25
Shows Ranked
/30
Max Score
1989–2019
Years Spanning
3
Scoring Dimensions
Leaderboard
| # | Show | Total |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Breaking Bad(2008) | 29/30 |
| 2 | The Wire(2002) | 28/30 |
| 3 | The Sopranos(1999) | 28/30 |
| 4 | Game of Thrones(2011) | 25/30 |
| 5 | Seinfeld(1989) | 27/30 |
| 6 | The Office(2005) | 27/30 |
| 7 | Friends(1994) | 26/30 |
| 8 | Succession(2018) | 26/30 |
| 9 | Better Call Saul(2015) | 25/30 |
| 10 | Mad Men(2007) | 25/30 |
| 11 | Band of Brothers(2001) | 25/30 |
| 12 | Chernobyl(2019) | 25/30 |
| 13 | True Detective(2014) | 25/30 |
| 14 | Stranger Things(2016) | 25/30 |
| 15 | Fleabag(2016) | 25/30 |
| 16 | The West Wing(1999) | 24/30 |
| 17 | The Shield(2002) | 24/30 |
| 18 | Lost(2004) | 23/30 |
| 19 | 24(2001) | 23/30 |
| 20 | Arrested Development(2003) | 24/30 |
| 21 | Curb Your Enthusiasm(2000) | 23/30 |
| 22 | The Americans(2013) | 23/30 |
| 23 | Fargo(2014) | 23/30 |
| 24 | Ozark(2017) | 22/30 |
| 25 | Peaky Blinders(2013) | 22/30 |
| 26 | The Simpsons(1989) | 25/30 |
| 27 | South Park(1997) | 23/30 |
| 28 | Severance(2022) | 23/30 |
| 29 | The Bear(2022) | 22/30 |
| 30 | Mr. Robot(2015) | 23/30 |
| 31 | Atlanta(2016) | 23/30 |
| 32 | Barry(2018) | 22/30 |
| 33 | Ted Lasso(2020) | 23/30 |
| 34 | Sherlock(2010) | 23/30 |
| 35 | Black Mirror(2011) | 22/30 |
| 36 | Futurama(1999) | 23/30 |
| 37 | Rick and Morty(2013) | 22/30 |
| 38 | Deadwood(2004) | 23/30 |
| 39 | Narcos(2015) | 22/30 |
| 40 | It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia(2005) | 22/30 |
| 41 | Parks and Recreation(2009) | 23/30 |
| 42 | Mindhunter(2017) | 22/30 |
| 43 | Westworld(2016) | 21/30 |
| 44 | The Mandalorian(2019) | 22/30 |
| 45 | Boardwalk Empire(2010) | 21/30 |
| 46 | 30 Rock(2006) | 23/30 |
| 47 | Andor(2022) | 22/30 |
| 48 | House of the Dragon(2022) | 21/30 |
| 49 | Homeland(2011) | 21/30 |
| 50 | The Last of Us(2023) | 23/30 |
| 51 | Dexter(2006) | 21/30 |
| 52 | House(2004) | 21/30 |
| 53 | ER(1994) | 21/30 |
| 54 | Frasier(1993) | 22/30 |
| 55 | Cheers(1982) | 22/30 |
| 56 | Schitt's Creek(2015) | 22/30 |
| 57 | What We Do in the Shadows(2019) | 21/30 |
| 58 | Veep(2012) | 21/30 |
| 59 | Silicon Valley(2014) | 20/30 |
| 60 | The Pacific(2010) | 21/30 |
| 61 | Squid Game(2021) | 22/30 |
| 62 | Dark(2017) | 21/30 |
| 63 | Money Heist(2017) | 20/30 |
| 64 | Lupin(2021) | 19/30 |
| 65 | Cobra Kai(2018) | 20/30 |
| 66 | Yellowstone(2018) | 19/30 |
| 67 | Suits(2011) | 20/30 |
| 68 | The White Lotus(2021) | 21/30 |
| 69 | Yellowjackets(2021) | 20/30 |
| 70 | The Crown(2016) | 20/30 |
| 71 | Downton Abbey(2010) | 21/30 |
| 72 | Bridgerton(2020) | 19/30 |
| 73 | Entourage(2004) | 19/30 |
| 74 | Sex and the City(1998) | 21/30 |
| 75 | Euphoria(2019) | 19/30 |
| 76 | Mare of Easttown(2021) | 20/30 |
| 77 | Twin Peaks(1990) | 22/30 |
| 78 | The Leftovers(2014) | 21/30 |
| 79 | Battlestar Galactica(2004) | 20/30 |
| 80 | Hannibal(2013) | 20/30 |
| 81 | Justified(2010) | 20/30 |
| 82 | Alias(2001) | 19/30 |
| 83 | The Good Place(2016) | 21/30 |
| 84 | Buffy the Vampire Slayer(1997) | 20/30 |
| 85 | The X-Files(1993) | 21/30 |
| 86 | Six Feet Under(2001) | 20/30 |
| 87 | Oz(1997) | 18/30 |
| 88 | Slow Horses(2022) | 20/30 |
| 89 | Shogun(2024) | 21/30 |
| 90 | Scrubs(2001) | 21/30 |
| 91 | Friday Night Lights(2006) | 21/30 |
| 92 | Monk(2002) | 19/30 |
| 93 | Catastrophe(2015) | 20/30 |
| 94 | Peep Show(2003) | 19/30 |
| 95 | The Newsroom(2012) | 18/30 |
| 96 | Trailer Park Boys(2001) | 19/30 |
| 97 | Penny Dreadful(2014) | 18/30 |
| 98 | Better Things(2016) | 18/30 |
| 99 | Killing Eve(2018) | 19/30 |
| 100 | Reacher(2022) | 19/30 |
Breaking Bad(2008)
The greatest character transformation in television history.
