To celebrate the past 10 years of television, I've drawn up a gigantic poll of 99 TV dramas/comedies that were created and broadcast throughout the noughties. I've been lenient in a few instances where a show technically started in 1999, provided it aired the majority of its episodes this decade (Angel, League Of Gentlemen, etc.) Now, it's over to you...
All you have to do is select your 10 favourites of the decade from my list, and the combined results will be revealed on 17 January 2010. Obviously, this list isn't definitive, so you can add one omission by typing your own choice in yourself as an "other vote". I would have preferred to give you the ability to create 10 totally unique votes, but Polldaddy.com unfortunately only allows one "other vote". Hopefully I'll have included most, if not all, of your favourites. My apologies if none of your own top 10 are on my list!
I have included a few shows that were axed in their infancy, too -- if I felt they were important enough to warrant a listing (Freaks & Geeks, Firefly, etc.) Please peruse my alphabetical list very carefully, to ensure you don't cast your own "other vote" for a show that does appear on the list. That will only confuse matters at my end when I'm totting up!
Remember: only drama or comedy are eligible to be voted on, so you're wasting your "other vote" if you type in 'Big Brother' (reality TV), 'Deal Or No Deal' (gameshows) or 'Planet Earth' (documentaries). The poll would be too ungainly if it encompassed every genre, so it's focused on scripted entertainment -- and no, that doesn't mean Top Gear can be included! I reserve the right to discount any of your personalized votes if I feel they're ineligible or misguided, too.
Finally, I encourage you to spread the word about this mega-poll on your own sites, blogs, social networking sites, etc, with one caveat -- that you're sure your readers can be trusted not to hijack the poll and skew the results. That's very unfair. Please be sensible. If I detect any cheating going on, you risk shooting yourself in the foot because I may just ignore "suspicious votes" (which could be genuine), and your favourite might end up charting embarrassingly low as a result.
I will keep drawing attention to its existence most weeks, just to ensure as many people see it as possible. What are you waiting for? Get voting!
Update: to reiterate a point made in the comments below, for some obscure reason Polldaddy has decided to stick the following shows after the "W" category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, State Of Play, Farscape, Pulling, The Smoking Room, Spiral and Scrubs -- so if you're looking for those, that's where they! My apologies, but it looks like Polldaddy has a bug!
