Animated: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop (Tie)
Each need no explanation...
Comedy: Curb Your Enthusiasm, Extras, or The office UK. Arrested Decvelopment gets a mention. (Tie)
Curb Your Enthusiasm has a hint of Graucho Marx, and old 1930's comedies in it. It is also well improvised and acted.
Extras and Office UK are subtle as hell, naturalistic, yet are fictitiously acceptable enough for certain situations to have certain comedic effects. Plus both are made by Ricky Gervais. Arrested development, well it is a classic all on its own. The situations, continuity errors made on purpose, the subtlety that may even go past the office, the vast amount of wordplay and heavy use of jargon make this comedy good.
Drama: The Sopranos, The Wire (Tie).
The Wire takes heavily from the Greek tragedies and keeps the reader in suspense. Plus, it has a deep message, so deep in fact that there are 5 of them: a theme for each season which explores a different sociopolitical aspect of the American dystopia. They are the drug trade/ police efforts against it; the docks/ the corruption of american working class; government, bureaucracy/ reformation; schools/ theme of miseducation of innercity children at the expense of the game, news/ exposure to city-wide events. No show has ever transformed TV like the Wire.
The Sopranos is considered to be literature in many academic circles. Its use of reference and allusion to the Godfather films, Goodfellas and Italian filmmakers knows know bounds. Second of all, The Sopranos used cinematic techniques that have not been used in TV before and its eclectic use of music gives it a strange and vibrant feel. The show is noted for it's feature-film quality and it's brilliant use of lighting (resembling da Vinci's chiaoscuro technique) to give the show a morally enthralling tale. Written in the model of Shakespeare and Cervantes, the Sopranos, along with The Wire, had set the standard of TV for many years to come.