Breaking Bad is the most perfectly constructed television series ever made. Vince Gilligan's five-season arc — transforming Walter White from a meek chemistry teacher into a methamphetamine kingpin — is executed with a precision that borders on mathe...
Read full profileThe Wire(2002)
The show that treated television like literature.
The Wire is the most ambitious television series ever conceived. David Simon built a five-season Dickensian novel about Baltimore that examined every institution — the drug trade, the docks, City Hall, the schools, and the media — and found the same ...
Read full profileThe Sopranos(1999)
The show that invented prestige television.
The Sopranos did not just change television. It created the medium we now take for granted. Before Tony Soprano walked into Dr. Melfi's office, television dramas were procedural, episodic, and safe. David Chase proved that TV could be a novelist's me...
Read full profileGame of Thrones(2011)
The last show the entire world watched together.
Game of Thrones was the biggest television event of the 21st century. At its peak — seasons one through six — it was the most thrilling, unpredictable, and visually spectacular show ever made. The Red Wedding, the Battle of the Bastards, and Cersei's...
Read full profileSeinfeld(1989)
A show about nothing that changed everything.
Seinfeld rewrote the rules of the sitcom. Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld created a show with no hugging, no learning, and no growth — four terrible people navigating the absurdities of everyday life in New York City. The show's innovation was radical...
Read full profileThe Office(2005)
The most rewatchable show in television history.
The Office is the comfort food of television — a show so perfectly calibrated for rewatching that Netflix reportedly paid $500 million to keep it, and Peacock built its entire streaming strategy around acquiring it. Steve Carell's Michael Scott is th...
Read full profileFriends(1994)
The show that defined a generation's idea of adulthood.
Friends is the most successful sitcom in television history by nearly every measurable metric. For ten seasons, six characters in a New York apartment became the most famous people on the planet. The show's cultural influence is staggering: it shaped...
Read full profileSuccession(2018)
Shakespeare in a helicopter.
Succession is the sharpest, most venomous television show ever made. Jesse Armstrong created a Shakespearean tragedy about a media dynasty that is simultaneously hilarious, devastating, and addictive. The Roy family — Logan, Kendall, Shiv, Roman, and...
Read full profileBetter Call Saul(2015)
The prequel that matched the original.
Better Call Saul accomplished the impossible: it created a prequel to the greatest drama ever made and arguably surpassed it in emotional depth. Bob Odenkirk's transformation from Jimmy McGill to Saul Goodman is a tragedy told in slow motion — you se...
Read full profileMad Men(2007)
The show that made silence louder than dialogue.
Mad Men is the most beautifully crafted drama in television history. Matthew Weiner built a show about the advertising industry of the 1960s that is really about the way America lies to itself — about identity, happiness, progress, and the cost of re...
Read full profileBand of Brothers(2001)
The definitive World War II story ever filmed.
Band of Brothers is the greatest war story ever told on screen. Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks produced a ten-episode miniseries that follows Easy Company of the 101st Airborne from training at Camp Toccoa through D-Day, Operation Market Garden, the ...
Read full profileChernobyl(2019)
Five episodes of pure, devastating television.
