Julianna Margulies and Hugh Laurie.

There, that was easy, wasn't it?

I could spend, and have spent, hours of my life arguing that most of the best acting is done on television these days.

However the academy voters manage to whittle down the host of great performances we have seen this year to six nominees, I guarantee you there won't be a person on the list who doesn't deserve an award of some sort.

But in the end, winners must be picked, and this year in those dramatic categories, the winners are clear, at least to me. And here's why:

"The Good Wife" was not only the best drama to premiere this year, it is also one of the best dramas on TV, period.

And though that is due to a variety of factors, including terrific writing and a cast so good it's almost not fair, Margulies is the star, in the true meaning of the word. Her Alicia Florrick quickly became the "Mona Lisa" of television, at once instantly human and tantalizingly enigmatic.

Self-assured and insecure, passionate and pragmatic, she navigated her plight - scandal-plagued, former professional wife re-enters the legal profession with all its potential pitfalls and temptations - with an agility just flawed enough to be completely human.

And, yes, she was given great material, but Margulies pulled it off every single episode, setting the acting bar high from the first moments of the premiere and keeping it high enough to give everyone around her room to reach for it too.

Laurie, meanwhile, has been doing the same thing for years now; it's shocking, actually, that he hasn't won yet.

Maybe he makes it look too easy, maybe it's because "House" has been a top-rated drama for so long it just can't generate the buzz. But in the sixth season, following its first real ratings dip, the creators and Laurie pulled out all the stops. From the two-hour premiere to the emotional finale, the show and its star reminded us exactly how powerful a well-established drama can be when it pulls itself to its full height.

The supporting actor awards are harder to call because of simple mathematics - for every lead who deserves a nomination, there are invariably two or three other actors matching the star's performance with excellence of their own.

The entire casts of "House" and "The Good Wife" deserve nominations, while such shows as "Big Love," Mad Men," "Lost," "In Treatment" and "Grey's Anatomy" are such perfect ensembles that "lead" and "supporting" don't really apply.

A word about "Lost": The success of that show rested more on the performers than the conceit. As the finale reminded us, the characters and their ever-shifting relationships were what kept viewers coming back to the show.

Michael Emerson and Terry O'Quinn have won much-deserved Emmys, but, considering the story lines that many of the performers so gamely took on, the academy should come up with some way to acknowledge the entire, and enormous, cast.

But it's a wide open field - from John Lithgow's sinister Trinity in "Dexter" to Mary Lynn Rajskub's surprisingly emotional turn in this season's "24 " - and one in which "best" may receive its most subjective definition.

I'd go with Archie Panjabi of "The Good Wife" and John Noble of "Fringe." Both play extravagantly complicated characters - Panjabi's Kalinda is the sleekest "fixer" since Cary Grant in "To Catch a Thief" and Noble's Walter Bishop miraculously redefines and humanizes the idea of a "mad scientist" - with a theatrical subtlety that is a wonder to behold.

Whoever's nominated, whoever wins, it's been a miraculous year.

If you wonder why attendance is down at the multiplex, the answer is simple - these days, there's much better drama to be found on the flat screen.