I’ll admit it: I’ve spent more evenings than I’d like to confess recently falling down a nostalgia hole, half-watching old episodes of shows I haven’t thought about in decades, waiting to discover the inevitable – that they were only good because I was young and undemanding, and that time has not been kind. Mostly, that’s exactly what happens. But every so often you land on something that still holds up completely, and it’s worth separating the two.

There’s no shortage of American shows from the decade that still genuinely deliver on a rewatch. But any list like this suffers from the usual affliction if you stop there: a complete blind spot for anything that wasn’t made in Los Angeles. So here’s my honest highlight reel of the American shows worth your time, followed by the bit I suspect you actually came for – the Australian shows that deserve just as much of your loyalty, and arguably more of it.

The Americans made a few genuine classics

Cheers remains the gold standard of the ensemble sitcom, and it’s not close – eleven seasons deep, and it was still landing in the ratings top 10 for eight of them, which tells you something about how rarely a show gets better as it goes rather than coasting on momentum. The Golden Girls is the other one I’d defend to the death: four women well past the age television usually bothers writing interesting parts for, being funnier and sharper than almost anything currently airing. It hasn’t aged. If anything, it’s aged into relevance.

Magnum, P.I. holds up largely because Tom Selleck in a Hawaiian shirt is one of the great unimpeachable pleasures of the medium, and Miami Vice is worth revisiting for the soundtrack alone, though the visuals have their own woozy, pastel charm decades on. Moonlighting and Hart to Hart are both still fun in the way genuinely confident, chemistry-driven shows tend to be, and Dallas and Dynasty remain the gloriously overwrought benchmark for prime-time soap excess – the “who shot J.R.” mystery genuinely stopped the world for a moment, something no streaming cliffhanger has managed since.

Where the list gets shakier is Diff’rent Strokes, which hasn’t aged gracefully around its central premise, and Knight Rider, which I’d argue survives purely on the theme song and the novelty of a talking Trans Am, rather than any real dramatic merit. Fine nostalgia. Not necessarily “still a pleasure”.

Now, the shows we actually grew up on

Here’s my complaint with lists like this: they treat the 1980s as though television only happened on three American networks, when plenty of us were just as glued to the box watching shows made considerably closer to home.

A Country Practice deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as any American medical or ensemble drama of the decade. Set in the fictional town of Wandin Valley, it ran for 13 years and dealt with genuinely difficult subject matter – AIDS, domestic violence, disability – with a warmth and honesty that a lot of glossier American equivalents never attempted. If you haven’t revisited it, it holds up as genuinely good television, not just comfort food.

The Flying Doctors gave us Andrew McFarlane flying into the outback fixing up patients and, more subtly, doing more to romanticise remote Australia than any tourism campaign before or since. It’s the kind of show that made the rest of the world briefly believe every Australian doctor arrived by light aircraft, which, frankly, isn’t the worst piece of national branding we’ve ever produced.

Sons and Daughters was our answer to the American prime-time soap, and it deserves far more credit than it gets – Rowena Wallace’s turn as the deliciously scheming Patricia won her four Logies, and the show’s tangled, Romeo-and-Juliet family rivalry gave Dallas and Dynasty a genuine run for their money on pure melodrama, without needing a single oil well.

Neighbours, which began in 1985, went on to become one of the most quietly influential exports this country has ever produced – a show that somehow launched Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan into global pop stardom almost as a side effect of its storylines, and ran for four full decades before finally wrapping up. Say what you like about Ramsay Street, but very few pieces of Australian culture have travelled that far, for that long.

Home and Away, arriving right at the tail end of the decade in 1988, took the family-drama format to the beach and never looked back, becoming appointment viewing for a new generation almost overnight.

And if you want something with real bite, Kingswood Country remains a sharper piece of social satire than its daggy sitcom reputation suggests – Ted Bullpitt’s small-minded suburban grumbling was pointed commentary on the Australia of its time, dressed up as a laugh.

The verdict

The Americans made some genuinely great television in the 1980s, and I won’t pretend otherwise. But the idea that the decade’s most enduring shows all came out of Hollywood does a disservice to a golden run of Australian drama and soap that shaped an entire generation of viewers here just as thoroughly — and, in the case of a couple of Ramsay Street exports, arguably shaped a few generations overseas as well.

If you’re going to spend an evening down the nostalgia hole, do yourself a favour and split your time evenly. Some of the best television of that decade was made considerably closer to home than Los Angeles.