RETRO Recommends the Best of the Best: TV Shows, Vol. 2
In this Retro series, a longtime professional art critic and a former professor of digital culture ranks the best television programs of this century—from network to cable and web series to streaming.
{Note: Listings are alphabetical by category. While all these cultural artifacts are worthwhile, tastes can and will vary—so caveat lector, cave videntium, and caveat emptor. That said, if I listed a work here, you can rest assured that I do earnestly consider it to be badass and say so without any inducement whatsoever from any party. These opinions are mine and mine alone. Works that appear with a star (⭐) alongside are regarded as “the best of the best of the best.”}
Introduction
For years I was a professional reviewer of television shows, films, graphic novels, video games, poetry collections and more at Indiewire and The Huffington Post (now BuzzFeed). Then I entered academia, where I began teaching courses in these and other genres and media. While none of this means my opinion is more valuable than anyone else’s, I mention my background—which you can read more about here—to give you a sense of where I’m coming from with the recommendations in this series, and moreover of the professional consideration behind them. I suspect that, if you try some of my picks out, you’ll start to get a good sense of my preferred aesthetics and poetics. And if these match yours, well, you might just find some new gems below.
Ground Rules: Television Shows
(1) Most shows have stronger and weaker seasons, but I have not included any shows with seasons I consider not worth watching at all. It’s one reason why The Simpsons is not listed here—because so many seasons of it are sadly disposable. Of course, it’s also fair to note that under this rule Sons of Anarchy, Billions, and The OA just barely make the lists below—and I mean barely—even as shows like Entourage, Prison Break, Heroes, The Newsroom, Hanna, and The Last Man on Earth don’t make it at all. And some shows were uneven at the episode level, like Da Ali G Show, Who Is America?, Little Britain, or other sketch comedies, so they likewise do not appear here. I realize that this seems to penalize long-running shows, but I look at it this way: the purpose of these lists is to answer the question, “Would you recommend this show to someone?” If the answer is, “Yes, but only the first six seasons of over twenty,” that seems to me far too conditional a reply to consider it an answer in the affirmative. By comparison, a program with four seasons, three of which are well worth watching and the fourth of which is good but not great is one you can recommend without further comment. I think we all know, in any case, that The Simpsons is a landmark program.
(2) This list will be updated over time. There are, needless to say, many programs I haven’t read or seen—the lists below make no claim of being exhaustive—so while of course you can and certainly should quibble with any of the entries below (and/or suggest additional ones) in the comment section here, there’s a good chance that if something isn’t listed here and you desperately feel that it should be I just haven’t seen it or (far more commonly) I haven’t seen enough of it yet to make a judgment. I mention a few such shows below. In any case, my point is that to the extent this is a “best of the best” list, it’s also a work-in-progress, and should be read that way.
(3) With a list like this one there has to be, and here there is, a temporal cutoff point. If there weren’t one, this list would become a fairly useless rant on (by way of analogy) which Atari 2600 video games would have been considered great approximately forty years ago. Indeed, if I even open this up to the last century, this list swells markedly, with acknowledged classics such asi Seinfeld, Friends, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Freaks and Geeks, Quantum Leap, Frasier, Twin Peaks, and The Wonder Years among others far older like All in the Family, as well as a whole new contingent of borderline calls like Cheers, Taxi, Family Ties, Golden Girls, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, NewsRadio, Picket Fences and on and on. And of course the older a show is, the better the chance that events in the intervening years have made its selection problematic; consider, for instance, The Cosby Show or (to a far lesser degree) Roseanne. I’m already torn about what to do with Louie; the show has been universally reviewed as a work of genius—approaching “must-watch” status for anyone learning how to innovate in television—and in watching it many years ago I always thought of it as a show capable of making its viewers into more empathetic, fully self-actualized people, but now that we know its titular star committed an unknown number of unprosecuted and now-past-their-statute-of-limitations acts that may have constituted misdemeanor sex crimes, with his victims always women on the disadvantaged end of a power differential with him, I think it’s preferable that I acknowledge the artistic value of Louie (which preceded the revelations about its odious creator by years) without recommending it. I don’t claim to be an expert on how professional critics should handle situations like this, but I’m certainly able to distinguish between acknowledging the value of a work and recommending that readers financially support its creator. Ultimately, the latter decision is going to be up to each reader on their own terms and for their own reasons.
(4) There are many artworks that you can enjoy without feeling comfortable putting them on lists like this. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is an example. Heck, I was even briefly sucked in—I’m going to admit to something awful here—by both Poldark and Outlander, though in my defense, so were many unfortunate souls. The primary goal of these lists is to distinguish transient pleasure from lasting value, however, so for that reason avowed guilty pleasures have almost entirely been avoided.
