Kiichiro Sato, APOprah Winfrey ended her long-running daytime show in May.
The year that was was a television year defined by high-profile departures. Indeed, "Auld Lang Syne" could have been the theme song for the last 12 months.
There was also enough quality TV happening that it's hard to limit a best-of list to just a Top 10. But 2011 was no stranger to challenges -- and the challenging.
Fond farewells
The longest goodbye belonged to the queen of daytime television, Oprah Winfrey. She said farewell to her syndicated daytime show, turning full attention to getting the struggling OWN cable channel on track.
There were other seismic shifts on the syndication front. Regis Philbin wrapped up a 28-year daytime stint, leaving his talk show "Live! With Regis and Kelly." Mary Hart left "Entertainment Tonight" after a 29-year gig. Winfrey, Philbin and Hart logged a combined 82 years on their signature shows.
News divisions also saw big changes. Jim Lehrer stepped down as anchor of the "PBS NewsHour."
Meredith Vieira left NBC's "Today" show. Katie Couric relinquished the "CBS Evening News" anchor chair after just five years.
Keith Olbermann parted company with MSNBC. Glenn Beck left Fox News.
Breaking up is hard to do? Maybe so, but it sure happened with great regularity in 2011.
Scripted prime-time shows were not immune to the bye-bye blues. Steve Carell resigned from NBC's "The Office" after seven seasons. And Laurence Fishburne left CBS' "CSI" to concentrate on movie and theater roles.
But the noisiest departure of last year unquestionably was Charlie Sheen's carnival split with "Two and a Half Men."
Daytime viewers bade adieu to the soap opera "All My Children," which ended a 31-year ABC run. Prime-time viewers said goodbye to such long-running quality series as "Friday Night Lights" and "Rescue Me."
And then there were the sad goodbyes for those iconic TV stars who died in 2011. That roster includes Peter Falk ("Columbo"), James Arness ("Gunsmoke"), Harry Morgan ("M*A*S*H") and Andy Rooney ("60 Minutes").
FX"Justified," starring Timothy Olyphant, was at the top of the 2011 heap.
The Top 10
It's always difficult limiting this annual list of notable overachievers to 10, particularly when you consider how much class a handful of cable channels have contributed to the ever-expanding TV landscape. So you'll notice that, on few of these, I cheated, sneaking in an extra title or two. Even with such overt fudging, I sure wish I had a few more spots.
1. "Justified" (FX): Even if AMC's "Mad Men" had aired original episodes in 2011 (which it didn't), "Justified" might still have claimed the top spot. U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) and his crew raised their already impressive game in the second season, electrified by Margo Martindale's Emmy-winning portrayal of Kentucky crime matriarch Mags Bennett. Lightning doesn't strike twice? It has for Olyphant ("Deadwood") and Walton Goggins ("The Shield"), who have found sensational roles in another searing cable drama.
2. "Downton Abbey" (PBS): Set in a Yorkshire country house and airing on the PBS series "Masterpiece," this sumptuous British drama recalled the addictively witty delights of "Upstairs Downstairs" and "Brideshead Revisited." Writer and executive producer Julian Fellowes created a richly detailed world for a cast that includes Maggie Smith, Elizabeth McGovern, Hugh Bonneville and Siobhan Finneran. All return for the second season, which begins at 9 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 8, on WVIZ Channel 25 and WEAO Channel 49.
3. "The Middle" and "Modern Family" (ABC): Comedy is far from dead, and ABC consistently demonstrates the point with this hilarious one-two Wednesday-night combination. "Modern Family," featuring Youngstown native Ed O'Neill ("Married . . . With Children") rightly picks up award after award (including the last two Emmys for best comedy), but it shouldn't overshadow the wonderful work being done on "The Middle," starring Bay Village native Patricia Heaton. Two family comedies with loads of heart.
4. "Breaking Bad" (AMC): The fourth season had its logic lapses and its uneven episodes, but the powerhouse performances, particularly three-time Emmy winner Bryan Cranston's portrayal of increasingly dark Walter White, remained the mightiest draw to this ambitious drama about the heart and soul of a decent man being consumed by evil. Having taken the once-sympathetic Walter from high school chemistry teacher and cancer patient to drug kingpin and murderer, executive producer Vince Gilligan has said that the fifth season will be the last.
5. "Damages" (DirecTV): With the move from FX to DirecTV for the mystery drama's fourth season, there was significantly less buzz surrounding this marvelously sly show. Too bad. Glenn Close was typically brilliant (and scary) as master manipulator Patty Hewes, and John Goodman was a more-than-formidable opponent as Howard T. Erickson, the private military contractor at the center of a wrongful-death suit. With help from the likes of Judd Hirsch, Fisher Stevens and Griffin Dunne, the legal series successfully reinvented itself yet again.
6. "Community" (NBC): It's past time that this series got full credit for being one of the best lunacy courses on television. Although never nominated for anything when award shows roll around, the community-college comedy is often goofily innovative and genially eccentric. It also boasts one of the most able ensembles in the prime-time ranks, including Joel McHale, Danny Pudi, Gillian Jacobs, Chevy Chase and East Cleveland native Yvette Nicole Brown. Even NBC's executives, who put the show on hiatus last month, don't seem to realize what they have.
7. "True Blood" (HBO), "The Walking Dead" (AMC) and "American Horror Story" (FX): This terrific terror trio has upped the guts-and-gore factor in the cable realm, but each of the three leading supernatural series has served up some memorably chilling moments. Each has had its share of hey-wait-a-minute moments as well, and "True Blood" is probably the best of them. But the vampires of "True Blood," the zombies of "The Walking Dead" and the oddball ghosts of "American Horror Story" have pushed horror to haunting new heights on TV.
8. "Homeland" (Showtime): "Dexter," although still a pretty high-octane mixture in a year when the bloody formula seemed slightly off, may not have been the best series on Showtime in 2011. That distinction has passed to this nuanced and intricately plotted suspense thriller about a troubled CIA analyst (Claire Danes) who is convinced that a rescued Marine sniper (Damian Lewis) was turned by terrorists during his eight years of captivity in Iraq. There are nits to pick with the complex structure, but Danes, Lewis and Mandy Patinkin are mesmerizing.
9. "Rescue Me" (FX): The easy play on words here is that the fiery cable drama went out in a blaze of glory. Easy to say, perhaps, but not easy to pull off, considering the heights this series reached over its seven-season run. It was a wildly irreverent, moving and thoughtful final season, though, and Denis Leary's series about New York City firefighters went out on just the right note (with the Pogues' "Dirty Old Town") -- and near the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
10. "Boardwalk Empire" (HBO): Still uneven in its second season, the Roaring '20s drama nonetheless remains an intoxicating brew about Prohibition and the price of power. Atlantic City kingpin Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) regained control of the town and beat the legal rap against him, but it would be a stretch to suggest that all is right with his volatile world. The series certainly set itself challenges for the third season, killing off such popular characters as Angela (Aleksa Palladino), the Commodore (Dabney Coleman) and Jimmy (Michael Pitt).
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