The worst insult you could give to Barney Rosenzweig, the executive producer of Cagney & Lacey, was to tell him that his work was "too TV.” Twin Peaks was universally praised by critics for being "unlike anything we'd ever seen on television." In a medium long considered artless, the only artful TV is that which isn't like all the rest of it. Quality TV breaks rules. It may do this by taking a traditional genre and transforming it, as Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, and Moonlighting did to the cop show, the doctor show, and the detective show, respectively. Or it may defy standard generic parameters and define new narrative territory heretofore unexplored by television, as did thirtysomething and Twin
