OTOH, my mom loves Reba.

I love The Wire, and second Battlestar Galactica, the new version. I would offer the following:

Life on Mars(The British version)
Doctor Who(the new version, smart writing, great acting by Christopher Eccelston and David Tennant, although I postively hated Martha Jones)

I loved the Miniseries Band of Brothers(HBO), I felt it was one of the better written, and excellently acted series on war.

I also like Life, which has Damian Lewis from Band of Brothers as the star. It’s a little in the “quirky detective solves complicated murder mysteries while dealing with a slightly impossible personal life” but I do like it a lot. I like the first season much more than the second though.

there are some more that I am missing, I need to look at my Netflix list to see what ones I watched lately.

-slings and arrows = fantastic series that is about the stratford theatre festival in a very intentionally thinly-veiled way (a lot of stratford actors/directors have been involved with it on various levels). a lot of the humour is obviously very theatrically-oriented, but you really don’t need to be a theatre person to get it. paul gross, on of the principal actors, has called it an “employment comedy”, which is basically what it is. it comes at the whole thing from a very businessy angle, which is a lot funnier than it sounds, i promise. it ran for three seasons, which was exactly as long as it meant to, and each season is only six episodes, so it’s very tight. um i have way too many good things to say about this, but hopefully that’s enough to make you think it’s perhaps important.

-hamish macbeth? i haven’t seen too much of this myself, but my mother swoons over it much. so it’s something mothers like? and i have enjoyed it when i’ve watched it, i just haven’t felt compelled to watch it with any regularity. which is about how i feel about the west wing.

-wonderfalls = satisfyingly twisty, but unsatisfyingly plotted, since it was cancelled just as they were starting to set up some really interesting stuff so they kinda had to wrap it all up in a tidy package all of a sudden at a point that was supposed to have been mid-season.

NORTHERN EXPOSURE is quirky, likeable characteres, no violence or gore, and I’ve heard that the stories are frequently inspired by fable, folklore and such. It’s out on DVD.

There’s always M.A.S.H. for good, intelligent entertainment.

There’s also STAR TREK,

and I’ve recently become enamored iwth a program I never thought I’d even look at – a reality based show for which I generally have no interest – but I stumbled on this one and LOVE it – PROJECT RUNWAY and it is out on DVD.

I LOVE Law & Order and my favorite are the first 5 seasons wtih Michael Moriarty as the DA.

Northern Exposure is GREAT!

If you’re looking for more Aaron Sorkin, you might want to try ‘Sport’s Night’ as someone above suggested, or ‘Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip’. I haven’t seen either, but they get some fairly decent reviews.