It’s traditional for TV critics to name their 10 top series at the end of the year.

But I’m breaking that tradition by naming 11.

Readers may think I’m indecisive, but I prefer to think the decision is based on quality.

The top 11 (alphabetically):

• Bones (Fox). It’s certainly appropriate that this series is first on the list. At times I feel I’m a one-person bandwagon supporting this crime procedural drama that also specializes in humor and heart.

Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz are terrific as the dedicated forensic anthropologist and the sarcastic but likable FBI agent who solve mysteries by examining bones.

• The Closer (TNT). Kyra Sedgwick, a feminine cop heroine transplanted from Atlanta to Los Angeles utilizes a deceptive Southern twang and style in solving and "closing" murder cases.

Sedgwick’s character and performance hoist the series out of the predictable TV crime genre.

• Friday Night Lights (NBC). Readers already know of my ongoing support for this sensitive drama about life in a rural Texas town completely absorbed in the hoped-for success of its high school football team.

The writing, acting and stunning close-up camera angles are the ingredients that make Lights a shining freshman series.

• Grey’s Anatomy (ABC). Mix compassionate hospital stories with human emotions and romantic triangles that would vex an MIT trigonometry professor and you get a high-class soap that deserves its huge, loyal audience.

However, I wouldn’t want to be a patient in this Seattle hospital.

• The Office (NBC). Transferring subtle British humor to the sensibilities of U.S. television is not an easy trick. (Anyone remember Coupling?).

But producers have done so with humorous scripts and a marvelous cast headed by Steve Carell, who can draw chuckles with a simple stare. And there’s no laugh track.

• Rescue Me (FX cable). It’s raw, often violent and features strong sexual content. But add compelling to the description of this Denis Leary-Peter Tolan series about life in a Manhattan firehouse, post Sept. 11.

Fans also love the ribald humor.

• The Shield (FX cable). Michael Chiklis continues to soar to dramatic heights as a Los Angeles rogue cop who, this past season, was chilled by a new supervisor, played by Forest Whitaker.

Trite but true - scenes crackled when the two faced-off against one another.

• 30 Rock (NBC). This brisk comedy, now established on Thursday night, offers a pointed, humorous "inside view" of life behind the scenes of a network variety series.

Producer-creator Tina Fey is superb as the frustrated comedy writer while Alec Baldwin is an Emmy candidate as an arrogant, self-absorbed "TV suit."

• 24 (Fox). Did you really believe five seasons ago that a series about a frantic day in the life of a super-agent saving the country (or the world) would draw strong audience support?

Season six starring the believable Kiefer Sutherland - not exactly the typical muscular, macho TV hero - begins Jan. 14.

• Ugly Betty (ABC). The freshman hit of the fall season, this fairy-tale series produces tears and smiles from viewers applauding America Ferrera’s performance as an "ugly duckling" who invades the swanlike world of high fashion.

A question remains: How long can Betty remain an ugly duckling?

• The Wire (HBO). Audience ratings on season four of the intense urban drama about life on the Baltimore streets was up 17 percent over the previous year. And with good reason. Most of story lines concentrated on four inner-city teens caught in the crossfire between good and evil. This remarkable drama will return for a fifth season in 2007.

WORST NEW SERIES: This is an important category simply because it’s overcrowded with entrants. The winner: Happy Hour, a short-lived (thankfully) Fox comedy about a single young man, who liked to party in an apartment house filled with curvy women. What a concept. Happy Hour lasted three unhappy half-hours.

BEST DOCUMENTARY: Viewers who missed Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke, a monumental, four-hour HBO miniseries, can find it on DVD. Billed as a requiem in four acts, the production, more than any other TV effort, provides a searing, intimate portrait of New Orleans in the wake of Katrina’s destruction. But equally important, Lee’s work salutes the victims’ desire for survival that often triumphed over misery and despair.

Notable again was public television’s Frontline, the ongoing, timely documentary series that deals with controversial issues. Heading the list this year was The Age of AIDS, a comprehensive, scary look at the past, present and future of a disease many have put on an emotional back burner.

TODAY’S NOSTALGIA: On Dec. 27, 1967, Charles Collingwood and Morley Safer interviewed Gen. William Westmoreland on a CBS News Special about the negative military situation in Vietnam.