Images Great and Small

We usually think of top 10 lists as honoring a year’s best individual programs. That applies only partially to the elite of 2001, when the most electrifying TV moments came from a transcendent catastrophe (guess which one) and bodies of work that made you grateful that Philo Farnsworth created something called a television image in 1927.

The list:

Sept. 11. In case you too have been in a cave, hijacked airliners slammed into the twin towers at New York’s World Trade Center on this date, writing Chapter 1 of a calamity destined to ripple indefinitely.

As they say in local news, it was “caught on tape.” As were many acts of individual heroism and moving human interest stories that flowed from this day as the nation and President Bush sought deliverance from this unthinkable horror and crushing blow to the national psyche.

On the screen, airliners colliding with glass towers appeared almost surreal, yet another badly scripted, over-the-top disaster movie with big-budget special effects blasting you from your seat. It couldn’t be happening.

If only it had been a Hollywood fantasy. Instead, the televised murder of thousands in the terrorist attacks on the U.S. put Osama bin Laden on the tips of tongues and defined the evils of fanaticism for this generation of Americans and those to come. Never has TV been more nightmarish or more relevant as an archive of where much of the universe stood at this potentially pivotal moment in contemporary history.

HBO. The Emmy-laden subscription channel continues to set the standard for TV entertainment, its 2001 schedule alone embodying a near-top 10 list. The HBO year brought more of prime time’s best drama, “The Sopranos,” and those terrific comedies “Sex and the City” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” plus a superior newcomer in “Six Feet Under.”

In addition, HBO gave viewers an extraordinary World War II miniseries in “Band of Brothers,” as well as superb dramas in “Wit” and “Conspiracy.” More recently there was “Shot in the Heart,” a fine sleeper of a movie about Mikal Gilmore’s last days with his brother, convicted killer Gary Gilmore, and “Into the Arms of Strangers,” an Oscar-winning program documenting the rescue of Jewish children from the jaws of Nazism just before World War II.

Fall comedies. The traditional sitcom is prime time’s unstoppable yuk, and what makes one person laugh makes another weep. So this is entirely subjective.

When it comes to new comedies that are unconventionally witty, however, this has been a banner season. Count ‘em: “Undeclared” and “The Bernie Mac Show” on Fox, NBC’s “Scrubs” and the WB’s “Maybe It’s Me.”

Their comedy environments are familiar. “The Bernie Mac Show” and “Maybe It’s Me” are series about blemished families, “Scrubs” is set in a hospital and “Undeclared” takes place on a college campus.

But the writing is inventive, and the characters and their predicaments highly original. As a bonus, all four are heroically funny.

“Into the Heart of Israel.” Like its Los Angeles competitors, KCBS is generally mundane and superficial when covering news, but on occasion very good. Topping the latter category was this post-Sept. 11 Special Assignment series--reported by Drew Griffin, produced by Ellie Seckbach and edited by Richard Alvarez--chronicling the neuroses of life inside Israel and the West Bank during the present intifada, just before it flamed into an inferno.

The most enduring journalism teaches us something about our times, which is certainly the case here, thanks to Griffin and the crew (which also included camera operators Dolores Lopez and Dolores Gillham) being smart, balanced and perceptive while delivering stories that related perils of that region to potential dangers now faced by Americans here.

As in Griffin noting that racial profiling of Palestinians in Israel “has turned every Jew into a member of the police force.” Sound grimly familiar?

“Promises.” An extraordinary and devastating PBS glimpse of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the tender eyes of children from both sides. This was the “P.O.V.” documentary series at its best.

“The Chris Isaak Show.” A wonderfully bent comedy returning to Showtime in January after a bracingly funny first season, with laid-back country rocker Isaak again playing a version of himself. Authentic or not, no comic character in TV wears as well.

“Hell in the Pacific.” A blistering, witheringly honest World War II documentary that ran on the Learning Channel, and graphically conveyed the level of atrocities perpetrated by Japanese troops and the ruthless response by U.S. soldiers and their allies.

“24.” Fox’s thrilling new drama with a season-long arc encompassing a 24-hour period in which a federal operative, played persuasively by Kiefer Sutherland, tries to block the assassination of a presidential candidate. And oh, yes, his daughter has been abducted and his wife endangered by a brutal killer. Although the plot occasionally goes ka-boing (don’t these characters ever need sleep?), the suspense is magnificent.

“Second Sight.” The British miniseries on PBS about a police detective whose growing blindness is ending his brilliant career.

“Any Day Now.” The departing Lifetime drama whose honest, unforced, at times humorous approach to race relations was unmatched by any other entertainment show. It’s had a nice run but never gained the plaudits it deserved.

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Howard Rosenberg is The Times’ television critic.