People who listen to public radio tend to dismiss TV as a "vast wasteland." That memorable phrase - "vast wasteland" - was coined in a speech 41 years ago by Newton Minnow, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

But since I was 6 years old when he delivered it, I had never read the rest of the speech. So when I looked it up what I found surprised me because he also said this: "when television is good, nothing - not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers - is better."

He's right, as the last decade has certainly proved.

Name a comic novel or a film comedy from the last dozen years superior to The Simpsons. Or a recent play or movie better than The Sopranos. In fact, most nights on television -- Frasier, Friends, West Wing, TV Funhouse, the Daily Show, ER -- you can experience fresh writing and acting as good or better than 99 percent of what's in theaters.

"Golden Age of Television" is not oxymoronic. I think we've been in a golden age for quite a while. In fact, it strikes me that we're now late into network TV's golden age -- that end-game in pretty much any cultural epoch where Mannerism kicks in and the arresting innovations of the day before yesterday become the self-conscious tics of today.

I'm thinking of the fantasy sequence in prime-time TV. The trend got going back in the early 90's with the HBO show Dream On. The hero's thoughts were depicted by cutting quickly to brief clips from old movies and old TV shows.

A girlfriend is nagging him, so he imagines Jimmy Cagney shoving the grapefruit in Mae Clark's face. He finds himself sucking up to a boss -- and thus imagines Eddie Haskell acting unctuously toward Ward Cleaver.

The year after Dream On went off the air, Ally McBeal premiered and made the fantasy sequence part of TV's lingua franca for millions more people.

And then -- this being television -- the fantasy sequence proliferated, crazily. For some reason, this past season, NBC in particular bet the ranch on fantasy-sequence-driven sitcoms.

There is Scrubs, in which moments of the nerdy star's self image are literalized -- he is actually a deer caught in headlights, he is actually hit on the head by a ton of bricks. Then there's Inside Schwartz, where an aspiring sportscaster's fantasies take the form of athletic events. And Imagine That, in which the hero, played by the brilliant Hank Azaria, is a wimpy writer who's daydreams are acted out, Ally McBeal-ishly.

If you haven't seen Inside Schwartz and Imagine That, it's too late. They've already been cancelled. Because they sucked.

But there's one more on the way, and judging from what I've seen of the pilot, it's the best of the whole lot. Andy Richter Controls the Universe and it premieres on March 19th. The premise is yet another weenie writer with extravagant fantasies, but it takes James Thurber's old Walter Mitty concept and post-modernizes it. It plays with that line between fantasy and reality - with an unreliable narrator and stories a within its stories.

In the twilight of nearly all cultural golden ages there are Mannerist masterpieces. Like Michaelangelo's 16th century Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel. Or Sir John Soane's eclectic, jam-packed 19th century house in London.

Or even, just maybe, one new 21st century TV show.

This is Kurt Andersen in Studio 360.