`SOPRANOS' HITS HIGHEST NOTE.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

If you do a top-10 list of a year's worth of television, some not-truly-great stuff can weasel its way in if you're not careful. So instead, here's a top-5 list:

1. "The Sopranos": If I were compiling a list of best anything this year - movies, books, sports teams, pasta dishes, Best-Of Lists - I'd probably put this near or at the top of all of them; it was that good. David Chase's comedy-drama essayed the life of Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini, as terrific as the rest of the cast), a mobster suffering a midlife crisis worse than most - how many other people's mothers are trying to have them killed? Virtually every episode was a masterpiece: In the pilot, Tony wistfully waxed poetic about the loss of the geese that once swam in his pool. The episode in which Tony took a break from visiting colleges with his daughter to rub out an informant was justly famous. A less-celebrated but no less powerful moment came when Tony ultimately spared the life of a soccer coach who got on his wrong side. Happily, new episodes begin in January.

2. "Animal Farm" and "Strange Justice": One top telefilm came from TNT, which adapted George Orwell loosely, yet made keen points about power corrupting, thanks to a charming and/or grotesque menagerie - it was the darker side of "Babe" without going stark-raving "Pig in the City." The other was Showtime's politically charged thriller examining the Clarence Thomas-Supreme Court fiasco with both savvy insight and artfulness.

3. "Not for Ourselves Alone" and "New York: A Documentary Film": The Burns brothers did it again: Ken's documentary on the suffragette movement - particularly the women who spearheaded, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony - managed to be both authoritatively informative about a generally overlooked portion of our nation's history and surprisingly moving. Ric's exhaustive, 10-hour epic (two more hours are due in early 2000) told you everything you wanted to know about the Big Apple as well as some stuff you didn't; Brian Keane added a haunting, evocative score.

4. "Freaks and Geeks": It's the most honest depiction of high school life on TV - even if it does take place in the '80s and seems mildly irrelevant to some of today's more media-savvy kids - with smart scripts and actors who look as if they were born into their roles. It's hilarious one week, moving the next and both the week after that. Its ratings are hurting, but it's getting a second chance in 2000 when it moves to Mondays on NBC.

5. "The League of Gentlemen": Consigned to little-seen BBC America, this British farce began typically enough, examining life in a small, remote British hamlet, but got progressively more perverse and weird and hilarious. Just one example - a fiercely proud, swinish couple running a shop catering only to "local" people and their increasingly demented campaign against construction of a freeway that would roll through town.

NOW, IF YOU DO A BOTTOM-10 LIST about that same TV year, you're probably correctly accused of gratuitous nastiness. So in the charitable spirit of the holidays, here's a bottom-5 list:

5. International women of mystery with large breasts: Shows like "Amazon," "D.R.E.A.M. Team," "VIP," "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World," etc. are for guys who never made that last big stride out of puberty.

4."Wasteland": "Dawson's Creek" reflected creator Kevin Williamson before he went Hollywood. "Wasteland" reflected him afterward.

3. Italian-American anti-defamation leagues complaining about "The Sopranos": Did I miss the show's title card, "This show purports to be representative of all Italian-Americans"?

2. Relentless coverage of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s death: "Here's the premature, non-obit obit about his fairy-tale life. We now cut to the largely irrelevant press conference with the plane's manufacturer - for the third time. Time now for yet more conjecture on the Kennedy curse, accompanied by strictly gratuitous footage of Chappaquiddick. We have an interview with a guy who met him once at a party and thought he was pretty down-to-earth for a Kennedy. Excuse us, time for some breaking news - there are no new developments. Did we mention the fairy-tale life? Here's some exclusive speculation on what the retrieved suitcase may look like. Now, someone who worked in the same building as his wife will offer up a pathetically failed attempt to describe her personality. Remember, this is an American icon we're talking about, not just some fellow who enjoyed luck of the draw at birth and edited a mediocre magazine, meaning our wall-to-wall coverage is completely justified. He truly had a fairy-tale life." Had Martha Quinn and Laurie Hibberd from CBS' "The Early Show" been on the case, this would have ranked No. 1.

1. Game-show mania: Let's face it, this is just wrestling for the genteel lowbrow - no blood-letting, less bellowing, fewer fashion missteps. These shows aren't as crass as Jerry Springer or Sally Jessy Raphael - though Regis Philbin and Chuck Woolery pretty much define unctuous - and participants are more openly paid to squirm for our amusement. But really, are we riveted to our tubes to find out the answer to questions like, "Which fashionable dot is named after a dance - the `hora' or the `polka'? What have we as a people become?

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

(1) "The Sopranos": It just doesn't get better than this.

(2) "Animal Farm": When power corrupts.

(3) "New York: A Documentary Film": An exhaustive 10-hour epic.

(4) JOHN F. KENNEDY JR.

(5) PAMELA ANDERSON LEE