Chernobyl is the most terrifying television show ever made — and every frame of it is true. Craig Mazin's five-episode miniseries about the 1986 nuclear disaster is a masterclass in tension, horror, and the cost of institutional lying. Jared Harris, ...
Read full profileTrue Detective(2014)
Eight episodes that redefined what a season of television could be.
True Detective Season 1 is the single greatest season of television ever produced. Nic Pizzolatto wrote a Louisiana noir that is simultaneously a murder mystery, a philosophical treatise on nihilism, and a meditation on time, memory, and the stories ...
Read full profileStranger Things(2016)
The show that made nostalgia into an art form.
Stranger Things is the most successful original IP in Netflix history and the show that proved streaming could create water-cooler cultural events. The Duffer Brothers built a love letter to Spielberg, Stephen King, and 1980s Amblin entertainment tha...
Read full profileFleabag(2016)
Twelve episodes. Two seasons. Absolute perfection.
Fleabag is the most emotionally precise show ever written. Phoebe Waller-Bridge created a two-season, twelve-episode masterpiece that uses the fourth-wall break not as a gimmick but as a window into the soul of a woman who uses humor to hide from gri...
Read full profileThe West Wing(1999)
The show that made politics feel noble.
The West Wing is the most idealistic show in television history — and that idealism is its greatest strength. Aaron Sorkin wrote a White House staffed by brilliant, passionate, flawed people who genuinely believed that government could be a force for...
Read full profileThe Shield(2002)
The show that proved basic cable could be fearless.
The Shield is the most underrated great drama in television history. Shawn Ryan created a show about a corrupt LAPD strike team led by Michael Chiklis's Vic Mackey — a dirty cop who commits murder in the pilot episode and spends seven seasons trying ...
Read full profileLost(2004)
The last show that made the entire internet theorize together.
Lost was the most addictive television show ever made. J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, and Carlton Cuse created a mystery so compelling that it turned the internet into a collective detective agency. The show pioneered the flashback structure, the mytho...
Read full profile24(2001)
The show that turned real-time into an addiction.
24 invented the binge-watch before streaming existed. The real-time format — each season covering one 24-hour day, each episode one hour — was a stroke of genius that created urgency no other show could match. Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer became an...
Read full profileArrested Development(2003)
The densest comedy ever written for television.
Arrested Development is the most rewarding comedy ever made on a second, third, or tenth viewing. Mitchell Hurwitz constructed a show so dense with callbacks, foreshadowing, sight gags, and layered jokes that it was years ahead of its audience. The B...
Read full profileCurb Your Enthusiasm(2000)
Seinfeld without a filter.
Curb Your Enthusiasm is Larry David unfiltered, unscripted, and unleashed. The show takes the social observation that made Seinfeld great and removes every safety net: no laugh track, no studio audience, no scripts, and a protagonist who says the thi...
Read full profileThe Americans(2013)
The best show nobody watched.
The Americans is the most critically acclaimed underwatched series in television history. Joe Weisberg created a show about two KGB officers posing as an American married couple in 1980s Washington, D.C., and turned it into the most authentic explora...
Read full profileFargo(2014)
An anthology that keeps defying expectations.
Fargo is the most successful film-to-television adaptation ever made. Noah Hawley took the Coen Brothers' tone — that precise mixture of Midwestern politeness, brutal violence, and existential absurdity — and expanded it into an anthology series wher...
Read full profileOzark(2017)
Breaking Bad's spiritual successor done right.
Ozark is the most underestimated drama of the streaming era. Jason Bateman and Laura Linney deliver career-best performances as Marty and Wendy Byrde, a married couple laundering money for a Mexican drug cartel in the Missouri Ozarks. The show's geni...
Read full profilePeaky Blinders(2013)
Style as substance. Birmingham as mythology.
Peaky Blinders is the most stylish drama in television history. Steven Knight created a gangster epic set in post-World War I Birmingham that transforms industrial England into a mythological landscape of smoke, razor blades, and Cillian Murphy's che...
Read full profileThe Simpsons(1989)
The show that predicted everything.
The Simpsons is the most influential comedy in television history. Seasons three through eight represent the greatest sustained run of comedic writing ever produced for any medium — sharper than any film, deeper than any novel of its era, and more qu...
Read full profileSouth Park(1997)
The show that offends everyone equally.
South Park is the most fearless show in television history. Trey Parker and Matt Stone built an empire on construction-paper animation and a willingness to attack every sacred cow in American culture with equal ferocity. The show's six-day production...
Read full profileSeverance(2022)
The most unsettling workplace comedy ever made.
