TV 1999

From "The Sopranos" to "Greed," a look back at the highs and lows of the year in television.

By Joyce Millman

Dec 13, 1999 | End-of-the-millennium TV miracles and wonders abounded in 1999. Two genres written off as dead -- the prime-time game show and the adult drama -- sprang back to life. Network programming soothsayers gazed into a pile of entrails and scheduled "sure things" like Chris Carter's "Harsh Realm," Kevin Williamson's "Wasteland" and Jennifer Love Hewitt's "Time of Your Life." The entrails were wrong. And who needs apocalyptic prophecies and Y2K hysteria? You only have to watch "WWF Smackdown!" to know that the end is near.

Here is my very last year-in-TV wrap of the 20th century. I'm getting nostalgic already.

The 10 best shows of 1999

The Sopranos (HBO) A dark, wickedly funny and deeply felt portrait of middle-aged anxiety, ethnic identity, the suburban dream and the difficulties of keeping families close in a depersonalized, acquisitive age. With the storytelling punch and cinematic verve of the best of Scorsese and Coppola, and a superb cast that keeps finding astonishing new angles and shadings to what could have been stock bada-bing, bada-boom characters, "The Sopranos" emerged in its first season as an instant Mafia-movie classic, and as premium cable's biggest phenom ever. Created and co-written by David Chase, "The Sopranos" was nominated for 16 Emmys, but it was absurdly robbed of the three prizes it most deserved -- best drama series, best actor (James Gandolfini as the savage, sympathetic antihero, Tony Soprano) and best supporting actress (Nancy Marchand as his monstrous mama, Livia). The show returns Jan. 16 with new episodes. And this time, it's personal.

Now and Again (CBS) This is the series with "Again" in the title that does not star Sela Ward. If you haven't been watching, the story goes like this: A sadly underappreciated insurance exec and family man named Michael Wiseman (John Goodman) dies in a New York subway accident, only to be given a second chance when his uninjured brain is secretly transplanted into the buff young body of a government-built $6 million man (Eric Close). Michael isn't supposed to contact his widow Lisa (Margaret Colin) or daughter Heather (Heather Matarazzo), or they'll all be "terminated," but his longing for them prevails. He keeps finding ways to see them and be a part of their lives, even though they don't know his real identity. His fidelity and determination impress even his aloof keeper, Dr. Theodore Morris (Dennis Haysbert, in a spectacularly droll and inscrutable performance). Created by Glenn Gordon Caron, "Now and Again" is utterly unclassifiable. To call it a sci-fi fantasy would shortchange both its whimsical humor and the gracefulness of Colin's performance as a widow trying to pick up the pieces without letting go of the memories.

Angel (WB) Buffy the Vampire Slayer's ex-boyfriend -- and forever soul mate -- strikes out on his own in Los Angeles in this clever marriage of vintage private-eye noir and goth attitude. Clad in a photogenic black overcoat that flaps behind him like a cape (a nod to "Batman," perhaps), atoning for his sins in semi-isolation, David Boreanaz's brooding vampire with a conscience makes a perfect damaged superhero, all while keeping a deadpan sense of humor. Or is that "undeadpan"?

Freaks and Geeks (NBC) This remarkably acted, melancholy high school comedy from "Larry Sanders" writers Judd Apatow and Paul Feig may be set in 1980, but the schisms it depicts transcend decades -- freaks vs. geeks, popularity vs. good grades, living your parents' dreams vs. charting your own course. NBC barely let us get to know the show, scheduling it on Saturday nights (the dead zone of programming), then preempting it for a month for baseball playoffs and sweeps specials; it's no wonder the ratings were terrible. But "Freaks and Geeks" was spared the ax and moves to 8 p.m. Mondays next month. Watch it. I promise you will fall in love with Linda Cardellini's Lindsay, a math whiz in a ratty Army jacket searching for her identity among the Zep-head stoners, before the opening theme song -- Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation," no less -- is even over.

Once and Again (ABC) This is the one with Sela Ward. I'm still not sure if "Once and Again" is truly one of the best new shows of the year, or just Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz's diabolical, demographically engineered sequel to their seminal work of middle-class boomer angst, "thirtysomething." I watch fascinated as newly separated, 40-ish soccer mom Lily (Ward) and divorced 40-ish soccer dad Rick (Billy Campbell) torture themselves and their kids with a hot, guilt-inducing affair. But it's not always a good kind of fascination. It's more like -- well, you know how cats like to watch other cats on TV? Lily is maddeningly apologetic; Rick is a sensitive yet pushy lug. Their teenagers are manipulative brats. Their exes are always hanging around, moony-eyed and needy. Everybody talks to the camera in annoying black-and-white confessional interludes -- as if they're the first people to lament the road not taken, or how they still suffer the emotional scars of imperfect childhoods, or how their kids are growing up and they feel so old. "Once and Again" is all so suburban-white-person self-indulgent, I want to scream. But who am I kidding? I'll be back next week.

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