IMHO, if you have to watch the whole thing, sequentially, to appreciate a TV series, it’s not playing the same game as an episodic series. They should be separate categories.
Exactly. New drama series are novels, each episode just a chapter from the book. Look at Season two of Breaking Bad for an example. The beginning of each episode is a “flash forward” to what’s going to happen in the season’s final episode, inferring that Season two is one huge story.
Is that good? Is that bad?
Does that make modern dramas “superior” to older dramas?
Or are they two completely different forms.
She’s the Sheriff, of course.
Television is better now. There’s no reason whatsoever that the best series should be evenly distributed in time. Probably should expect it to be skewed towards more recent shows since the writers and directors have learned lessons from earlier.
Excuse me, but you misspelled The Governor and J.J.
No love for the classics? Twilight Zone and The Fugitive would be on my lists.
They are different forms and the modern show is the superior form. It’s long form cinema as opposed to just a series of episodes where the trick is to continue the string forever without anything changing too much.
Deadwood
Justified
Six Feet Under
Game of Thrones
Boardwalk Empire
All better than older shows with very few exceptions.
Also I highly recommend “The Leftovers.”
I think it’s going to be the most creative show for the time being.
“ER” was damned good, and predates today’s Golden Age of TV. It aired five years before “The Sopranos” premiered.
Madmen should have made the top 3. Weird list.
West Wing is out: the OP wanted dramas. Though, in my opinion, it was one of the best sitcoms ever – at least for 1-4, 5-7 kind of faded in that.
I would agree except it went on 5 seasons too long. At least. A series can definitely hurt it’s legacy by staying on too long.
But you miss my point.
We’re talking TV shows, not cinema.
Films are meant to be watched in one setting. One long story with a beginning, middle and end.
Television shows are meant to be watched in spurts. One hour here, a half hour there.
If it takes a creator 13 episodes to tell one complete story, one long drama, that’s no longer a TV show. That’s one hell of a long movie.
Some creators in the past were able to tell long, over reaching stories as part of an hour drama, as sub plots within the show’s hour. Look back at Hill Street Blues or St. Elsewhere for example. Each episode can stand on their own, but they had sub plots that formed a connecting storyline over several episodes, if not the full season. They were hour long, once a week dramatic TV shows.
Calling modern dramas “Superior” simply because they’ve trashed the weekly hour format is wrong IMO. It’s a new form. Not better, not worse.
If I want to enjoy Breaking Bad for example, can I simply turn on episode 4 of season 3 and enjoy it as much as someone who’s been watching it since the pilot? Of course not. Does that make it worse than let’s say Law & Order which can be viewed at anytime. No. Does it’s over reaching storyline make it superior? No again.
It makes it an entirely new form of drama but not a superior one.
Because the show sucked? 
Please feel free to list you top comedies then! But will you stipulate that Breaking Bad and Orange is Black are in the select minority of interesting drama> And doesn’t Orange is Black qualify as comedy, at least in some perverse sense?
Than you for articulating why the modern dramas are better than the old ones.
Yes, I forgot this one. Or rather haven’t watched it for 50 years. 
Maybe I should find a way to rewatch this series! There was also an each-episode-is-standalone-short where Richard Boone was a regular actor; it was also good. But this is a different genre from the “TV series with on-going cast assignment.”
Game of Thrones I watched part of one episode. I’d probably like it a lot if I really got into it, but it might take much concentration getting started — familiarizing myself with the culture. With my selections, all set in contemporary America, immersion is immediate.
I enjoyed Justified and Boardwalk Empire, but they are inferior to my top choices because the characters are less interesting() and less likable. The same may be true of Deadwood. ( - The villains in Justified were interesting; that show could have been salvaged with just 1 or 2 interesting lawman. Whatshisname didn’t turn me on.)
I thought Six Feet Under was done very well, but the plots, characters and dialog are less exciting than with, e.g. crime drama.
I did mention ER as a top candidate in OP. OTOH, since Hill Street Blues was mentioned: On rewatch Hill Street will be seen as stilted, almost slapstick or vaudevillian, compared with modern TV drama.
If the list were to include comedies, I should like to nominate House. Its primary plot hour lines were fairly formulaic, but the leitmotif material made the show very watchable. And while the underlying story arcs shaped a larger story, as I recall, they were placed into the episodes in a way that could allow the viewer to watch individual episodes without feeling too excluded by having missed the longer story line.
As far as pure comedy, the apex has to be Coupling, which pasted on a fourth season that was still as high quality as what went before. Yes, I get that British television is not included, but good stuff ought to get proper credit.
Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man!
But seriously, debates about what art form is “superior” is just unsubstantiated intellectualized wanking meant to bolster one’s personal preferences . . . well, intellectual wanking on a higher level than ranking art within a form. 
Which is the superior art form, prose or poetry? Which is the superior art form, short stories or novels? Or essay writing? Or ?
You might like long-form TV drama better than other styles, but what makes them “better”?
The author of this book and you and others in this thread have come up with an arbitrary list of criteria for “good” television that are synonymous with the definition of a particular style. Congratulations. I’m not sure what makes “long form cinema”, as you say, inherently better than fascinating, thought-provoking, funny, irreverent, compelling or emotional series of shorter stories. Because episodic TV can be all of those things, just as serial TV can.
Dramas only? Lessee…
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Hill Street Blues
The West Wing
Game of Thrones
Comedies only:
Seinfeld
Friends
Frasier
Big Bang Theory
The Simpsons
So, The West Wing or Big Bang Theory.
Even speaking as someone who prefers the modern serialized format, I’ll still say that MAS*H deserves to be on this list.
And just looking at science fiction, Babylon 5 was better than any iteration of Star Trek.
I object to the OP’s criteria that a series have more than 2 seasons. Almost all Japanese series have exactly two seasons, because they plot out a 2 season story arc, tell that story arc, and quit. And that’s just better. LOST, for example, might have been a great show if they’d actually plotted the thing out and finished it. David Lynch’s upcoming Twin Peaks series will probably be 1 season, but it may be the best TV series ever made (probably not, but hopefully).
Japan would win this battle, for the sheer fact that they’ve been doing good TV for longer than the US has and that the US still hasn’t discovered how to plot TV shows. Deadwood and Breaking Bad are great TV, but so are Cowboy Bebop, The Hakkenden, Key: The Metal Idol, Evangelion, etc.