>>Sopranos, Deadwood, Rome, The Sheild, Rescue Me, BSG ( and of course, Buffy ) - so many good examples as to why TV is better than movies ever were or ever could be. A writer's medium with room for story and dialogue and foreshadowing and subtlety. Characters have time to change...
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>This is only a recent phenomenon. TV networks have been deathly afraid of offending the public, and more importantly the advertisers. Movie studios imagined themselves to be in the realm of art and were and are probably on average willing to take more risks.
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>That said, there is a strong and easy to make case that were in the golden age of television as far as writing goes.


One thing you don't mention is that on network TV there are FCC "decency" rules that must be observed regardless of whether you are willing to offend the public or advertisers. There are still censors who vet every show before it airs. I remember an interview with Robin Williams. He said when he was on "Mork and Mindy" he got to know the censor who reviewed the show quite well <g>. He said he had some success slipping Yiddish words past her. "But she knows what putz means now, that's for sure," he added.

You may be right about this being a golden age of TV writing. One big exception IMO is sitcoms. They are as godawful as ever. In fact, worse; where is today's "MASH", "Mary Tyler Moore", "All in the Family", or even "Get Smart"? Nowhere I have seen. Most of them are an endless repetition of the basic structure: line, reaction to the line, beat, punch line, laugh track. And the lines usually aren't that funny (hence laugh tracks).