(5) There are some artworks I have read or seen but still need time to decide about. Some examples include Modern Family, This Is Us, and Eastbound & Down. This is distinct from works I’ve seen—and know many love—but that I know I will never be able to stomach (let alone recommend) for reasons relating to my own aesthetics. Examples include Glee, 24, How I Met Your Mother, Grey’s Anatomy, and (candidly) most courtroom dramas and police procedurals, which feel preposterous to anyone who’s practiced criminal law.
As a final note, I want to make particular note of a short list of popular shows that I’ve never seen at all but already expect I’ll be asked about. I figured I would cut off at the pass any questions about Empire, Weeds, Six Feet Under, Supernatural, or Adventure Time, as I’ve simply never yet encountered or had a chance to schedule encountering them due to my other watching habits. There are simply some limits to how much culture one can consume. While I’m sure some readers will doubt my choices, I hope we can all agree that any survey of U.S. television culture will necessarily be incomplete.
Happy reading—and even more so, happy disagreeing! I invite your comments below!
Television Shows
Animated and Puppetry
Archer ⭐
Big Mouth
Bob’s Burgers
BoJack Horseman ⭐
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance
Family Guy
Futurama
The Midnight Gospel
Rick & Morty ⭐
Solar Opposites
South Park
Comedy
30 Rock ⭐
Arrested Development
Chapelle’s Show ⭐
The Colbert Report
Community ⭐
The Daily Show
Extras ⭐
Flight of the Conchords
I Think You Should Leave
Inside Amy Schumer
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch
Key & Peele ⭐
New Girl
The Office (UK)
The Office (US) ⭐
Portlandia
Scrubs
Silicon Valley
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Veep
What We Do in the Shadows
Drama
Better Call Saul
Breaking Bad ⭐
Downton Abbey
The End of the Fucking World
The Good Wife
Halt and Catch Fire ⭐
Mad Men ⭐
The Plot Against America
Rectify
Rescue Me
Sneaky Pete
Succession
Treme
The Wire ⭐
Dramedy
Atlanta ⭐
Bored to Death
The Chair
Friends From College
Girls
The Good Fight
The Good Place
The Great ⭐
High Maintenance ⭐
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Orange Is the New Black
UnReal
Dystopian
Black Mirror ⭐
The Handmaid’s Tale
The Leftovers ⭐
Lost ⭐
Mr. Robot
Experimental
How to with John Wilson
Fantasy
Angel
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Game of Thrones ⭐
His Dark Materials
Shadow and Bone
Wheel of Time
The Witcher
Horror
Stranger Things ⭐
The Walking Dead
True Blood (see also Pulp)
Mob
Boardwalk Empire
Justified ⭐
The Sopranos ⭐
Mystery
Borgen
Mare of Easttown
The Killing
Lupin
Luther ⭐
Monk
Sherlock (2013) ⭐
True Detective
Veronica Mars ⭐
Political and Political Comedy
Alpha House
The Crown
House of Cards
The West Wing ⭐
Pulp
Billions
Cobra Kai
Sons of Anarchy
True Blood
You
Reality
LEGO Masters
Project Runway
Top Chef
Science Fiction
Battlestar Galactica (2003) ⭐
Dark
The Expanse
Firefly ⭐
For All Mankind
The Mandalorian
Russian Doll
Westworld
Sports
Ted Lasso
Superheroes
The Boys
Doom Patrol
Hawkeye
The Punisher
WandaVision
Watchmen ⭐
Thriller
The Americans
Dexter
Homecoming
The OA
Ozark
You (see also Pulp)
War
Band of Brothers ⭐
Generation Kill
Rome
Vikings
Western
Deadwood ⭐
Hell on Wheels
Just Missed the Cut
American Gods
The Bad Batch
Barry
Invincible
Letterkenny
Loki
Longmire
Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K.
The Newsroom
See
Workaholics
Missed the Cut
Hacks
Masters of the Universe: Revelation
Mythic Quest
Refuse to Watch Due to Violence, Gore, and/or Torture
American Horror Story
The Squid Game
Refuse to Watch Due to Life Is Too Short
Tiger King
Selected Planned Future Viewing
Arcane
Boardwalk Empire
Bosch
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Chernobyl
Fargo
Foundation
Lilyhammer
Lord of the Rings (September 2022)
The Mindy Project
Only Murders in the Building
Parks & Recreation
Peaky Blinders
Ray Donovan
Reservation Dogs
Sex Education
Sweet Tooth
We Are Lady Parts
Y: The Last Man
Yellowjackets
+1 Boardwalk Empire
Worth it solely for the incredible 1920's settings, props, wardrobe, etc. But there's obviously many, many better reason to watch it. Impeccably done series.
I think you might like Dead to Me.