9. Buffy The Vampire Slayer
The 90s were a pretty good place for teen dramas - with Dawson's Creek and Beverly Hills 90210 and My So-Called Life, there was no shortage of solid entertainment for that particular demographic. But until Buffy The Vampire Slayer came around, there wasn't a huge amount of overlap between genre shows and programmes that were meant to be aimed at teenagers. In the eyes of most major networks, supernatural television shows for teens didn't seem to have a big market. It's surprising that anyone was willing to take a chance on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, being based on a pretty campy movie from the early 90s that didn't exactly win over audiences. But as a new network, the WB didn't have much to lose, and they picked up the innovative new show. After their best performing drama, Savannah (a programme more or less lost to time despite being relatively successful when it was on the air), met an early end, Buffy was waiting to step into the Monday 9pm time slot. There, it became a phenomenon, one that would run for seven seasons and inspire a spin-off for one of its main characters. Without Buffy, you don't get Roswell, or The Vampire Diaries, or Teen Wolf, or Supernatural - an entire genre of shows which has proven itself to be very lucrative would never have gotten the green light.