Severance is the most original science fiction concept of the streaming era. Dan Erickson's premise — a surgical procedure that separates your work memories from your personal memories — is a metaphor so perfect for modern corporate life that it feel...
Read full profileThe Bear(2022)
Anxiety as an art form.
The Bear is the most viscerally stressful show on television — and that is the highest compliment you can pay it. Christopher Storer created a show about a fine-dining chef returning to run his dead brother's Chicago beef stand that captures the chao...
Read full profileMr. Robot(2015)
The show that hacked television itself.
Mr. Robot is the most technically accurate and cinematically ambitious hacker show ever made. Sam Esmail created a psychological thriller that uses real cybersecurity, real Linux commands, and real social engineering to tell a story about loneliness,...
Read full profileAtlanta(2016)
Twin Peaks meets the Atlanta rap scene.
Atlanta is the most artistically uncompromising show of the streaming era. Donald Glover created a show that defies categorization — it is simultaneously a comedy about the Atlanta rap scene, a surrealist horror anthology, a meditation on race and ca...
Read full profileBarry(2018)
A hitman walks into an acting class.
Barry is the darkest comedy in television history. Bill Hader created and stars in a show about a Marine-turned-hitman who discovers a passion for acting in Los Angeles, and the result is a series that oscillates between laugh-out-loud comedy and gen...
Read full profileTed Lasso(2020)
The show the pandemic needed.
Ted Lasso arrived at the exact moment the world needed it. Jason Sudeikis transformed a character from NBC Sports promos into the most optimistic, emotionally intelligent protagonist on television — an American football coach hired to manage a Premie...
Read full profileSherlock(2010)
Holmes and Watson for the smartphone age.
Sherlock reinvented the most famous detective in literary history for the 21st century and made it look effortless. Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss transplanted Holmes to modern London, gave him a smartphone, and cast Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Fr...
Read full profileBlack Mirror(2011)
The show that made you afraid of your phone.
Black Mirror is the most prophetic television series of the 21st century. Charlie Brooker created a techno-paranoia anthology that has predicted social credit scores, deepfakes, AI companions, and the weaponization of social media with eerie accuracy...
Read full profileFuturama(1999)
The smartest show disguised as the silliest show.
Futurama is the most intellectually ambitious animated comedy ever produced. Matt Groening's second series assembled a writers' room with multiple PhDs in mathematics, physics, and computer science, and they used that brainpower to create a show that...
Read full profileRick and Morty(2013)
Nihilism as a family comedy.
Rick and Morty is the most conceptually ambitious animated comedy since Futurama. Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland built a show about the smartest being in the multiverse and his anxious grandson that uses science fiction as a delivery system for philos...
Read full profileDeadwood(2004)
Shakespeare in the mud.
Deadwood is the most beautifully written show in television history. David Milch created a Western set in the lawless mining camp of Deadwood, South Dakota, and filled it with dialogue so ornate, profane, and Shakespearean that it invented its own la...
Read full profileNarcos(2015)
The real story was more insane than any fiction.
Narcos turned the Pablo Escobar saga into the most gripping crime drama of the Netflix era. The show's masterstroke was treating the real history with minimal embellishment — because the truth about Colombia's drug wars is so extraordinary that ficti...
Read full profileIt's Always Sunny in Philadelphia(2005)
The longest-running live-action comedy in American history.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is the most transgressive sitcom ever made — and the most consistent. The Gang — Dennis, Mac, Charlie, Dee, and Frank — are genuinely terrible people, and the show's genius is that it never asks you to like them. Rob...
Read full profileParks and Recreation(2009)
Government as a force for good, told through comedy.
Parks and Recreation is the most optimistic comedy in television history. After a rocky first season that leaned too heavily on The Office's cringe format, the show found its voice by making Leslie Knope — Amy Poehler's hypercompetent, waffle-obsesse...
Read full profileMindhunter(2017)
The quietest show about the most violent people.
Mindhunter is the most intellectually rigorous crime drama ever made. David Fincher produced and directed a show about the birth of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit — the people who invented criminal profiling by interviewing imprisoned serial kille...
Read full profileWestworld(2016)
The maze was not meant for you.
Westworld Season 1 is one of the most intellectually ambitious seasons of television ever produced. Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy adapted Michael Crichton's film into a meditation on consciousness, free will, and the nature of storytelling itself. Anth...
Read full profileThe Mandalorian(2019)
This is the way.
The Mandalorian single-handedly rescued Star Wars. After the divisive sequel trilogy, Jon Favreau created a show that captured the original trilogy's sense of adventure and stripped it down to its essence: a lone gunfighter and a child, wandering the...
