TV Shows Set In Massachusetts?
Last week I wrote an exhaustive list of the best movies set in or filmed in Massachusetts. You can check that out here. I enjoyed making the list even though I wound up with hundreds of movies and it was a real challenge to pair it down to just 16. I thought this week I’d explore the small screen and look at the best TV shows set in Massachusetts, thinking, stupidly, that that would be easier. Boy was I wrong. Turns out there have been hundreds of tv shows set in Boston and Massachusetts. And what makes it even harder is that very few of them were actually successful. That has less to do with the unforgiving nature of Boston and more to do with the unforgiving nature of television.
How I Did It
I went to one of my favorite websites Ratingraph.com which uses user grades from IMDB.COM to rank tv shows and show you how they have progressed or degressed over the seasons. But I didn’t just say “Well Cheers has a score of 7.6 and Wings has a score of 7.7 so obviously Wings is better.” That would be insane and even though I am one of the few people who to this day will defend Wings, it was in no way shape or form as good as Cheers. So I added in how many votes each show got as well, which is only fair. If a show was only seen by the mother of the executive producer and she gave it a 10/10 it would show up on IMDB as the greatest show of all time. On top of that I also factored in how many seasons and episodes a show had. Again because a show may be beloved by a small group of people but if it got cancelled after only 6 episodes you can’t say it’s one of the best TV shows set in Massachusetts.
