100 Great Oil Paintings was a television series created by Edwin Mullins for BBC 2 in 1980, in which he also acted as moderator. He chose 20 thematic groups, such as war, the Adoration, the language of color, the hunt, and bathing, picking five oil paintings from each. The selection ranges from 12th century China through the 1950s, with an emphasis on European oil paintings. He deliberately avoided the greatest paintings, such as Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa or John Constable's The Haywain. The series is available on VHS or on DVD.

 German Television Series    From 1980 through 1994, the German broadcaster WDR produced a television series called "1000 Meisterwerke" (originally named 100 Meisterwerke aus den großen Museen der Welt, 100 Masterworks from the Great Museums of the World), which was broadcast by ARD, ORF and BR. In each of the 10-minute broadcasts, a single oil painting was presented and analyzed by an art historian. The Sunday evening broadcasts had five million viewers.