![]() Fans of sumptuous costume dramas will find plenty to love in the series’ lavish production design, while those seeking the images of esteemed European actors bouncing off each other will also have a lot to savor. Original Network: BBC Two (UK) / PBS (US)īased on the best-selling historical novel series by Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall stars Mark Rylance (everyone’s favorite award-winning, poetry-spouting thespian) as Thomas Cromwell, the lawyer and statesman who ended up rising through the ranks (via a combination of sheer intelligence and Machiavellian manipulation) to become the right-hand man of King Henry VIII. Stars: Mark Rylance, Damian Lewis, Claire Foy, Bernard Hill, Anton Lesser, Mark Gatiss Robert Altman would go on to make a feature film sequel, Tanner on Tanner in 2004. ( Veep, I’m looking at you.) Altman would go on to describe making Tanner ’88 as pure joy: “two-thirds scripted, and one-third found art.” Now released by the Criterion Collection, Tanner ’88 is as astounding and prescient a piece of political television as we’ve ever seen. Michael Murphy plays presidential candidate Jack Tanner to sublime perfection, and the show’s fascination with the absurdity of daily campaign minutiae would have far-reaching comedy influence. O’Connor, Daniel Jenkins, Jim Fyfe, Matt Malloy, Ilana Levineh, Veronica CartwrightĪn 11-episode, political mockumentary miniseries written by Doonesbury’s Garry Trudeau and directed by Robert Altman sounds too good to be true, but HBO found a way to make it happen on the eve of the 1988 Presidential election. Stars: Michael Murphy, Pamela Reed, Cynthia Nixon, Kevin J. So feel free to share your own list-or to angrily declare that we’ve failed you entirely, and that you alone know enough about political TV to make Paste great again-on our Facebook page.īelow are our picks for the 25 greatest political TV shows of all time. If we’ve learned anything from politics, it’s that you can’t make all of the people happy, all of the time. ![]() Which means The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live and our current favorite, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver didn’t qualify, but there were plenty of others to consider. Over the years, producers and writers have mined the political playing fields of both the past and present to bring viewers hilarious comedy and heart-breaking tragedy.įor our list, we stuck to fictional narrative shows, rather than political satire. Political satire is as old as politics, and the well of inspiration for political TV shows runs maddeningly deep, resulting in some incredible TV. ![]() When you elect a reality star to the highest office in the land, you can expect reality to reflect even the most ridiculous fictional TV shows. When the former Mayor of New York held a press conference for the former host of The Apprentice about mounting legal challenges to the latter’s election loss in Pennsylvania, and the venue for the event was, inexplicably, a warehouse at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, one could be forgiven for thinking one had accidentally turned on HBO’s Veep.
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