Read full profileBoardwalk Empire(2010)
Prohibition-era America as only HBO could build it.
Boardwalk Empire is the most lavishly produced period drama in television history. Martin Scorsese directed the pilot — at a cost of $18 million — and set a visual standard that the show maintained for five seasons. Steve Buscemi's Nucky Thompson is ...
Read full profile30 Rock(2006)
The fastest comedy ever written.
30 Rock is the most joke-dense sitcom in television history. Tina Fey packed more laughs per minute into her fictionalized version of Saturday Night Live than any show before or since. The comedy arrives at a velocity that rewards — and practically d...
Read full profileAndor(2022)
Star Wars for people who gave up on Star Wars.
Andor is the most mature, politically sophisticated Star Wars story ever told. Tony Gilroy created a spy thriller that examines how ordinary people become revolutionaries — and the moral compromises that rebellion demands. Diego Luna's Cassian Andor ...
Read full profileHouse of the Dragon(2022)
Game of Thrones redeemed.
House of the Dragon proved that the Game of Thrones universe still had stories worth telling. Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik's prequel about the Targaryen civil war — the Dance of the Dragons — delivered everything fans loved about the original ser...
Read full profileHomeland(2011)
The war on terror as psychological thriller.
Homeland's first season is one of the most gripping debut seasons in television history. Claire Danes's Carrie Mathison — a bipolar CIA analyst convinced that a rescued American POW has been turned by al-Qaeda — is a protagonist unlike anything telev...
Read full profileThe Last of Us(2023)
The show that proved video game adaptations could be art.
The Last of Us shattered the video game adaptation curse. Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann translated the beloved PlayStation game into a post-apocalyptic drama that stands alongside the best of prestige television regardless of its source material. Pe...
Read full profileDexter(2006)
America's favorite serial killer.
Dexter made audiences root for a serial killer and feel fine about it. Michael C. Hall's performance as a blood-spatter analyst who moonlights as a vigilante murderer is one of the great high-wire acts in television. The first four seasons — particul...
Read full profileHouse(2004)
Sherlock Holmes with a stethoscope and a Vicodin addiction.
House M.D. turned a medical procedural into a character study. Hugh Laurie's Gregory House — a misanthropic, Vicodin-addicted diagnostic genius — is one of the most magnetic characters in network television history. The show ran for eight seasons on ...
Read full profileER(1994)
The show that made medical dramas cinematic.
ER revolutionized medical television with its kinetic camera work, overlapping dialogue, and unflinching realism. Michael Crichton's creation ran for fifteen seasons and launched the careers of George Clooney, Julianna Margulies, and dozens of others...
Read full profileFrasier(1993)
The smartest sitcom in a room full of smart sitcoms.
Frasier is the most literate sitcom ever produced. The Cheers spinoff transplanted Kelsey Grammer's pompous psychiatrist to Seattle and paired him with David Hyde Pierce's even more fastidious brother Niles in what became an eleven-season masterclass...
Read full profileCheers(1982)
Where everybody knows your name.
Cheers is the template for the modern sitcom. Set entirely in a Boston bar, the show ran for eleven seasons and proved that a fixed location, great characters, and sharp writing could sustain a series indefinitely. Ted Danson's Sam Malone and Shelley...
Read full profileSchitt's Creek(2015)
A family learns to love by losing everything.
Schitt's Creek is the most heartwarming comedy of the streaming era. Eugene and Dan Levy created a show about a wealthy family who loses everything and is forced to live in a small town they once bought as a joke. The miracle is how the show transfor...
Read full profileWhat We Do in the Shadows(2019)
Immortality is boring without good roommates.
What We Do in the Shadows turned Taika Waititi's cult film into one of the funniest shows on television. The mockumentary about vampire roommates on Staten Island delivers some of the most consistently hilarious episodes in modern comedy. Matt Berry'...
Read full profileVeep(2012)
Washington as it actually works.
Veep is the most savage political comedy ever produced. Julia Louis-Dreyfus's Selina Meyer — a vice president and eventual president consumed by narcissism, pettiness, and raw ambition — is one of the great comedic performances in television history....
Read full profileSilicon Valley(2014)
The tech industry's most accurate mirror.
Silicon Valley is the most technically literate comedy ever made. Mike Judge created a startup satire so accurate that actual tech founders have said the show gave them anxiety flashbacks. Thomas Middleditch's Richard Hendricks and T.J. Miller's Erli...
Read full profileThe Pacific(2010)
Band of Brothers' darker, more brutal sibling.
