An adaptation of the ancient epic, in which the exiled Prince Rama and his brother Laxman set out to save Rama's wife, Sita, who has been kidnapped by the demon king of Lanka Ravana. Stars: The O.G.! Stars: 23 min Animation, Action, Adventure. Originally created in 1928 as a radio series by writer and actress Gertrude Berg, it moved to TV a little over 20 years later, appearing on CBS, the DuMont Network, and in syndication, and airing its final regular episode in 1956. Things you buy through our links may earnVox Mediaa commission. It captures the intense love that dedicated parents feel for their children, a generosity that crosses over into a masochistic desire to sacrifice, and even die, for the next generation, against the petty reality of daily life a death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts experience that can leave you so enervated, you fantasize what it would be like never to have had kids at all. Shailene Woodley, 33. Wes Tian, TV-PG Hes modern enough to know that he should help with the housework, and he and his wife should be equal partners, and he should have actual conversations with his family members. A widowed sportscaster raises his three daughters with assistance from his rock and roll brother-in-law and madcap best friend. Dee Bradley Baker, Montgomery's classic novels. Diego Velazquez, TV-14 Catherine Hicks, The most powerful images in the series, including the newborn Kunta Kinte being held aloft and the traumatic departure of Kizzy, are ultimately about families being regenerated or ripped apart. Laci J Mailey, Drama, Family, Romance. | Dul Hill, Amybeth McNulty, Tom Kenny, Animation, Action, Adventure. But even beyond the history-making depiction of a person in transition, Transparent is one of the most interesting TV stories about how families work. 1. After crash-landing on an alien planet, the Robinson family fight against all odds to survive and escape, but they're surrounded by hidden dangers. In so many ways they are an American TV Ur-family, as a model or as a paradigm to resist. Iman Vellani, Roughly 40 years after Diffrent Strokes looked at a white family adopting black sons from a simplistic, sitcom perspective, This Is Us considers a similar circumstance with far more sensitivity and depth, as well as an understanding that the issues that take root in our youth can grow into something stubborn and sturdy as children become adults. Lets put it this way: They definitely didnt hurt. A widowed sportscaster raises his three daughters with assistance from his rock and roll brother-in-law and madcap best friend. | From gang boss Tony Sopranos opening statement that he worries he came in at the end and that the best was over, through the final seasons obsessions with decline, death, loss of memory, and climate change, The Sopranos depicts a family unit angling to grab as much as it can for itself before the shrinking ice floe theyre clinging to finally disappears. But Bobs Burgers is much, much weirder than most TV families ever allow themselves to be who else but Tina could really lean into the horrible intensity of puberty? The Simpsons, 1989present Matt Groenings series about the Simpsons of Springfield started off as a series of shorts on Foxs The Tracey Ullman Show. This Netflix series is as sweet as sweet tea. Jon Walmsley, Don Cheadle provides the voiceover, which is just an added bonus. | It may sound strange to use the word fresh in connection with this series, which, at this point in its run, doesnt feel that way anymore. But its actually a beautifully acted look at pressing on in the face of loss, and a tribute to the work that brothers and sisters do to lift each other up. This version only has one season, but it's a good watch for the whole family, if the kids are a bit older. June 12, 2023. Daniel Davis, 40 Best Family Sitcoms (In Chronological Order) - List Challenges What Else Is New? Lacey Chabert, We Vulture list-makers debated over whether to include both and ultimately decided to go with Little House, because the time period it depicted was so distant from the 1970s, yet the issues its episodes confronted from the rivalry between Laura (Melissa Gilbert) and the original mean girl Nellie Oleson (Alison Arngrim) to serious illnesses and addiction still felt relevant to the present. Main page; Contents; Current events; Random article; About Wikipedia; Contact us; Donate; Help; Learn to edit; Community portal; Recent changes; Upload file Taylor Russell, TV-Y7 Comedy, Family. 12 Blackish Never Strays Away From The Stories That Matter Narrowly beating Roseanne with a 7.1 rating is ABC's current hit Blackish. 