The Simpsons wins vote for best TV series of all time

The Simpsons beats Twin Peaks in best series vote

Miami Vice knocked out The A-Team by 88 votes to 87. A single ballot. In the previous round, Romanzo Incivil had fallen to Twin Peaks (The Return) by 33 to 32, another one-vote margin. The battle to choose the best series of all time was not decided in the big finals, but by differences that fit in one hand, and that detail explains better than any headline why the result still raises hackles.

The votes have crowned The Simpsons with 134 votes against 76 for Twin Peaks. The animated series prevails over David Lynch's work in the final of a tournament that started from a closed list: the 32 fiction series best rated on Filmaffinity up to 2021, plus 16 animated, ten classics and six Spanish productions.

The bracket: from the initial 32 duels to the final

The first matchups left few doubts in the upper zone. The Wire crushed Stranger Things (118-37), Twin Peaks beat Cristal (144-34) and The X-Files beat Los Serrano (104-11). But already in the round of 32 the seeds of what was to come appeared: The Pink Panther sailed past Cowboy Bebop (92-40), Around the World with Willy Fog eliminated Death Note (55-40) and Curro Jiménez beat Columbo (86-81) in a clash of classics decided by five votes. The A-Team and Miami Vice signed the tightest duel of the round, resolved by a single vote.

In the round of 32, Dragon Ball overcame True Detective (60-58), Game of Thrones beat Star Trek (56-67) and Verano azul left out The Office (40-38). The round of 16 confirmed that the bracket did not respect hierarchies: The X-Files beat Futurama 46-43. Already in the quarterfinals, Twin Peaks came close to elimination against Dragon Ball (58-55) while The Wire fell to The X-Files (37-43), a result that much of the public read as the big shock of the tournament.

The duels decided by a single vote

The tournament left a collection of minimal margins that dismantles the idea of a clear favorite. Miami Vice (88) against The A-Team (87). Twin Peaks (The Return) eliminating Romanzo Incivil by 33 to 32. And the near miss of Dragon Ball against Twin Peaks in the quarterfinals, five votes apart in a duel that many considered settled.

To those matchups are added those that knocked down heavyweights without anyone seeing it coming. True Detective fell to Dragon Ball in the round of 32, a fight that, added to the subsequent elimination of The Wire, shaped the most repeated thesis: the majority vote rewards the popular and recognizable over the demanding, and cult series end up paying for their own label.

Why The Simpsons wins and not The Wire or Breaking Bad

The semifinal resolved the mystery by the minimum: The Simpsons eliminated Breaking Bad by 65 to 63, while Twin Peaks overcame The X-Files by 48-42. On paper, Breaking Bad started with a better accumulated record (316 votes compared to 304 for the yellow series at the close of the quarterfinals), but the direct duel does not understand averages.

The explanations circulating are contradictory and none prevails. The series that accumulated the most votes round after round was Twin Peaks, with 334 at the close of the quarterfinals.

The series missed from the list

No tournament with a closed list is free from the outcry over what did not enter. Over the months, the presence of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Seinfeld, House, The Expanse, I, Claudius, Hill Street Blues, Red Dwarf and Doctor Who was demanded. Recent titles such as The Knick, about a New York hospital in 1900, or Severance, discarded for not having finished airing, were also proposed.

On the opposite side, there were those who questioned the inclusion of several contemporary candidates, considered inflated by the bias of mass voting on platforms. The criterion —a snapshot of the highest rated on Filmaffinity up to 2021— concentrated almost all the criticism, and there were express requests to redo the distribution by genre or by decade in a future edition.

The weight of anime and the fight for quotas

The distribution of blocks raised hackles from day one: ten Western animated series and six of Japanese origin entered by design. An overrepresentation of anime attributable to a highly mobilized audience was denounced, and it was responded that Dragon Ball or Evangelion are first-rate cultural phenomena. The organizer himself admitted that the selection of Japanese titles was debatable and that not all could enter.

The block structure was maintained until the end, but the real proportion of votes overflowed it: in the last round two animation productions competed and one of them took the prize.

The final abstention and the wear of the format

The decisive stretch left an unusual picture: part of the public announced that it did not plan to vote in a final between Twin Peaks and The Simpsons, considered a farce by the most purist sectors. There were those who declared themselves cheated by the development of the previous rounds, those who lamented that Knight Rider did not go further and those who asked for a third and fourth place match to stretch the competition.

Despite the noise, there were congratulations to the organization for the idea and a proposal on the table: repeat the format by genres —drama, comedy, pavor, science fiction— to avoid such broad lists ending up diluting the criterion.

The uncomfortable fact remains. Twin Peaks was the series that accumulated the most votes in the entire tournament, 334, and lost the final by 58 votes difference. Between the round that elevated it and the final duel there is a distance that no sum of quarterfinals explains.