Pretty interesting list here from Entertainment Weekly. So how many from the list have you seen and thought were great?

http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20318758,00.html

For me,

Battlestar Galactica
Shogun
Band of Brothers
John Adams
V

I only saw these three on the list and I thought they were all very good.

SHOGUN (1980)
FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON (1998)
BAND OF BROTHERS (2001)

I heard really great things about this one but I don't get HBO anymore.
JOHN ADAMS (2008)


Wheels

I dont have HBO either but I just rented the dvd's from Netflix. It really is an amazing miniseries and a must-see for any history buff.

I had my fingers crossed for The Blue and the Gray but sadly it didn't make the list. I remember that one fondly because I got a free color poster for it at school a few weeks before the mini series aired; I taped the poster to my bedroom wall so my mom let me stay up past my usual bedtime to watch each episode in full.

The Shogun image looks like Action Man with Kung Fu Grip stumbled onto the set of The Last Samurai...

LMAO Skycat!

Yeah, I also remember "The Blue and the Gray" and I enjoyed it quite a lot even though I think the writers went a bit overboard with Patrick Swayzee's character being the "dreamy ladies man".

edit: Whoops! That's "North & South" that Swayzee was in.

V and Band of Brothers are the only two i've seen from that list.

Roots
A few episodes from Shogun
V (at least 17 times over lol)
Band of Brothers - If the interviews with the old Easy veterans don't put a lump in your throat, you need to have your throat checked. - Amen.
BSG

... and I can hardly wait for HBO's new Pacific miniseries

Cheers

Nico

Lemme see..

I, Claudius (own DVD)
Shogun (own DVD)
Brideshead Revisited
The Thorn Birds
V (own DVD)
From the Earth to the Moon
Band of Brothers (own DVD)
BSG (own DVD)
Bleak House (own DVD)
John Adams (own DVD)

Well, they get points for having Lonesome Dove in there. BSG and V are landmark series. I would add Taken which even my wife enjoyed.

Unfortunately, they blow it all by including The Stand, which was absolutely horrible (other than Laura San Giacomo in her bra ). Started out very well, but the ending was a MAJOR letdown after such a big build up.

*GASP*

You haven't seen From the Eart to the Moon?
If so, I have a mission for you: Go see it! It ranks way up there with Band of Brothers as some of the very best TV ever.

How the hell did they leave "Rich Man Poor Man" off that list?

Yes! What he said.

Roots
The Thornbirds
Lonesome Dove
The Stand
Shogun
Band of Brothers

Looks like I'll be adding yet more dvd's to my Netflix queue.

Roots
Shogun (recently just got the DVD box set too)
The Thornbirds
V
Band of Brothers
Battlestar Galactica

v6,
boNes

You won't just be adding them, you'll be placing them at the very front of your queue

I did see "Apollo 13" and enjoyed it immensely so it seems that I'll also like this mini-series.

Yeah, this is even better. Do yourself a favour and watch it as soon as possible. The episode that details the making of the Lunar Module actually made me tear up a bit (as well as some of the other episodes). How many shows make you go all soft over a machine?! The Apollo 11 episode is also fantastic, even though you know how it all ends you still sit there holding your breath

Battlestar Galactica.

Soft over a machine in BSG? Not to be crude, but I think you have that backwards. LOL

I've seen quite a few of them, especially the older ones, and a few of the newer ones that interested me (Band of Brothers, Earth to the Moon, etc). Back before everyone had cable with hundreds of channels these tended to be a big deal and got big viewership, like Roots, was a huge thing, think was in 6th grade or something.

Oh yeah!

V - check
Brideshead Revisited - Check
I, Claudius - Check
Singing Detective- Check
Band of Brothers - Check
From the Earth to the Moon - Check
Shogun - Check
Thornbirds - Check
Roots - Check

Now, for the controversial part: Personally I never could get into BSG, it just never grabbed me.

edited rest of original post because I didn't understand or like what I'd written

I agree they left off a couple of shows that were excellent in my opinion. Rich Man Poor Man which I think was one of the first mini series and The Wire which to me was some of the best drama on TV although they mention The Corner by the same people.

I would say that Earth to the Moon, in addition to being great entertainment was one of the most educational and informative things I've ever seen on TV. A good DVD set to own since it's 12 hours long.

The Wire wasn't mentioned because it was a cable show and not a miniseries.

That could be Panzer but I thought The Corner was only shown on cable as well as the John Adams series.

V and Band of Brothers.

I bought "From the Earth to the Moon" and will watch it soon.

Well I've seen 12 of them, but that's not surprising seeming how many are British :P

Edge of Darkness is a surprising omission, I understand it's being re-imagined by an American team.

And can BSG count as a miniseries? I was under the impression that the key to a miniseries was that it never ran longer than a season (and usually 3-8 instalments)

Someone mentioned tearing up over an episode of Earth/Moon. One scene I remember that was very moving was the one where Frank Borman appears before congress to testify about the accident that took the lives of the three astronauts in a practice mission for Apollo 1. His testimony to a Senate panel investigating the accident was very emotional.

