Is ‘Game of Thrones’ greatest TV show of all time?

“So what should I be watching?”
When you write about television, you get asked this question a lot. It’s impossible to answer. Television has become such a wildly diverse, densely populated planet that asking “What should I watch?” is like asking “Where should I go on vacation?”

But ask, “What is the best show ever?’ and the answer is easy: “Game of Thrones.”

There are television series that more people have watched, that more people have loved, series that have more specifically aided our growth as a society, better showcased a single performance or more clearly set a template for other shows to follow.
But “Game of Thrones,” adapted for HBO by D.B. Weiss and David Benioff from the book series by George R.R. Martin, is, and will possibly remain, the only television series that can be truly described as epic.
No other series has ever built such a deeply detailed and far-flung world, with a geography as varied as its social constructs, religions, languages. No other series has propelled such a massive yet impeccably individualized cast through such an impossibly intricate cat’s cradle of story lines that honestly should have collapsed long ago but didn’t.
No other series has so organically grown and changed along with its characters and its audience. No other series has better harnessed the industry’s wild unruly technological advances while never ceding the basic rules of storytelling and the deep human need for coherent mythology.

And don’t get me started on Ramin Djawadi’s haunting, exhilarating theme song, the ever-changing Steampunk gadgetry of the opening sequence or Khaleesi’s magnificent braid strategy.
In story and sweep, ambition and execution, heart and mind, “Game of Thrones” is, quite simply, the greatest show on earth.
Cue the groans and spluttering of indignant opposition. What about “The Sopranos,” “The Wire,” “Breaking Bad,” “ER,” “Friday Night Lights” or “Grey’s Anatomy”? What about “M.A.S.H.,” “All in the Family,” “Friends,” “The Big Bang Theory”? What about (insert your personal favorite show here)?
All great, successful, significant shows, none of which even approaches the visual, thematic or difficulty level of “Game of Thrones.”

But the nudity, the rapes, the brutal bloody violence! The reliance on CG, the cost of all those locations, the shock-value killings! What about all that time wasted in Meereen or the fact that sometimes it takes months to get from King’s Landing to Winterfell and sometimes it takes days?
“Great” is not synonymous with “perfect.” To gauge the power of the show all you have to do is look at the passion and deep obsessive intricacy of the criticism.
No matter how you feel about it personally or politically, “Game of Thrones” is a masterwork, the zenith of the 21st century big bang that remade television.