As we head into March Madness, New York Magazine‘s excellent culture blog, Vulture, has decided to a slightly different sort of bracketing: what is the best drama of the past 25 years?

Looking back at 1990, our options for good TV dramas were limited – a 21 Jump Street spinoff, some show with Richard Chamberlain that wasn’t The Thorn Birds, and shows for the older set, Matlock and Murder, She Wrote.  Vulture goes on to suggest that Twin Peaks was one of the first shows for adults in a long time –

Twin Peaks was a TV show that didn’t seem to knowit was a TV show, and its mere existence conveyed a strangely empowering message to TV viewers everywhere, people who’d long been content with neuron-dimming procedurals and plod-heavy soaps: You’re smarter than this.

And since then, those TV viewers who want it, have been treated like adults with shows like Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and Battlestar Galactica.

A panel of novelists, actors, writers, and journalists will make the case for their shows and then decide who goes on to the next level until New York Magazine’s TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz will announce the final winner on March 23.

Sopranos - the probable favorite

This is a breakdown of all the shows in the running, with their initial sparring partners, my choices are in bold:
Group 1:
Sopranos vs Six Feet Under – this was today’s bracket, Sopranos won.
The Shieldvs NYPD Blue
Breaking Bad* vs Friday Night Lights
Twin Peaks vs Battlestar Galactica 

Group 2:The Wire vs My So-Called Life
X-Files vs West Wing
Buffy the Vampire Slayer vs Deadwood
Mad Men* vs Lost

*These shows have not yet finished their run, so this is based on all shows that have aired to date.

Are there any shows missing? Which do you think will/should win?