22 min Soaring ticket prices expose serious cracks in the touring industry as fans face impossible choices to see their favorite artists this summer. | This show is for older children and touches on topics like cerebral palsy, eating disorders and peer pressure. Shawn Toovey, The eleven seasons of the show track the years from 1955 to 1965. Zach Smadu, By Sage Young April 28, 2020 Netflix Lately, you've probably been spending more time together as a family than ever before. Dallas, 19781991The earliest prime-time family TV shows, dating from the late 40s and 50s, tended to be in the sitcom style, focusing on a home and a small family unit. Stars: These siblings with superpowers might be twins, but they are very different indeed. The 100 Best TV Shows of All Time - Newsweek Stars: Comedy, Drama, Family. - IMDb user rating: 8.8. Dave Filoni, | From predicting the future to criticizing corruption (we're looking at you, Mr. This Disney+ series is set in the Star Wars universe but years before the Star Wars movies. Comedy, Family, Romance. The Baby-Sitters Club follows Kristy Thomas, Mary Anne Spier, Claudia Kishi, Stacey McGill, Dawn Schafer, Jessie Ramsey and Mallory Pike as the middle-schoolers start their babysitting business in the town of Stony Brook, Connecticut. In addition to being warm and hilarious, Best Foot Forward on Apple TV+ provides sorely needed representation for differently abled kids. 30-Across, Six Letters: Penelope and True to Kim. | This Is Us, 2016presentThis NBC series has done something that shows like Friday Night Lights and Parenthood, as great as they were, couldnt quite pull off. The entire series can now be seen on HBO Max. DJ Khaled Reviews Drakes Poetry Book: He Wrote a Sentence!. | Bel-Air is a Peacock original starring newcomerJabari Banks as Will Smith. Blustering bigot Archie Bunker (Carroll OConnor), his good-hearted dingbat wife Edith (Jean Stapleton), his postcollegiate liberal daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers), and his long-haired, polemic-spouting son-in-law Mike Meathead Stivic (Rob Reiner) had the kind of knockdown arguments that were already raging in millions of households that never saw themselves reflected on television, at least not in this way. 20 min Paul Butcher, Best Family TV Shows and Shows Like Modern Family - Parade Stars: 8. Regardless of whether you're in the mood to laugh, cry, rejoice or cheer on a superhero, theres a show on this list that you can watch as a family. Except this time Rev Run of Run DMC fame stars in this Netflix family comedy as hip hop icon MC Joe Speed. 27. Grey Griffin, TV-G 30 Best TV Shows of All Time - Insider Monkey Meghan Ory, But the way the show performs all of those moves, and the essence of its long arc toward warmth, is in Frasiers relationship with his father and his brother. 22. Fox, 26 min Jennette McCurdy, Good Times, 19741979One of the most important sitcoms ever to be undone by its own success, Good Times was a spinoff of Maude, itself a spinoff of All in the Family, and the flip side of The Jeffersons, a series about upper-middle-class black characters whod made it. All were part of executive producer Norman Lears mini-empire of popular, pot-stirring sitcoms that took on hot-button issues TV used to avoid. Diffrent Strokes had them all: The cute kid who steals focus from everyone else on the show (Gary Colemans Arnold); a case of very special episode-ism; rampant use of a catchphrase (Whatchoo talkin bout?); and the cute kid who joins the cast after the existing kids age a bit (Danny Cookseys Sam). Jewel Staite, Stars: Geraldine James, Baby Yoda is the emerging star of this sci-fi adventure series. Plus, who doesnt love show tunes? | | The trials and adventures of a female doctor in a small Wild West town. 12. Home Improvement, 19911999The essence of Home Improvement is in its unironic celebration of a particular breed of dumb masculinity that defined a particular breed of family sitcom (also see: The King of Queens). Bradley Steven Perry, Action, Adventure, Family. Stars: There are gay characters. Comedy, Drama, Family. Mallory James Mahoney, When parents Amy and Bob return to work they put their latest addition in the care of her three older siblings. Lani O'Grady, Comedy, Drama, Family. Stars: Dave Coulier, There was nothing high-concept or complicated about Family; it was a straightforward, unflashy relationship show, and one that was completely unapologetic about leaning hard into emotions. | Philip Banks (Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) Phil Dunphy (Modern Family) Ward Cleaver (Leave it to Beaver) Danny Tanner (Full House) Dr. Jason Seaver (Growing Pains) The best TV dads of all time run the . Neil Flynn, | Ash Ketchum, his yellow pet Pikachu, and his human friends explore a world of powerful creatures. Four ninja turtles, mutated by a mysterious alien substance, must rise up out of the sewers and defend their city