1. ‘Seinfeld’ (1989-1998 on NBC)
Despite its own waggish hints to the contrary, and the headlines of a million hack entertainment writers, “Seinfeld” wasn’t a “show about nothing.” It was a show about etiquette: Is it okay to eat an éclair that’s adjacent to garbage? To announce a birth in a note that contains no exclamation point? To double-dip or be a close-talker? What should we call such social transgressions, what is the proper response and why do they irk us so much?
The phrase “like a great novel” is frequently applied to dramas like “Breaking Bad” or “The Wire.” But “Seinfeld” was the first sitcom to earn the comparison: By being so small, so specific and so microscopically attuned to the oddities of social interaction, it became universal — an epic of self-absorbed Upper West Siders, with the durability and reach of Jane Austen or Edith Wharton.
— Kyle Smith
2. ‘Friends’ (1994-2004 on NBC)
Never mind that almost every bit of the show was shot in LA — even the opening credits, which were staged at a fountain on the Warner Bros. lot, not in Central Park, as many believe. “Friends” still did a remarkable job of capturing what it’s like to be young and single in New York City.
The series, which was originally called “Insomnia Cafe,” revolved around the romantic, personal and professional travails of six buddies (and for a few misguided episodes, one monkey) living in Greenwich Village. Many of the plots concerned mundane aspects of city life that connected with New Yorkers on a deep level: In one episode, Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) gets into a fight with the building super after clogging the trash chute. In another, the group is grossed out by an ugly naked guy whom they can glimpse in the apartment across the way.
The show rarely failed to wring laughs out of New York-centric struggles, like making less money than your friends and being unable to pay for a fancy dinner. Or the hardships of having roommates — something successful adults in the rest of America don’t usually have to stoop to.
The one aspect of city life that the show really flubbed? The set. Everyone knows that to score an affordable apartment that big, you’d have to live just outside Manhattan — in West Virginia.
— Reed Tucker
3. ‘Sex and the City’ (1998-2004 on HBO)
Centuries from now, when archaeologists discover what New York was like in the early to mid-aughts, they will surely find “Sex and the City” DVDs preserved in amber.
Sure, it’s easy to bemoan the “SATC” tours that still clog the streets of the West Village 10 years after the show’s finale aired, and to curse the long lines at Magnolia Bakery, one of the many brands that skyrocketed to fame after inclusion in the show. Yes, it’s easy to lampoon the efforts of the thousands of Carrie Bradshaw wannabes who flocked to NYC to take the city by storm/write dating columns/hang out in the Meatpacking District/find their Mr. Big. But taken on its own, the show was an exuberant, whole-hearted love letter to the city of New York — Manhattan, specifically — and to the thousands of single women populating it, pounding the pavement every day in their stilettos and looking for love, money, happiness and friends to cheer them on.
— Mackenzie Dawson
4. ‘I Love Lucy’ (1951-1957 on CBS)
The Manhattan apartment where Lucy and Ricky Ricardo (Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz) lived was the place to be 60 years ago. There, the star-struck Lucy would hatch her schemes to live a bigger life. Though she couldn’t sing or dance, she wanted to find a way to be in showbiz, like countless aspiring Broadway babies and film actors and rock stars and novelists and painters before and after her. If they can make it here . . .
One of the New York-iest things about “I Love Lucy” was the way her friends/landlords, Fred and Ethel Mertz (William Frawley and Vivian Vance), came over at the drop of a hat — “Friends” and “Seinfeld” and a million other shows owe that to “Lucy.” In the early days of television comedy, you didn’t need to set up a tedious chain of jokes to make a studio audience feel welcome. With Ball and her trio of co-stars, there was never any doubt the audience would get what it came for: to laugh.
— Robert Rorke
5. ‘30 Rock’ (2006-2013 on NBC)
Tina Fey’s brilliant comedy was supposed to be a backstage spoof of late-night television. But it really captured the love/hate relationship New Yorkers have with our city. It’s the greatest place on Earth, but then you also have 8 million people trying to squeeze into the same subway car.
