Upfronts 2024: Procedurals, Sitcoms & Missing Persons On 20th Anniversary Of Greatest TV Season

deadline.com:

Looking at the crop of new scripted series selected by the broadcast networks for 2024-25, one cannot help but reminisce about the 20th anniversary of what may have been broadcast television’s greatest season ever.

The 2004-05 season introduced several genre-defying series — all but one based on original ideas — whose impact on TV storytelling is still being felt: Lost, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, House, The Office and Veronica Mars.

Remarkably, one of them, Grey’s Anatomy is still around, having just been renewed by ABC for Season 21, along with another show that premiered that same season, animated comedy American Dad!.

Aside from the fact that the current economic realities of the TV business will likely never support another drama going to 21 seasons, broadcast networks will also likely never take chances on so many unconventional ideas: a sci-fi drama on a deserted island that set the tone for modern genre fare, a comedy-drama about murderous suburban moms which inspired the Real Housewives reality juggernaut, a medical drama where romantic entanglements among doctors overshadow cases, a medical drama with an antihero protagonist we had only seen on cable in shows like The Sopranos and The Shield, an office mocumentary breaking the fourth wall and a teen noir mystery drama.