The best of 2007 television

Television obeys its own calendar. Technically, the TV season begins in September with the return to school as families settle into new routines, then ends in the spring with the close of May sweeps. For ratings purposes, the TV year traditionally begins and ends in September, but it's never made much sense to me to sum up the year at the end of summer, when the fall season is already generating interest. Better to save it for the end of May, when the prime-time broadcast networks pretty much shut down for summer and the release of the fall schedules has viewers looking ahead to the next season.

The benefits of that approach were abundant this year, as cable channels united to produce the best TV summer ever. It really did seem the beginning of something new, so that the broadcast networks had to answer that challenge in the fall -- and largely failed, especially once the writers' strike began to limit programming.

In addition to the top shows I'm about to list below, cable produced daring programs such as "Saving Grace," "Big Love," "Damages" and "Weeds," while even the best of the broadcast series settled into a tame proficiency, as in "How I Met Your Mother," "Bones" and even "The Simpsons," as well as the new "Women's Murder Club" and "Samantha Who?"

When I look back on 2007, "The Sopranos" and "The Shield" seem to be last season, even though they ran early in the calendar year. So my top 10 begins in the silence following the last scene of "The Sopranos." Consider this the best of the first half of the TV season, to be completed in May (one hopes after the strike has been settled and TV has returned to its own peculiar normalcy). And it's no surprise it's dominated by summer cable series, starting with ...

1. "Flight of the Conchords" -- HBO's droll comedy about a pair of transplanted New Zealand musos in New York City found jokes around every corner where no one expected them. And the music videos were hilarious in themselves.

2. "Reaper" -- With a jump-start from director Kevin Smith, this slacker comedy on the CW network about a young man retrieving demonic souls for the devil went on to establish itself as the best new show of the fall, led by Ray Wise's worldly performance as Satan. If it wasn't quite "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in drawing parallels with the real world, it nevertheless made sharp points about love, loyalty and the nature of work.

3. "Pushing Daisies" -- Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, this ABC series about a pie maker who can return the dead to life -- including his childhood sweetheart -- was easily the most beautiful new series of the year, but when it found a sublime moment returning two older sisters to synchronized swimming it proved it had staying power and another level entirely.

4. "Mad Men" -- The best series ever done by AMC was at heart really just a prime-time soap opera concerning a Madison Avenue ad executive with a secret identity, but its stylish period detail set in 1960 made it something more, something elegant and intriguing.

5. "The Kill Point" -- The best program ever done by Spike -- a channel previously best known for extreme sports and the overdubbed slapstick comedy of "MXC" -- might have faded late, but its central bank-robbery conflict between a grammar-snob cop played by Donnie Wahlberg and a tormented Iraq War vet played by John Leguizamo made for compelling TV while the miniseries lasted.

6. "30 Rock" -- After winning the Emmy as best comedy, Tina Fey's sitcom made a lame comeback as part of Jerry Seinfeld's NBC hype machine, but then it soon returned to skewering the network powers that be, especially in the person of Alec Baldwin's Jack. I can't wait to see what it comes up with after the writers' strike ends -- if it ever ends.

7. "Aliens in America" -- This CW sitcom about a Pakistani Muslim exchange student in Wisconsin wasn't quite as good as it could have been, but its mixture of sentiment and satire, rooted in middle-American small-mindedness, made it a bittersweet success.

8. "The War" -- All right, Ken Burns' World War II miniseries that aired on PBS was too tightly focused and U.S.-centric -- talk about American small-mindedness -- but there was no denying its more powerful moments, as with the uncovering of the Holocaust.

9. "Kid Nation" -- Buried in bad publicity at the start, CBS' reality series about 40 kids left to their own devices for 40 days in a Wild West ghost town seemed a contrived exercise in near child abuse. But then each week made new points about the kids' capability and idealism. They'll never be able to do this again -- not now that kids know cash rewards are there to be gotten -- but I think in 10 years we'll be seeing "where are they now?" specials about Greg, Sophia and Taylor.

10. "The Sarah Silverman Show" -- Not to everyone's tastes, Silverman's caustic Comedy Central series was a no-holds-barred attack on sitcom conventions. And when it set her abortion montage to Green Day's "Good Riddance," it made for one of the most hilarious moments of satire of the year.

With the best, however, there must also be the worst, in descending order:

5. "Cavemen" -- Forget the revisionist attempt to revive this unfunny racial allegory. Its Neanderthal humor, mildly amusing in 30-second commercials, overstays its welcome by about 25 minutes a week as a half-hour sitcom.

4. "Crowned: The Mother of All Beauty Pageants" -- Oh, Mama, can this really be the end of reality TV? If only.

3. "Viva Laughlin" -- Just whose idea was it to turn a Las Vegas drama into a musical -- and schedule it after the terminally stodgy "60 Minutes"?

2. "Big Shots" -- Attempted to do for men what "Desperate Housewives" did for women, to the credit of neither sex.

1. "Lil' Bush" -- How do you mess up a cartoon lampoon of the Bush administration based on animated kids' shows like "Muppet Babies"? By making the humor so crude and cruel it makes a viewer feel sorry for even Dick Cheney.

Remotely interesting: CBS siblings WBBM Channel 2 and WXRT 93.1-FM join forces for a New Year's Eve countdown at the House of Blues downtown beginning at 11:35 p.m. Monday. WLS Channel 7's Janet Davies and Mark Giangreco do a countdown from the Willowbrook Ballroom starting at 11:08 p.m. On a network level, Ryan Seacrest again caddies for "DickClark's New Year's Rockin' Eve" at 9 p.m. on Channel 7. Carson Dalyplays host to NBC's coverage with Alicia Keysas the musical guest at 10:35 p.m. on WMAQ Channel 5. … MTV presents "TilaTequila's New Year's Eve Masquerade" at 10 p.m. Comedy Central runs a "South Park Out of This World New Year's Eve" marathon starting at 8:30 p.m. Comedy Central also picks up "Futurama" reruns starting at 7 p.m. Wednesday.

"The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" and "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" return with new episodes at 10:35 p.m. Wednesday on Channel 5. "Jimmy Kimmel Live" returns at 12:05 a.m. Thursday on Channel 7. The original "Law & Order" comes back at 8 p.m. Wednesday on Channel 5. … Nickelodeon's Noggin becomes a 24-hour commercial-free preschool channel at 5 p.m. Monday. … Court TV relaunches as truTV Tuesday.

End of the dial: To mark the new state smoking ban arriving with the new year, WERV 95.9-FM is retiring Boston's "Smokin'" effective Tuesday, although they'll play it all day long Monday along with tips on how to quit. Now if only they'd retire the rest of the Boston catalog.

Urban-contemporary WGCI 107.5-FM has developed a new weekly show featuring local talent, but with the unfortunate title "Go Ill" (for Chicago, Ill., get it?) airing at 9 p.m. Saturday.

"Hambone's Blues Party" features an in-studio performance by Honeyboy Edwards and Lil' Ed at 10 p.m. Thursday on WDCB 90.9-FM.

Waste Watcher's choice

No waste this week, only the best of the best, as in the greatest Hitchcock movie of all. Joseph Cotten plays uncle to Teresa Wright while trying to hide his shady past in "Shadow of a Doubt." Check out Hitchcock's ring motif at 8:10 p.m. Saturday on the Sundance Channel.