11 Shows That Set The Gold Standard For Modern TV

From The Sopranos to Breaking Bad, there are plenty of great shows that set the gold standard for modern television. While cinema has gone downhill in the 21st century, with the rise of CG-riddled I.P.-based blockbusters, TV has only gotten better. For decades, television rigidly stuck to established formulas with its stories and characters. But, when those formulaic TV shows inevitably grew stale, writers like David Chase and Vince Gilligan came along to shake up those formulas with morally gray antiheroes, long-running serialized storylines, and a truly cinematic sensibility.