This was the decade of the VCR, but you still didn’t make plans on Thursday nights. It was a golden age for sitcoms and for big, silly action-adventures where the good guys always won-plenty to distract us from the last vestiges of the Cold War and a pair of nuclear arsenals that could do a decent imitation of the Death Star. Nostalgia for bygone eras gave me a connection to the ’50s with Happy Days and the ’60s with Wonder Years, but mostly shows captured the 1980s in all of its neon glory. Big hair, loud colors and very special episodes ruled the day, as TV dared to talk about issues that had always been taboo. We’re celebrating the best of ’80s TV all week here at Paste. We’ve dug back into the crazy decade, to find the 80 Best TV Shows of the 1980s. We were judging each series on its content between Jan. 31, 1989, so some great ’70s shows that lasted into the ’80s fell further down the list, while The Simpsons, which we named The Best TV Show of the 1990s, didn’t make the cut during the 1980s with only one Christmas special to its name. Stars: Marc Singer, Faye Grant, Jane Badley, Michael Ironside, Robert Englund Let us know your favorite shows of the 1980s in the comments section below (besides, of course, Too Many Cooks).
V in the 1980s is a great example of a concept that worked well as a miniseries but couldn’t support itself as a full-on TV show.