Another Borman contribution was the reading of Genesis during the first moon orbit in Dec. 1968.
His closing line was:
And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you—all of you on the good Earth.

– Frank Borman, live broadcast from lunar orbit (1968)

As an aside, I was doing some contract work in Las Vegas in 1970 when the news came over the TV in the Tropicana lounge that the Apollo 13 incident had happened and that the crew was in jeopardy of not making it back alive. Some of the hard core gamblers started making bets among themselves as to whether the crew would survive or not. Odds changed as the news continued to come in. I had a hard time convincing some people at home that this had happened, it was very business like.

BSG began life (well, second life) as a mini-series a year or so before the series itself started. Showed the betrayal and destruction of Caprica and the colonies, assembling the fleet and ends with the goal to find Earth.

I really need to see "I, Claudius". Derek Jacobi is a very talented actor. I thought he was great in "Gladiator".

Plenty of good british series that could have been included.

A House of Cards
Smiley's People
Thinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
The Perfect Spy
Crow Road
Ivanhoe (the BBC mini-series one)

Das Boot (mini-series)

And so on

Alec Guinness was FANTASTIC as George Smiley! All the more so for fans of the books I have Smiley's People on triple VHS somewhere..hehe. Been a few years since I watched that one. Gonna have to see if it's on DVD or BR now.

Alec Guinness had one of those creative careers that most actors could only dream of having but yet I get the feeling that the majority of the public only know him for his Obi Wan role on Star Wars.

I recently saw him in the classic "Our Man in Havana" a hilarious film with Ernie Kovacs, Burl Ives and Noel Coward. Well worth watching this cast in action.

Shogun
V
Band of Brothers
BG
Thornbirds
All when original airs

Yepp, it's on DVD, same with TTSP and A Perfect Spy (both LeCarre stories).

I wouldn't mind getting a copy of the Shogun series. I had just read the James Clavell book prior to the series airing, so I got so much more out of it.

Many of the sub plots and much of the backgound dialog on the TV mini-series were in Japanese with few sub-titles. Of course all of these were explained in the book in English, so it just made the series that much more enjoyable.

It's hard to believe that this series aired almost 30 years ago and I wonder if the TV production values of the time still hold up well today--especially since the DVD sets are still priced at over $60.

Just to add a couple I didn't see listed that I thought were pretty good

Taken
Hunley (think this was the mini series name)

I watched "Shogun" about 6 years ago and I felt that the production values and setting still hold up very well by today's standards. It seems like the producers did have a very good budget to work with when they made the mini-series.

For me, the grandest gem of "Shogun" is getting to see Toshiro Mifune in his post-Kurosawa era and he was still great.

Nice I have read all his books, but I haven't seen A Perfect Spy or TTSP. Just Smiley's People, and that was brilliant!

Run and buy. Smiley and TTSP are each £5.99 from Play.com, Perfect SPy is £10.99.

Øystein

I remember Roots was on TV when I was a kid.. violent images and the song was pretty sad. Years later, I (fully) understood why.

Though I love Battlestar Galactica and Band of Brothers, I fail to see why they are already branded as "Classic" since both barelly have 10+ years COMBINED!

Combined with other less than 10 years shows on the list and the lack of other shows like Chips, SWAT, Blue Thunder and Knight Rider (to name a few), I'd say the list is pretty bogus.

But then again, that's just me.

I find it pretty shocking that Peter the Great isn't even mentioned Maximilian Schell, Omar Sharif, Laurence Olivier, Vanessa Redgrave, Trevor Howard, Ursula Andress... As far as casts go, things can hardly get more impressive. I would also nominate The Winds of War and War and Remembrance.

As much as I like BSG, BoB and some of the other recent series in the article, they should wait a few years before they are rewarded the "classic" status. Besides, does BSG even qualify as a miniseries?

All of those were regularly recurring tv shows and not miniseries.

Yes it does because BSG was originally envisioned and created only as a miniseries. It was NOT known whether the Sci-Fi Channel would pick up BSG as a show until AFTER the tv ratings came in for the miniseries. That's why there was a full year hiatus between the airing of the miniseries and the airing of the first tv show episode. Once the ratings came in for the miniseries and the network was happy with them, THEN BSG got greenlit into a series.

Other older series that I recall being good/enjoyable:

War & Peace (BBC 1972)
Quo Vadis
Marco Polo
Against the Wind
All the Rivers Run
How the West Was Won

I watched both "Marco Polo" and "Peter the Great" when they originally aired on tv. Both are outstanding mini-series with lots of intelligence and great dialogue.

"Marco Polo" was recently released on DVD here, I've been meaning to pick it up.

I gotta get Lonesome Dove on BluRay. Pity there's no region free version yet. At least not that I've been able to find. If anyone can clue me in to where I can get a region free version, please do

The Odyssey was good. Could have been directed better, but for what looked like a fairly limited budget, I thought they did well. Despite Eric Roberts being in it. Armand Assante was a good Ulysses and the locations looked good.