I did not come to this show until around 1996, watching it in syndication shortly after it went off the air. Until then I'd never heard of it, and I was already in my 20s and had watched quite a lot of TV growing up. It was obviously a successful program, since it ran from 1988 - 1995 with over 100 episodes, but I do wonder if most of its ratings success was driven by viewership in the South of the United States? (I'm originally from the North).

In any case, I watched it for a couple years in college, and just started watching it again on the THIS network; I think it's an awesome show that really does a good job of making the Southern setting a character all its own, what with the heat, the fidelity to the Southern accent (no one, not even someone originally from the North like Carroll O'Conner himself, accidentally falls back into a Northern accent; on so many shows set in the South today, there's barely a trace of Southern drawl to be found, and that's a shame), and the unique history of the Deep South in particular.

Some have pointed out that the quality of the acting and indeed the mood of the show is uneven; concerning the latter, the show could be very serious, and then another episode would play out almost like a comedy (I'm thinking, for example, of the episode where there was a flamboyantly gay drug dealer, and another [or the same episode, maybe?] where there is a clueless group of middle-aged art thieves).

I'm more a fan of the darker episodes; two of my favorites are an episode where a man kills his cheating wife, and his young son and teenage daughter (who knew about the affair and still love their Dad even after what he did, which I found believable, but I don't think it would be written that way today) have to deal with the aftermath. My other favorite is late in the show, in Season 7, the episode "Little Girl Lost", dealing with a teenage female drunk driver who runs over and kills a little girl. There is sympathy for all involved in the plight, including the driver, which again I'm not sure would be written in quite the same way today.

Only the first season of this show, from what I've read, has been released in a quality DVD set; the rest of the seasons have apparently only been released in DVR format by Amazon, on disks which frequently freeze and, due to permissions issues, do not contain all of the episodes. Hopefully, one day, a quality DVD/Blu-Ray package of the entire series will be released.

I'd give the show a 4 or a 4.5 rating out of 5 on the TMDB scale.