against evil forces from both the past and present. Before The Middle, there was Malcolm In the Middle. Brandon Call, After you watch the original series, catch the reboot Ravens Home. Keith Silverstein, Alastair Duncan, Maree Cheatham, TV-PG Dick Van Patten, Amber Marshall, The 1980 sequel, Roots: The Next Generation, brings the story right up to the present, with the character of Alex Haley (James Earl Jones) listening to a griot tell the story of Kunta Kinte in the final chapter, followed (as in the original) by an epilogue in which the real Haley urges viewers to study geneology to better understand their own families. Drama, Family. Follow Anne as she learns to navigate her new life on Prince Edward Island, in this new take on L.M. Toby Stephens, That it takes so many factors into account when telling its stories, including class and generational conflict, active and passive racism, laws and government regulations, and even the impact of climate and economic change, makes it a lot more than an itch-scratching TV series full of compelling, good-looking actors, which is also is. 5 best TV dads of all time | Digital Trends Betsy Randle, TV-G There's a reason it's been on TV basically forever (or nearly 34 years, but who's counting?)! Heartland, CBC (2007 - present) When you search the internet for a truly family-friendly TV series, Heartland is often the first one to come up. The show follows three generations of Gilmores, and family members of various ages can relate to the storylines of falling in love for the first time, figuring out parenting or trying to get along with family members with different viewpoints. rank it your way 1 Superman & Lois Tyler Hoechlin, Bitsie Tulloch, Alexander Garfin 248 votes Premiered: February 23, 2021 24 min Its the finest scripted drama about sports, and one of the most sincere portraits of marriage ever broadcast, and, as this 2016 Vulture bracket proved, the best high-school show of the modern era. An animated television show that focuses on a sixteen-year-old Peter Parker, and the origins of Spider-Man. Byrne, Few family dramas of this cohort have been as actually rooted in what a family is and how belief can tie a family together (and drive it apart) as Big Love. The show is about Pennys relationship with her parents, Oscar and Trudy, and her desire to make them happy; her siblings; and her hardcore grandma Suga Mama. 30 min 25 min 40. Mallory James Mahoney, Fran Drescher, | Stars: Top 10 Best Family TV Shows of All Time The best TV shows for the family to watch together in the past 60 years. Stars: Rachael Lillis, This award-winning show is centered around the blended Pritchett-Dunphy-Tucker family. 55 Best Family TV Shows - Good Shows to Watch as a Family, Shows Like Modern Family - Parade: Entertainment, Recipes, Health, Life, Holidays ABC/Richard Cartwright Missing 'Modern. Influence is a tough thing to measure for newer series, and best indicates a value judgment that feels separate from the ideas we were trying to get across. | Emma Meisel, Happy Days, 19741984 Norman Lear set the tone for much of TV comedy in the 1970s, but so did Garry Marshall. Who else but Linda could explore so deeply the anxiety of not being cool? Regularly referred to as one of the best TV shows of all time by Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, and TV Guide . A reboot of The Wonder Years showcases a Black family in the same era as Kevin, with the show taking place in Alabama. Sarah-Nicole Robles, Tom Baker, TV-G The Dark Knight battles crime in Gotham City with occasional help from Robin and Batgirl. Justine Bateman. It's a show that you can not only watch together with your whole family. TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time - Wikipedia David Henrie, Stars: The cartoons theme song even tapped into pop culture with vocals by Solange Knowles and Destinys Child. Stars: Malachi Barton, Through its high schools, we are also introduced to Dillons teens and their family lives, the majority of which are broken in some way. 25 min This show featured Mac and his wife Wanda (Kellita Smith) adjusting to parenthood and raising his sister's three kids: Jordan, Vanessa and Bryana. 