧能够如此简洁地表达出更丰富的思想。 5. Lost: Something that would have been a rarity in any era and is almost unimaginable in our era: a series that aimed for greatness and quite often achieved it. An adventure story that turned into a remarkably weird and complex puzzle, Lost proved that a cult show can still be mass entertainment. 《迷失》：这是一部在任何时代都堪称精品的电视剧，而在我们当下这个时代几乎是不可想象的。这部电视剧的目标是做到最棒，并且基本上成功了。这个探险故事最终变成了一个超级怪异而又复杂的迷局。《迷失》向世人证明，一部邪典剧也能成为大众的消遣。 6. Friday Night Lights: It’s about a small town in America, perhaps the best such series ever. A loving and realistic married couple stands at its core. It celebrates hope and achievement without being cheesy. It’s never too late to start watching! 《胜利之光》：这部电视剧讲述的是美国一个小镇的生活，或许是迄今为止同类电视剧当中最好的一部。片中的主角始终是一对有爱心同时又很现实的夫妻。它颂扬希望和成就，但表现手法却毫不粗陋。什么时候看这部剧都不晚！ 7. Battlestar Galactica: Using a campy old sci-fi series as the source material for a thinly disguised examination of post-9/11 America? Great idea! The folks at what is now Syfy almost certainly never expected what they ended up getting here, as a huge cast of near-unknowns, many of them playing robots, mostly set aside geek talk and dealt instead with the most basic of human concerns: love, fear, courage, paranoia, and despair. 《太空堡垒卡拉迪加》：将一个滑稽古怪的老版科幻片作为素材，稍加改造之后用来审视9.11事件之后的美国？是个好主意！那些现在在美国NBC环球旗下的科幻频道工作的家伙们根本没有想到结果会是这样：一个由名不见经传的演员组成的庞大剧组，其中很多人扮演机器人，他们通常一边说着滑稽可笑的台词，一边却在演绎着人类最基本的关切：爱、恐惧、勇气、偏执和绝望。 8. The West Wing: This series makes the list primarily on the basis of its brilliant first two seasons and the nice way they wrapped everything up in the end. And of course, there’s that cast, as good as any major network series has ever had. Our real leaders might rise to the occasion sometimes, but they will never match the banter here. 《白宫风云》：这部电视剧上榜的主要原因是它出色的前两季以及它最终结束故事的漂亮方式，当然，剧中演员班底同其他主要网络电视剧的班底一样优秀。美国的真正领导者或许有时在口才上也能得体地应付一下，但他们可不如戏中人那么能插科打诨逗人发笑。 9. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: The series that kicked off the procedural boom is such a part of our landscape now that it’s easy to forget how trippy its innovations seemed in 2000. CSI also became the first series in decades to really take advantage of its Las Vegas setting. The formula is finally showing its age, but it was fun while it lasted. 《犯罪现场调查》：该剧掀起了一番刑侦悬疑电视剧热，而这种电视剧成为现今的电视剧类型之一，可我们却忘了2000年的时候我们看这部剧时其新颖的叙事方式弄得我们如堕云里雾里。《犯罪现场调查》也是几十年来第一部将拉斯维加斯设定为拍摄背景的电视剧。这部戏现在看来还是有些过时了，但当时播放的时候还是蛮好看的。 10. Breaking Bad: One of my criteria for this list was that volume matters: a series with over a hundred episodes is to be preferred over one that just began. But I had to mention Breaking Bad on the basis of how incredible its first twenty episodes have been. Bryan Cranston is amazingly good as the chemistry teacher gone bad, but eccentric touches such as an episode kicked off by a Mexican folk song about the mysterious meth dealer lift this show above the competition. 《超越罪恶》：我罗列此表的一个标准之一就是电视剧的长度，一部超过100集的电视系列剧肯定要比一部刚刚开始播映的更受青睐。而我要将《超越罪恶》引入此表是基于它前20集实在是太棒了。布莱恩·克兰斯顿惟妙惟肖地演绎了一个变坏了的化学教师，而剧中一些怪异的表现手法也令这部剧在竞争中更胜一筹，比如有一集是以一首墨西哥民歌开篇的，这首歌讲述的是一个神秘的毒贩的故事。 | 
发表于 2010-9-20 21:32
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发表于 2010-9-21 09:34
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