The Pacific is the companion piece to Band of Brothers that traded European camaraderie for Pacific theater horror. The show follows three Marines through Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, and it refuses to romanticize their experience. Ra...
Read full profileSquid Game(2021)
The show that made the whole world watch Korean television.
Squid Game became the most-watched Netflix series in history and turned Korean entertainment into a global force. Hwang Dong-hyuk's survival drama about desperate debtors playing children's games for a deadly cash prize struck a nerve about economic ...
Read full profileDark(2017)
The most intricately plotted show in television history.
Dark is the most meticulously constructed science fiction series ever produced. The German-language Netflix show about interconnected families navigating time loops across multiple centuries requires a family tree diagram and rewards it with storytel...
Read full profileMoney Heist(2017)
The Spanish heist that conquered the world.
Money Heist — La Casa de Papel — is the most successful non-English-language series in Netflix history. Alex Pina's saga of a master criminal called The Professor and his team of thieves pulling off impossible heists against the Spanish government tu...
Read full profileLupin(2021)
The gentleman thief, reimagined for Paris.
Lupin made Omar Sy a global star and proved that French television could compete in the Netflix era. The show follows Assane Diop, a man inspired by the fictional gentleman thief Arsene Lupin, as he orchestrates elaborate schemes to avenge his father...
Read full profileCobra Kai(2018)
The sequel nobody asked for that everybody loved.
Cobra Kai turned 1980s nostalgia into one of the most genuinely entertaining shows on streaming. The Karate Kid sequel series reframed the original film's villain, Johnny Lawrence, as a sympathetic underdog, and William Zabka's performance turned a l...
Read full profileYellowstone(2018)
The modern Western that cable television needed.
Yellowstone is the most-watched show on cable television in the 2020s. Taylor Sheridan's saga of the Dutton family defending their Montana ranch from developers, politicians, and rival landowners brought the Western back to mainstream relevance. Kevi...
Read full profileSuits(2011)
The legal drama that conquered streaming a decade late.
Suits had a solid run on USA Network but became a genuine phenomenon when it hit Netflix in 2023, years after its finale. The show about a college dropout working as a lawyer alongside Harvey Specter became the most-streamed show on Nielsen's charts ...
Read full profileThe White Lotus(2021)
Eat the rich, but make it gorgeous.
The White Lotus is the most stylish social satire on television. Mike White's anthology about wealthy vacationers behaving badly at luxury resorts is simultaneously a murder mystery, a class critique, and a showcase for extraordinary ensemble acting....
Read full profileYellowjackets(2021)
Lord of the Flies meets a high school reunion.
Yellowjackets is the most addictive mystery-thriller on Showtime. The dual-timeline story of a girls' soccer team stranded in the wilderness after a plane crash — and the secrets they carry twenty-five years later — combines survival horror with subu...
Read full profileThe Crown(2016)
The most expensive soap opera ever produced.
The Crown is the most lavish biographical drama in television history. Peter Morgan's decade-spanning portrait of Queen Elizabeth II's reign features three different actresses playing the monarch across six seasons. Claire Foy's early seasons are the...
Read full profileDownton Abbey(2010)
Upstairs, downstairs, and utterly addictive.
Downton Abbey made period drama globally mainstream. Julian Fellowes's saga of the Crawley family and their servants became a cultural phenomenon that drew audiences who had never watched a British costume drama. Maggie Smith's Dowager Countess deliv...
Read full profileBridgerton(2020)
Regency romance as pop spectacle.
Bridgerton is Netflix's most successful original series and Shonda Rhimes's streaming masterpiece. The color-conscious Regency romance shattered viewership records and proved that period drama could be steamy, diverse, and unapologetically fun. The o...
Read full profileEntourage(2004)
The Hollywood fantasy that aged like milk and fine wine simultaneously.
Entourage is the ultimate male fantasy of the mid-2000s — four friends from Queens living the Hollywood dream on Vinnie Chase's rising star. The show is a time capsule of pre-crash excess, and while its gender politics aged poorly, its depiction of m...
Read full profileSex and the City(1998)
The show that changed how women talked about everything.
Sex and the City revolutionized television's portrayal of female friendship, sexuality, and independence. Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda became archetypes that an entire generation used to define themselves. The show made Manolo Blahniks fa...
Read full profileEuphoria(2019)
Gen Z's most beautiful nightmare.
Euphoria is the most visually stunning drama on television. Sam Levinson's portrait of teenage addiction, identity, and social media anxiety made Zendaya the youngest two-time Emmy winner for Outstanding Lead Actress. The show's cinematography, makeu...