You saw it in the very first episode, when Liz (Tina Fey) gets back at a typical NYC line cutter by buying all the hog dogs at the cart. Or when a Princess Leia costume can’t get her out of jury duty. (“This ain’t Chicago, honey. Just look at these people,” the court officer tells her.)
But it wasn’t just about frustration, it was also about how Liz and Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) and all the other crazy characters could not have existed any other place. “30 Rock” showed that no matter how tempted we are to escape to the breezy life of LA, we know we’re all stuck here together in the same hot dog cart line.
— Tim Donnelly
6. (Tie) ‘The Honeymooners’ (1955-1956 on CBS)
Spun off from a recurring sketch on “The Jackie Gleason Show,” “The Honeymooners” aired for one perfect season, in gritty black-and-white — an ideal complement to the stark, two-room Brooklyn walk-up (sans curtains, TV, radio or fridge) where blustery bus driver Ralph Kramden (Gleason) lived with his wife, Alice (Audrey Meadows). Its main characters, including Ralph’s best pal, goofy sewer worker Ed Norton (Art Carney), were New Yawkers through and through: Norton pronounced “oil” as “erl,” and Ralph worked for the Gotham Bus Company. And it was filmed at the Adelphi Theatre on 54th Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues.
— Michael Starr
6. (TIE) The Cosby Show (1984-1992 on NBC)
Decades before it produced farm-to-table restaurants, Brooklyn could claim a different kind of cultural influencer. “The Cosby Show” centered around what was then a little-seen portrait on television, an upper-middle-class African-American family in Brooklyn Heights (though a Greenwich Village brownstone was used for the facade). High-achieving professionals and a loving, close-knit multi-generational bunch, the Huxtables dispelled backward racial stereotypes through entertainment.
East Coast to his core, Philly-raised Bill Cosby reportedly refused to film in LA because he disliked Hollywood, so the series shot first at NBC’s Brooklyn studios and later in Queens.
— Kirsten Fleming
8. ‘Girls’ (premiered 2012 on HBO)
Since its debut, “Girls” has become synonymous with the millennial generation — a supposed mass of indulgent, directionless 20-somethings. After all, the Brooklyn-based series showcases a wannabe writer (Hannah Horvath, played by Lena Dunham) and her friends as they traverse that messy period of transitioning into adulthood. But while critics have used the series as a means of dismissing young people, audiences have identified with the show’s reality, capturing what it’s really like to live in New York today, ridden with debt and broken dreams. Hannah and her friends are real people with real problems that feel quintessentially “now.”
— Gregory E. Miller
9. ‘Taxi’ (1978 -1982 on ABC, 1982-1983 on NBC)
The brilliance of “Taxi,” which portrayed the working lives of cabbies, was that within its perfectly matched ensemble cast, many layers of regular, everyday New York life were laid bare: from nasty little bosses to showbiz hopefuls, from single moms trying to make ends meet to the one weird guy on every crew. The drivers of the Sunshine Cab Company mocked and supported each other, commiserated about the only-in-New-York eccentrics they carted around, and created a world that was relatable to viewers in the rough-and-tumble 1970s Big Apple — bitch, moan, complain and be glad you’ve got a decent bunch to do it with.
— Larry Getlen
10. ‘The Jeffersons’ (1975-1985 on CBS)
The theme song for “The Jeffersons,” “Movin’ On Up,” could be the anthem for all the strivers of NYC. The show starred Sherman Hemsley as George Jefferson, a dry cleaning tycoon with a surplus of ego — kept in check by his no-guff-taking wife, Louise (Isabel Sanford), and their even sassier maid, Florence (Marla Gibbs). They epitomized the New York spirit we saw when George played foil to Queens racist Archie Bunker on “All in the Family,” where for every crack about “you people,” George would have a sharper, funnier comeback. Like their city, the characters on “The Jeffersons” took pride in hard-won achievements, and gave as good as they got.
— Larry Getlen