Why are all these dramas so depressing and dreary? Not that I enjoy them but that's all I see when flipping past channels. I get it , some dramas from yesteryear were also dreary (Hill Street Blues) but the vast majority were not. A lot of them added a little humor into the show. And most older drama\crime shows did not use dreary or depressing backgrounds. And one final thing old drama\crime did not really do on television: show vicious beatings , or any graphical scenes(that is until NYPD Blue premiered)

A lot of them added a little humor into the show.

Like Knight Rider, which, silly though it might have been in its run from 1982-86 on NBC, actually is turning out to be one of my favorites (got reacquainted with it through Mill Creek's 16-disc DVD lot release of it). I haven't been seeing them in order (cherry-picking from the remaining three seasons [1983-86]; had already seen the first one before), but it's really not that bad a show, IMO.

A similar thing could be said about sitcoms. In the 70's and 80's a lot of them had "very special episodes" and dramatic moments. It's certainly a thing of the past.