Read full profileMare of Easttown(2021)
Kate Winslet in a hoodie, solving a murder.
Mare of Easttown is the best limited series since Chernobyl. Kate Winslet's Mare Sheehan — a small-town Pennsylvania detective carrying the weight of a community's grief — is one of the great television performances. The show nails the specificity of...
Read full profileTwin Peaks(1990)
The show that broke television's brain.
Twin Peaks is the most influential cult series in television history. David Lynch and Mark Frost created a show that mixed murder mystery, soap opera, surrealism, and horror in a way that had never been attempted on network television. The 2017 reviv...
Read full profileThe Leftovers(2014)
The most emotionally devastating show ever made.
The Leftovers is Damon Lindelof's masterpiece — a show about grief, faith, and the unknowable that is so emotionally raw it is almost physically painful to watch. Carrie Coon and Justin Theroux deliver two of the greatest television performances of t...
Read full profileBattlestar Galactica(2004)
The post-9/11 allegory disguised as space opera.
Battlestar Galactica is the most politically sophisticated science fiction series ever made. Ronald D. Moore's reimagining used the framework of a human-Cylon war to explore terrorism, civil liberties, religious extremism, and the moral compromises o...
Read full profileHannibal(2013)
The most beautiful horror show ever made.
Hannibal is the most visually stunning drama in television history. Bryan Fuller transformed Thomas Harris's characters into an operatic fever dream of murder tableaux, sumptuous cuisine, and psychological warfare. Mads Mikkelsen's Hannibal Lecter is...
Read full profileJustified(2010)
The coolest lawman on television.
Justified is the most entertaining drama of the 2010s. Timothy Olyphant's Raylan Givens — a U.S. Marshal with an itchy trigger finger and a cowboy hat — is one of television's great creations. Walton Goggins's Boyd Crowder is his perfect foil. Based ...
Read full profileAlias(2001)
J.J. Abrams's first spy obsession.
Alias made Jennifer Garner a star and established J.J. Abrams as television's most exciting new voice. The spy thriller about double agent Sydney Bristow combined action, family drama, and mythology-driven storytelling in a way that directly paved th...
Read full profileThe Good Place(2016)
A sitcom about moral philosophy that actually works.
The Good Place is the most intellectually ambitious comedy since Futurama. Michael Schur created a show about the afterlife that smuggles genuine moral philosophy — Kant, Kierkegaard, utilitarianism, contractualism — into a network sitcom and makes i...
Read full profileBuffy the Vampire Slayer(1997)
The show that weaponized metaphor.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the most influential genre show in television history. Joss Whedon's seven-season saga used supernatural horror as metaphor for the terrors of adolescence and young adulthood with a consistency and depth that created the b...
Read full profileThe X-Files(1993)
The truth is still out there.
The X-Files defined 1990s paranoia and created the mythology-driven drama template that Lost, Fringe, and dozens of others would follow. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson's Mulder and Scully are one of the great television partnerships. The monster...
Read full profileSix Feet Under(2001)
The show about death that was really about living.
Six Feet Under is the most underappreciated HBO drama. Alan Ball's series about a family-run funeral home in Los Angeles explored death, grief, and the messy business of being alive with more honesty than any show before or since. The series finale —...
Read full profileOz(1997)
The show that made HBO dangerous.
Oz was HBO's first hour-long drama series and the show that proved premium cable could tell stories network television would never touch. Tom Fontana's prison drama was brutally violent, sexually explicit, and uncompromising in its depiction of life ...
Read full profileSlow Horses(2022)
The anti-Bond spy thriller.
Slow Horses is the best spy drama since The Americans. Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb — a flatulent, slovenly MI5 reject running a department of disgraced agents — is one of the great television characters. The show strips espionage of its glamour and re...
Read full profileShogun(2024)
The most beautiful show ever produced.
Shogun is the most visually magnificent drama in television history. The FX adaptation of James Clavell's novel about an English navigator in feudal Japan is a ten-episode masterpiece of political intrigue, cultural collision, and breathtaking cinema...
Read full profileScrubs(2001)
The medical comedy with a real heart.
Scrubs is the most emotionally versatile comedy of the 2000s. Bill Lawrence created a show that could pivot from fantasy musical sequences to genuine tragedy within a single episode. Zach Braff and Donald Faison's J.D. and Turk are one of television'...
Read full profileFriday Night Lights(2006)
Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose.
