The Guardian's top 50 television dramas of all time

What do you ­imagine a TV critic's ­ultimate ­viewing pleasure to be? A five-season box-set ­marathon of The Wire, quite possibly? A drama that digs into the ­power games of Washington (The West Wing)? You'd be surprised. It seems, at the Guardian at least, they are far more likely to enjoy a beautiful, costumed saga about 1920s aristocrats or a gritty tale about growing up as a lesbian in mid-70s Lancashire.

To find out what the Guardian's TV writers really think is the best TV drama ever made, we asked Nancy Banks-Smith, Sam Wollaston, Lucy Mangan, Sarah Dempster, Mark ­Lawson, Grace Dent and Richard Vine to rate, and then debate, what they consider the greatest ever series.

The overall winner was The ­Sopranos, the compelling tale of New Jersey mobsters created by David Chase. They almost all raved about this show, praising it as an ­original, absorbing and affectionate study of complicated family values. But it only made the top spot by a ­fraction. Their second favourite was Brideshead Revisited, the 1981 ITV adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel about religion, nobility and paisley dressing gowns. The Wire – HBO's widely praised series about Baltimore – attracted plenty of praise, but only ranked at No 14. Mad Men, the tale of 60s New York ad men, made the No 4 slot, just behind Our Friends in the North, an epic 1996 BBC2 ­series that traced the fates of four ­people across several decades.

Here's an interesting thing, though: ahead of some great US drama that has attracted such praise and attention in the last 10 years – The West Wing, Six Feet Under, Buffy the Vampire Slayer – comes a raft of British drama from the 1980s. A Very Peculiar Practice, Talking Heads, The Singing Detective, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Boys From the Blackstuff – these are among the "national treasure" series that have seared themselves into our critics' imaginations. "BBC4 and UK Gold should be repeating them but instead they're playing Coast 24 hours a day and bloody Silent Witness," complained Grace Dent.

To reach their verdict, the writers compiled a longlist. There was no period restriction, but the dramas had to be series (or serials) rather than one-offs. They marked the titles out of 20 and we averaged the scores, discounting any series that failed to attract at least four voters on the ­basis that these were the hobby horses of fanatics – not the greatest TV of all time. At this stage, A Very British Coup, Edge of Darkness and Tenko went by the wayside.