In the first season, Vic and the Strike Team were confident that they could get away with anything, but things changed. In the second season, they were definitely on the defensive, being pushed back on from all sides, and that started a trend which has continued through the rest of the series. Vic and the others have been forced to realize what they can’t get away with, because of both external and internal forces. And their previous excesses really come back to haunt them in the fifth season. I think the series tagline “Conscience is a killer” reverberates throughout the show.

I haven’t seen Huff, but I’m definitely a fan of Deadwood and The Wire. I personally don’t feel comfortable picking a top five list of TV shows, because I think that involves unfair comparisons even with a category. (Cable series have a lot more freedom than network series, for example, and obviously different shows have different goals.)

“Hey, that whore in From Hell–the one that was the pig farmer’s wife in Waking Ned Devine?–she was one of the criminals in Cracker”.

“Hey, check it out: Harry Potter’s mum is Panhandle!” (or, alternately, when watching Gosford Park: “Oi!, that ginger with the flapper hair–it’s Panhandle!”)

“Oh my God! Erastes Fulmen is Jimmy Beck with hair!”

Eccleston’s turn as The Doctor was weird to me because I kept expecting him to make a dying declaration: “this is evidence”.

I like The Shield (although I am currently only up to the end of S3–I’ve got the S4 box sitting here waiting for me to have some time, too) but I’m fairly certain it wouldn’t make it into my top five. It has a structural flaw in that Vic’s character, as you see it over the first few seasons, is inconsistent with his shocking action in the first episode.

Anyway, there are certainly other shows, even if we restrict ourselves to currently running dramatic shows, that I would rank higher. Off the top of my head I would say Deadwood, The Wire, and Huff for certain.

And if you’re doing all time best? Well, there are certainly a lot of other contenders there too, not least of which is the previously mentioned Sandbaggers.

And it’s good to see that The Shield is on his list. I don’t know why more people aren’t watching that show.