MONK also hit the ground running.
Queer as Folk, USA version.
Wasn’t THE MUPPET SHOW’s pilot episode the one that won Rita Moreno an Emmy?
Netflix has a great movie named Parallelsright now. It’s kind of like a more serious Sliders, but this time it’s an entire building that slides between alternate Earths. The thing is, it was originally supposed to be a pilot for a new series.
I keep hoping it’ll get picked up somehow, but I doubt it. Still worth a watch, though.
The pilot episode of THE INCREDIBLE HULK was movie quality.
Agreed. The only caveat I would add is that, today, it wouldn’t be nearly as great. It set the tone for the shocking and dark dramas that came afterward, and so we’re kind of used to that now. At the time it was pretty ground breaking.
Another one I forgot for my OP: Fargo.
All three pilots I’ve mentioned have been for mystery series. Maybe it’s easier to make a pilot for these kind of shows, since it lets you tantalize the viewers with something to tune in for again.
Similarly with The Night Stalker (not that anyone has mentioned it).
The pilot of MAS*H is still one of my faves. (No, I do not mean Cowboy, who flew the chopper 
)
ER is one of the best pilots ever and I don’t really like doctor shows.
NYPD Blue
I didn’t see that movie until Columbo had become part of the Mystery Movie, and the first time I watched it I didn’t even know that Columbo was in it (my parents had tuned it in). I remember saying to my parents at one point, “If this was Columbo, this is the part where he’d come in.” Sure enough, enter Peter Falk. “Ah, excuse me. I’m Lt. Columbo from the LAPD.” That’s how perfect the episode’s formula was and set the tone for the series.
Numb3rs.
Also, I agree that “33” (Battlestar Galactica) was brilliant.
I’ll throw in another vote for Mad Men. It had me hooked from the start, set a tone that the show would hold (versus shows were the pilot seems unrelated) and still holds up as “good television” even today.
The pilot episode of BATMAN had Frank Gorshin already doing his ‘Riddler’ schtick to perfection, plus curvy Jill St John, plus Adam West mentioning Bruce Wayne’s dead parents and doing the Batusi, so they were pretty well loaded for bear with that one.
The pilot for The Walking Dead is fantastic and uses the isolation and uncertainty of the environment to great effect. Shame it didn’t take long after that to grow stale and predictable.
Hill Street Blues. The pilot was so good they had to resurrect two characters when the series was picked up. Hill and Renko were supposed to die.
My Name Is Earl got everything right in the first episode.
And surprisingly more well-groomed than he would become later on.
The show I came in to mention was Deep Space Nine, introducing all the elements of the show except for the Dominion, which wouldn’t come up until later, and I find Sisko’s acceptance of his wife’s death still moving even after repeated viewings. It’s easily the best of the modern-Trek pilots.
Nitpick: He wasn’t “dropped,” he decided he didn’t want to do the show because he felt it was in bad taste. A direct quote: “Nazis were seldom dumb and never funny.”
FYI, the character (“Vladimir Minsk”) was played by Leonid Kinskey, a very interesting man:
IIRC, he was also a circus performer before emigrating from Russia.
And yeah, the pilot of Hogan’s Heroes was hilarious! 
Nitpick: Only Renko was supposed to die, which is why he was forever after given a special credit at the beginning of the show. It would seem he was appearing under some sort of special agreement, like Martin Landau and Barbara Bain on Mission: Impossible.
After showing the pilot to test audiences, they had to reshoot Esterhaus’s scene at end when he tells Furillo that two of his men had been gunned down. The original line was “One in critical condition, one DOA.”