A recent book, "Taschen's Favorite TV Shows," highlights some of the best shows of the last 25 years. With its eerie settings, oddball characters and strange pacing, "Twin Peaks" -- from director David Lynch and writer Mark Frost -- was unlike anything on television when it premiered in 1990. A revival of the show is in the works for Showtime, set for 2017.
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"The Simpsons" recently celebrated its 25th anniversary and remains one of the most influential shows on the air. It created a boom in animation, its clever writing worked on many levels, and it's rewarded repeat viewing -- which is good, since it runs constantly on FXX (and online).
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"No hugging, no learning" was the motto behind "Seinfeld," often described as a "show about nothing." But its portrayal of four self-absorbed New Yorkers struck a chord with viewers, who made it one of the most popular shows on TV.
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The gritty "Homicide: Life on the Street" showcased a group of Baltimore cops, but its willingness to look at shades of gray set it apart from many other cop shows.
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"The X-Files" gave viewers a whole world of mystery and horror, one that many fans eagerly followed. After years off the air, a new season is in the works.
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"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was based on a 1992 film, but the TV series -- which debuted in 1997 -- went far beyond the movie, creating the "Buffyverse," a world in which the lead character, Buffy Summers, "saved the world ... a lot." The show also helped establish writer Joss Whedon's name and has been the subject of academic treatises.
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The brutal HBO series "Oz," set in a prison, was the first one-hour dramatic series produced by the network. Created by Tom Fontana, who had a hand in "Homicide" and "St. Elsewhere," the show featured an expansive, multiethnic cast that included J.K. Simmons, Christopher Meloni and Dean Winters. (Like CNN, HBO is a unit of Time Warner.)
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"Sex and the City," another HBO show, followed the lives of four New York-based independent women. The show, which starred Sarah Jessica Parker, left, Kim Cattrall, right, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis, spawned two movies.
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Television hit new highs with "The Sopranos," the HBO series that has been hailed as "the greatest show of all time." The show, which mixed black comedy with tense drama, was essentially about Tony Soprano, a mob boss who goes into therapy. But it ended up about so much more.
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"The West Wing," which premiered in 1999, was often the only challenger to "The Sopranos" during their years on the air. (It beat "Sopranos" for the best drama Emmy its first four years on the air.) The show revolved around a U.S. president played by Martin Sheen.
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A family-run funeral home was the setting for "Six Feet Under," which took on love, death and everything in between.
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The original UK version of "The Office," starring Ricky Gervais, left, as the awkward and mercurial David Brent, used the mockumentary format to create moments of high comedy.
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"The Shield" starred Michael Chiklis, center, as a corrupt L.A. cop who generally got his way. The show revitalized Chiklis' career; before "The Shield," he was known for more lightweight roles such as "The Commish" and "Daddio."
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If "The Sopranos" got people talking about a new "TV golden age," then "The Wire" was held up as proof that TV had gotten better than movies. Hailed as novelistic and DIckensian, the show focused on the social and cultural forces that collide in a big city -- Baltimore, in "The Wire's" case -- and what makes progress so difficult.
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The sitcom "Arrested Development," starring Jason Bateman, right, never got the mass audience of its competitors. (After the show won a best comedy series Emmy, its creator begged people to watch.) But the intricately wacky show about a family in real estate has had quite the afterlife, including a fourth season on Netflix.
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"Lost" was a gamble: The pilot cost more than $10 million, making it the most expensive made up to its time. But the ratings were great and audiences followed the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 for six seasons, parsing the show's mysterious clues even when the show's writers seemed just as lost as the cast members. The finale still causes arguments.
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The old late-'70s "Battlestar Galactica" was essentially a "Star Wars" ripoff, a high-tech space opera. The reborn series, which ran from 2004 to 2009, was something different: a meditation on terrorism, religion and otherness. It even won a Peabody Award.
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"30 Rock" was a comedy set at NBC about a comedy set at NBC, but the Tina Fey-created sitcom could be as loose-limbed as "The Simpsons," with left-field jokes, quick cuts and crazy songs. All you can say is "blerg."
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"Mad Men" seemed like a long shot: It was on a basic cable network with virtually no original programming experience, it was a period piece set in the early '60s, and it could be as dense and slow-moving as a rich novel. But not only did the show, about the enigmatic creative director of a New York ad agency, win a slew of awards, it established AMC as a player among networks.
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That helped when it came to "Breaking Bad," an equally unlikely hit: the story of a high school chemistry teacher who becomes a crime kingpin thanks to his ability to make crystal meth. Bryan Cranston, at left with Aaron Paul, won four Emmys for his performance as Walter White on the AMC show.
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After a short-lived series on HBO, "Lucky Louie," failed to click, Louis C.K. returned three years later with "Louie" on FX. There the comedian struck gold with an uncomfortable blend of comedy and, well, not-comedy. He's exercised full creative control, even editing the show himself on a Mac.
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On the other end of the budgetary spectrum is "Game of Thrones," HBO's mammoth hit based on the George R.R. Martin "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels. Its intricate look at the political and military machinations of Westeros drives the plot, though its violence and nudity keep people talking.
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If the women of "Sex and the City" tended to handle life's problems with a quip and a shopping spree, the women of "Girls" -- all 20-somethings trying to find their space -- are more open about their struggles. The show was created by Lena Dunham, left.
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"House of Cards" stars Kevin Spacey, center left, as a conniving congressman who manipulates his way to the presidency. The show marked Netflix's entry into the original programming business and helped make the service a force in entertainment.
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"Orange Is the New Black," another Netflix series, concerns the members of a Connecticut women's prison. As Taschen's Jurgen Muller and Steffen Haubner describe it, the show is "a drama that observes and interrogates the structure of power." (It also has its share of laughs.) "OITNB" recently streamed its third season.