It's the 70s though that I'll pick as my fave, and that's another decade of viewing that I "lived through". I entered high school at the beginning of the decade, was living in NYC by the end of it.

The 70s just had the largest output of shows I count among my top faves in overall enjoyment and certain subsets. Another factor has to be the ambience of the times in which I watched these show - VCRs were practically unheard of and too cost-prohibitive ('Columbo' made a big deal out of one as an alibi in one episode) so that we had to watch those shows in real time or miss out. Which is why the early 70s (at least here in the USA) was a golden age for commercials - you had no choice but to watch them, so the advertisers could take their time to make them entertaining... instead of the info-dumps crammed into 15 seconds that they've become.

Social mores became relaxed, so that certain topics could be broached for the first time, and that began the "pushing the envelope" phase. And those who grew up watching TV were now starting to write for it - which may or may not be a good thing.

Plus there was the mood-enhancing "atmosphere", the clouds of which I lived under for a good chunk of that time.

And that brings me to the shows:
Columbo
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Saturday Night Live
Monty Python (for America, of course. We didn't even hear about them until 1974)
Doctor Who (same reasoning - I don't think it got over here for the most part until 1978 or so)
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
SCTV
WKRP In Cincinnatti
Soap
Three's Company
The Bob Newhart Show
All In The Family
Maude
The Muppet Show
mini-series
movies of the week
and Jiggle TV in general, of course, of course.

And although I saw it in the summer of '68, 'The Prisoner' got its major revival here in '77; and I was finally able to show my friends what I was blabbering about in that previous decade.

Those are just my choices - I left out a lot of biggies that didn't excite me as much as the general public.

Whether I can claim it as my personal decade I'm not sure - I think of myself as growing up in the 80s, but I was 10 in 1980 so most of my kids tv watching was already pretty entrenched.

My initial favourite shows were those I remember from being a kid - Doctor Who with Pertwee and then Tom Baker, the glory which was Pipkins, chunks of Space:1999, the first year of Blakes 7 and any number of BBC children's classic adaptations.

But then, ahving watched everything I remmebered on video in the late 80s and early 90s, I started looking out for old televsion I hadn't seen and discovered that the Seventies almost invariably produced my favourite shows.

Come the internet and trading old grainy videos, then cds and now the bittorrent revolution, and I still prefered seventies and earlier shows - whole strands of television like the grim miserablism which links shows as diverse as Survivors, Secret Army and Sapphire and Steel; creepy kids telly like Escape into Night and The Clifton House Mystery; fantastically silly sitcoms like Man About the House, George and Mildred and Dads Army which even with all the daftness were still capable of the unexpected; and above all drama after drama (from the BBC mainly) which doesn't patronise the viewer or underestimate his intelligence and where good writing, acting and direction are more important than bright lights, expensive fx and marketing.

God, I sound like a right grumpy old man today...

Hmm. Sixties memories include Watch With Mother: Bill and Ben, Pogles Wood, The Herb Garden, which I loved. Andy Pandy/Woodentops which I hated.

I can remember saying aged 5 at school my favourite tv programmes were Scooby Doo and Blue Peter (not dissimilar from my own sprogs).

Also of course I loved Dr Who. I liked Tom Baker more then Jon Pertwee. And as far as I was concerned it was all down hill after he left.

I also loved The Tomorrow People, plus all the children's classics they showed on Saturday afternoons.

I also loved alot of the sixties shows which got repeated: Randall & Hopkirk, The Persuaders (I was in love with Tony Curtis), and The High Chaparal.

Later on cop shows like Kojak, Columbo and Starsky and Hutch featured. Plus English stuff like The Professionals (my friend lived next door to Martin Shaw which involved lots of visits to her back garden to try and spot him), and The New Avengers...

Wasn't allowed to watch The Sweeney, but Minder was great.

Comedy was all Young Ones and Not the Nine O Clock News.

I missed lots of 80s telly cos I was a student and having too much of a good social life. So I think that probably makes me a sixties/seventies girl... (And now I feel really old).