Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (PBS)/ No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (PBS)
If those bloviating about PBS' ''bias'' ever bothered to turn it on, they'd have seen two indispensable docs about 20th-century American icons that wouldn't have landed on any other broadcast network.

Entourage (HBO)
Both a great hetero-guy bonding comedy with an all-aces cast and a viciously funny portrait of a funnily vicious business; season 2 offered master classes in Hollywood skullduggery from guests Mandy Moore, James Cameron, and Malcolm McDowell — and the guy who wasn't Harvey Weinstein.

Project Greenlight (Bravo)
The apparently last and indisputably best year of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's anyone-can-make-a-movie docu-soap was a crash course in the idiosyncratic decisions and defeats that shape most filmmaking. (Useful tip: First-time directors probably shouldn't fight to cast their entire families in their movies.)

The Office (NBC)
Thanks to the fearless Steve Carell, an ever-stronger supporting cast, and scripts that spew American corporate absurdist vernacular with perfect pitch, this undervalued remake does the near impossible — it honors Ricky Gervais' original and works on its own terms.

The Comeback (HBO)
Canceled, sure, but what better ending could there be for a tragicomedy devoted to indexing the indignities the TV business inflicts on its needy, deluded semi-stars? Lisa Kudrow's prattling, humane portrayal of a vain neurotic was an Emmy-worthy walk on comedy's high wire.

TV news' Hurricane Katrina coverage
Just when you thought that all television correspondents could do was stand in the rain and tell you that it's raining, they remembered they were journalists and started delivering aggressive, impassioned reporting that galvanized viewers and left the federal, state, and local governments speechless.

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