I want to add one to the list -- which, despite citing Self-Referential, Self-Important Mopey Boy, is a valiant effort, a television show that, I'd argue, set the stage for all the irony, self-referentialism and meta-ness to follow.
That's Moonlighting.
Moonlighting was the show that introduced me to the edges of the fourth wall. It demonstrated that silliness and drama could co-exist, that if a show wanted to just do "Taming of the Shrew" one week it just had to decide to do it, and trusted its audience to follow along.
From the Museum of Television and Radio's website, acting all smarty-smart:
Additionally, in many episodes, protagonists Maddie and David break the theatrical "fourth wall" convention with self-reflexive references to themselves as actors in a television program or to the commercial nature of the television medium. Such metatextual practices are techniques of defamiliarization which, according to certain formalist critical theories, epitomize the experience and purpose of art; they jar viewers out of the complacent, narcotizing pleasure of familiar forms and invite them to question and appreciate the artistic possibilities and limitations of generic forms. Moonlighting's use of these metatextual practices signifies its recognition of the traditions that have shaped it and its self-conscious comments on its departure from those traditions--characteristics typically attributed to works regarded as highly artistic.
Arguably, "It's Garry Shandling's Show" did it better, but it had to start somewhere.
(Of course, the show also introduced the world to Bruce Willis, and I'd argue that's a net positive.)
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