If I had to pick fictional television characters to represent 2000s-era humans for a future generation, 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon would be my No. 1. Tina Fey’s character, while over the top, really represents the average snack food-loving workaholic.   

Thanks to a certain Alaskan, woman’s journey to the White House will forever have an embarrassing footnote left over from the 2008 election. After countless women, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Hillary Clinton, fought for gender equality in politics, the woman who came closest to the presidency famously flubbed the story of Paul Revere.   

A group of young women balance life, love and work as they try to make their mark on New York City. Sound familiar? But where Carrie and Co. represented an embellished fantasy of glamorous, high-powered, sexualized New Yorkers, HBO’s Girls offers a more realistic view of entering adulthood as a 21st century female.   

Premium cable’s apparent answer to Mad Men, Magic City (10 p.m. Friday, Starz) opens on New Year’s Eve 1958 in Miami Beach, Fla. Ike Evans (played by Javier Bardem-lookalike Jeffrey Dean Morgan) owns the luxurious Miramar Playa Hotel, the pinnacle of Miami vacationing and nightlife.  

Based on George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, this fantastical medieval drama isn’t just for fantasy nerds. Game of Thrones follows the major families in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros (think post-Dark Ages Europe), all with their respective lands, on the brink of all-out war over who will take the all-powerful Iron Throne.  

“Mad men” was a real term for the advertising kings of Madison Avenue in Manhattan during the 1960s, created by those very same men. How telling.  

Who would have thought that a cutout animation featuring four potty-mouthed kids, one of the first viral Internet videos, would go on to become an international phenomenon?  

American remakes of British television shows tend to be hit or miss. The Office certainly found a place in America’s heart, but countless others just didn’t quite make the trip across the pond. Showtime’s Shameless gives an award-winning Brit series a Chicago-style makeover, resulting in one of the grittiest portrayals of lower class family life on U.S. television.   

Little people in the media have come a long way since the munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. Today, there are countless reality shows revealing the lives of dwarves, like Little People, Big World and even Pit Boss. Peter Dinklage, an actor with achondroplasia (a common cause of dwarfism), has escaped stereotypical size-based roles to play serious characters in television in film.  

A show about horseracing might seem too niche to captivate a wide audience, but HBO’s Luck is entertaining for all types of viewers thanks to the varied perspectives from inside the track. Dustin Hoffman stars as Ace, an organized crime man fresh out of his stint in federal prison.   

Some television characters are so ridiculous, yet somehow so true-to-life, we have a hard time separating the actor from the role. Like Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon or Steve Carell’s Michael Scott, comedian Danny McBride has truly made Eastbound and Down’s Kenny Powers an extension of himself. (Go ahead, make a boner joke — Kenny would.)   

When filmmaker George Romero directed 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, he surely had no clue zombies would turn into a cultural phenomenon. While tons of horror films give way to camp, sex or bad special effects, Living Dead remains a classic and has prompted a cult of the zombie-obsessed.   

An American testifies against the Russian mob, forcing him and his family to enter the Witness Protection Program, move to New York City and … make a reality show about it! This is the premise of Adult Swim’s sleeper hit Delocated (midnight Thursdays, Cartoon Network).  

Lake Superior State University recently released its annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness. Annoying terms such as “baby bump,” “man cave” and the worn-out “amazing” made the list. Now, I can’t argue with the retiring of these words, but I’d like to add one to the list — hipster.  

If you don’t know Australian comedic jack-of-all-trades Chris Lilley, then get your Netflix/HBO.com/illegal download on and check out his work in We Can Be Heroes, Summer Heights High and Angry Boys (10 p.m. Sunday, HBO).