Friday Night Lights is the most emotionally authentic drama in television history. The show about high school football in small-town Texas transcends its sports premise to become a deeply moving portrait of community, marriage, and adolescence. Kyle ...
Read full profileMonk(2002)
OCD as superpower.
Monk is the most charming detective show of the 2000s. Tony Shalhoub's Adrian Monk — a brilliant detective crippled by obsessive-compulsive disorder — combined comedy and mystery in a formula so reliable that it ran for eight seasons and launched the...
Read full profileCatastrophe(2015)
The most honest comedy about marriage ever made.
Catastrophe is the sharpest, funniest, most brutally honest comedy about adult relationships in television history. Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney write and star as a couple who get pregnant from a one-week stand and decide to make it work. Four seaso...
Read full profilePeep Show(2003)
The most uncomfortable comedy ever made.
Peep Show is the cringe comedy masterpiece. David Mitchell and Robert Webb star as Mark and Jeremy, two flatmates whose inner monologues — delivered directly to the audience through point-of-view camera work — expose the gap between what people think...
Read full profileThe Newsroom(2012)
Sorkin's love letter to journalism.
The Newsroom is Aaron Sorkin at his most Sorkin — idealistic, preachy, and undeniably watchable. Jeff Daniels's Will McAvoy delivers the famous 'America is not the greatest country in the world anymore' speech in the pilot, and the show never stops s...
Read full profileTrailer Park Boys(2001)
Canada's most beloved criminals.
Trailer Park Boys is the most rewatchable cult comedy in television history. The mockumentary about Julian, Ricky, and Bubbles running schemes in a Nova Scotia trailer park is endlessly quotable, surprisingly warm, and funnier on the fifth viewing th...
Read full profilePenny Dreadful(2014)
Victorian horror done right.
Penny Dreadful is the most literate horror series ever produced. John Logan assembled Dracula, Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, and other Victorian literary monsters into a single narrative held together by Eva Green's astonishing performance as Vanessa Iv...
Read full profileBetter Things(2016)
The most real show about motherhood ever made.
Better Things is Pamela Adlon's autobiographical masterpiece about a working actress raising three daughters alone in Los Angeles. The show is plotless in the best sense — each episode is a vignette of motherhood, aging, creativity, and survival that...
Read full profileKilling Eve(2018)
The cat-and-mouse game that became a love story.
Killing Eve's first season is a masterclass in tension and obsession. Phoebe Waller-Bridge adapted Luke Jennings's novellas into a spy thriller driven entirely by the electric chemistry between Sandra Oh's Eve and Jodie Comer's Villanelle. Comer's pe...
Read full profileReacher(2022)
The Jack Reacher fans actually wanted.
Reacher is the most satisfying action series on streaming. Alan Ritchson's physically imposing take on Lee Child's wandering ex-military investigator delivers exactly what the books promised and the Tom Cruise films could not: a six-foot-five wall of...
Read full profileFrequently Asked Questions
What is the best TV show of all time?
Breaking Bad (2008-2013) tops our ranking with a near-perfect score of 29/30. Vince Gilligan's five-season transformation of Walter White from chemistry teacher to drug kingpin is the most perfectly constructed narrative arc in television history. Its cultural impact, storytelling precision, and rewatchability are virtually unmatched.
How are these TV shows scored?
Each show is scored on three dimensions out of 10: Cultural Impact (how deeply the show penetrated mainstream culture and influenced subsequent television), Storytelling (writing quality, character development, and narrative structure), and Rewatchability (how well the show holds up on repeat viewings). The maximum possible score is 30.
Why is The Wire ranked below Breaking Bad?
The Wire and The Sopranos both score 28/30, just one point behind Breaking Bad. The Wire scores a perfect 10 in both cultural impact and storytelling but loses a point in rewatchability due to its deliberately slow pacing and dense institutional storytelling. Breaking Bad's tighter narrative structure and more propulsive pacing give it a slight edge in the rewatchability category.
Are miniseries included in the ranking?
Yes. Band of Brothers, Chernobyl, True Detective Season 1, and Fleabag are all included. A great television achievement is a great television achievement regardless of episode count. Chernobyl's five episodes and Fleabag's twelve episodes demonstrate that brevity can be a superpower when the execution is perfect.
What is the most rewatchable TV show of all time?
The Office scores a perfect 10/10 in rewatchability — the only show on the list to achieve that score. Its comfort-food quality, endlessly quotable dialogue, and episodic structure make it the ideal show for background viewing and repeat watching. Netflix reportedly paid $500 million to keep it, and Peacock built its streaming strategy around it.
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