From The Sopranos' family values to finding Lost, this was the decade of the post-9/11 serial thriller.

The decade played like an unending horror show at times, but it was also a transformative time for the medium of television.

The ascension of HBO and the quality cable drama, as epitomized by The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood and Six Feet Under, coupled with the post-9/11 ironic sensibility of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, challenged our minds, shook our perceptions and, just as important, touched our hearts.

Broadcast television, a medium that, by definition, has to be all things to all, gave us the freak shows of Temptation Island and The Swan, but it also gave us the heady idealism of The West Wing, the tantalizing mystery of Lost and the youthful optimism of Friday Night Lights.

TV is easy to ridicule, and no program of the past 10 years was ridiculed more often and more ruthlessly than American Idol.

Idol touched a collective nerve, however, with its combination of goofy charm and promises of a childhood dream realized. Idol acted as a social balm in an unnerving climate defined by terror alerts, war, and potential homespun terror plots. The religious extremists who attacked New York City and Washington, D.C. could not have anticipated that their actions would inadvertently lay the ground for American Idol's success and popularity, but that's what happened. Cynics dismissed Idol as an idle trifle, but no other program has had a more significant and profound influence on the popular culture in the past 10 years. Idol was, and remains, an idealization of the idea that just about anyone can become a singing star, given a little talent, a lot of luck and the attention of an adoring TV public.

TV changed in other ways during the decade, and the best TV improved immeasurably. The proliferation of cable channels inevitably led to more dreck - TV shows that should never have been made in the first place - but it also gave us The Sopranos, The Shield and The Wire, programs that fundamentally changed the nature of TV drama aimed at an adult, thinking audience.

In the end, the 9/11 terror attacks did not usher in a return to the age of the TV western, with its lantern-jawed heroes staring down the bad guys, devoted wives and girlfriends swooning on their arms. TV gave us the anti-hero, instead, in the guise of tough-minded but flawed men of action like Tony Soprano, Vic Mackey, Jack Shepard and Dexter Morgan.

And women protagonists, too. Tina Fey credited the late Bea Arthur, who died earlier this year, with making TV safer for women, but this was a decade when, more and more, women starred in their own TV dramas and comedies. That was especially true on the cable specialty channels, where Glenn Close (Damages), Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer) and Holly Hunter (Saving Grace) proved they could hold their own in TV's traditional boys' club..

The decade's supernatural thrillers and comedies were darker, more adult and more sophisticated than anything that had come before. The silly '60s fantasies of I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched morphed into darkly funny fantasies, such as Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, True Blood and Six Feet Under.

The visionary writers, creators and producers of the '90s - David E. Kelley, Steven Bochco and John Wells - gave way to a younger, savvier crowd, from J.J. Abrams (Lost), Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) and Shawn Ryan (The Shield) to Ryan Murphy (Nip/Tuck, Glee), Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls) and Canadian Graham Yost (Band of Brothers, The Pacific).

The proliferation of serialized thrillers and adult, thinking persons' dramas hastened an intended brain drain in Canadian television, as some of this country's brightest and best script writers - David Shore (House), Rene Balcer (Law & Order), Hart Hanson (Bones) and Graham Yost (Boomtown) - tried their hands in Hollywood's dream factory.

Not everyone moved south to make his or her name, though.

Brent Butt, Mike Clattenburg and Chris Haddock stayed home and gave their home-and-native land Corner Gas, Trailer Park Boys and Da Vinci's Inquest. In doing so, they gave us some of the finest TV this country has produced.

If the past 10 years taught us anything, it's the medium of TV, at its best, still has the power to amaze and amuse and inspire awe on a grand scale.

Honourable mentions

So much for the notion - oft repeated, particularly by those who don't watch TV - that there's nothing to see on TV. Here are 20 more programs - a supporting cast, if you will, of groundbreaking dramas, comedies and reality series from the past 10 years. Each of these programs, in its own way, defied popular convention, yet managed to entertain, ennoble and even inspire.

- Arrested Development (Fox/Global, 2003-06)

- Friday Night Lights (NBC/Global, 2006-present)

- Deadwood (HBO, 2004-06)

- Boomtown (NBC/CTV, 2002-03)

- Pushing Daisies (ABC, 2007-08)

- Futurama (Fox/Global, 1999-2003/will return in 2010)

- South Park (Comedy Central/Comedy Network, 1997-present)

- Dexter (Showtime/Movie Network, 2006-present)

- Over There (FX/History TV, 2005)

- Gilmore Girls (WB/CW, 2000-07)

- Damages (Showtime/Showcase, 2007-present)

- Survivor (CBS/Global, 2000-present)

- Trailer Park Boys (Showcase, 2001-08)

- Boston Legal (ABC/Global, 2004-08)

- House (Fox/Global, 2004-present)

- Corner Gas (CTV, 2004-09)

- Dead Like Me (Showtime/Movie Network, 2003-04)

- Six Feet Under (HBO, 2001-05)

- True Blood (HBO, 2008-present)

- Da Vinci's Inquest; Da Vinci's City Hall (CBC, 1998-2005; 2005-06)