If character is destiny, then character has also long been the backbone of great TV writing. The list of the WGA’s 101 Best Written TV Series is a testament to this, as true for a series on which the main character is ostensibly a version of the star (The Cosby Show, to give but one example) as a show featuring a Vulcan aboard an exploratory space ship or a serial killer flitting across both sides of the thin blue line.
Close to half of the 101 Best Written TV Series aired within the last decade. Not coincidentally, this was a period that coincided with a sharp growth in original programming on both basic and pay cable television when writers were given more latitude to explore the moral complexities of the worlds they created.