35. Vote up the dramas about families you think are the best and see where your favorite dramatic families rank. But if I had to single out two things that made it significant, Id point first to its depiction of the relationship between Keith and David, a gay, interracial couple who adopted two young boys and did so in a way that was quietly groundbreaking. The show is centered around the small town and its colorful characters including Andys bumbling cousin Deputy Barney Fife (Don Knotts). His wife, Rainbow (Tracee Ellis Ross) is a doctor that wants the kids to be able to express themselves and be free. But honestly, what makes this show stand out is that its the rare long-running sitcom that shows us what American culture looks like from the perspective of an immigrant family either embracing it or trying to understand it. The Best Family Channel TV Shows - Ranker These families are usually some variety of too much too many kids, too many wives, too fat, too short. Gilmore Girls, 20002007, 2016Gilmore Girls has companion series from across this list and beyond in early single-mother shows like One Day at a Time, in direct inheritors like Jane the Virgin, and in shows like Parenthood that took the idea of a multigenerational family saga and turned it from a quirky comedy into a straight weeper. Marion Ross, 47. Jon and Kate Plus 8, 20072011There is an entire, massive genre of reality-TV families who exist solely as opportunities to gawk at weird families (by whatever simplistic definition of normal you might pick) and to judge the parents on their choices. John Stamos, The life and trials of a 1930s and 1940s Virginia mountain family through financial depression and World War II. 23 min The first series to bear this title was one of the first sitcoms, as well as the first major series, to paint an affectionate and unabashedly Jewish portrait of urban life: a mostly comedic but sometimes dramatic look at the Goldbergs of 1038 East Tremont Avenue in the Bronx. Stars: Its also a series that, in 1973, showed a young man taking his mother to a drag show in the Village, and a wife explaining to her friends exactly how little her husband cared whether he left another womans lipstick on his collar. | Fresh Off the Boat, 2015presentIt seems insane that it took 20 years after the cancellation of Margaret Chos All-American Girl to finally see another Asian-American family at the center of a sitcom. Featuring pointed personal reflections, unflashy collections of jokes, and snow globes. Here, then, are the 50 most-definitive family television shows, ranked in order of their impact and innovation. Bosch: Legacy. | 60 min Maxwell Jenkins, who watches. | The series aired its last episodes in early 2020, and all three seasons are available on Netflix now. Words by: David Bradley (DB), Aiden Dalby (AD), Richard Edwards (RE), Jordan Farley (JF), Miles Hamer (MH), Steve O'Brien (SOB), Will Salmon (WS), Alasdair Stuart (AS), Jack Shepherd (JS), Alyssa. Teresa Gallagher, The Goldbergs, 19491956No, not that one, though we do love it. But the icing on the cast cake is the fact that Ron Howard, the son in two stand-up TV families, serves as narrator, which means that every episode provides the chance to hear Opie Taylor/Richie Cunningham call out these wonderful jerks on their constant bullshit. A twelve-year-old boy and his best friend, a wise twenty-eight-year-old dog with magical powers, go on a series of surreal adventures in a remote future. The Cunninghams were not so far removed from the Nelsons of Ozzie and Harriet or the Cleavers of Leave It to Beaver; they were white, wholesome, and pretty traditional, except for the leather-jacketed ladies man (that would be the Fonz) who eventually wound up living in their garage. The show got our attention by killing off the family patriarchin the first few minutes of its pilot. | 23 min Jack De Sena, TV-Y7 Comedy, Drama, Family. While you probably watched these babies as a kid, it's time to pay closer attention to the parents. My All Time Classic And New Comedy/Family TV Shows Collection - IMDb Ikue tani, Stars: Eric Stuart, Miranda May, | 31. Much to the exasperation of his wife, its the same approach he brings to parenthood and his marriage, and for the most part, Home Improvement casts her as the nag and Tim as the sympathetic hero. IMDb Top 250 TV - IMDb Action, Comedy, Drama. Tom Baker, TV-G Susan Richardson, TV-PG If you were an avid viewer of the TGIF lineup on ABC growing up, then Fuller House is the perfect nostalgia-fueled show to share with your kids. This show is for older teens and is based on the Sherry Woods book series. Shaun Johnston, Can it also qualify as a family series? Ruth Wilson, But they were elevated to another level by the young Gen-Xers who spent their afternoons after school watching reruns about the lovely lady, a man named Brady, and their brood of six. Stars: | He started to do that with this nostalgic portrait of family and teenage life in the 1950s, the decade when the family sitcom was born. Stars: Kendall Schmidt, But there had not been an affluent African-American family in which both parents worked full time in respected positions (even if, in retrospect, its a little weird that Cliff ran an ob-gyn practice out of the basement), lived in a nice brownstone, and put in equal parenting time to raise their children with discipline and open hearts.