Counting down the best TV in 2010

5. "The Good Wife" (CBS)

This is one of the best network dramas of the year. That means it's more conventional than the cable dramas, with weekly procedural plots and more superficially written characters. But still, the legal issues are timely and sharply written, and the law-office and home soap opera material, involving Julianna Margulies's Alicia as a humiliated wife taking control of her circumstances, is rich. The writers veer away from sentiment; "The Good Wife" is a dramatic chess game that's as cool as Margulies's demeanor.