The Best of the Best TV Shows, Vol. 10
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.
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Introduction
{Note: Listings are alphabetical by category. All the shows below are worthwhile, but tastes do vary—caveat lector, cave videntium, and caveat emptor. Starred shows (⭐) are “the best of the best of the best.” You can watch the Top 50 Television Opening Credits of This Century here.}
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. I retain “legacy critic” status at Rotten Tomatoes to this day, in fact.
Then I entered academia, where I became a tenure-track assistant professor and began teaching courses at University of New Hampshire on the above (and other) genres and media. I mention my background—which you can read more about here—to offer a sense of where I’m coming from with my 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, I have no doubt you’ll find some new gems below.
The Ground Rules
(1) Most shows have stronger and weaker seasons, but I haven’t included shows with seasons I consider unwatchable. It’s one reason The Simpsons isn’t listed here; 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 barely made the lists below, even as Prison Break, Heroes and Hanna didn’t make them at all. And some shows are wildly uneven at the episode level, like Who Is America?, Little Britain or other sketch comedies; these don’t appear here either. I realize this seems to penalize long-running shows, but I look at it this way: the point of lists like this is to answer the question, “Would you recommend this?” If the answer is, “Yes, but only six seasons of 25,” that’s too conditional a reply to consider it an answer in the affirmative. By comparison, a show with four seasons, three of which are well worth watching and the fourth of which is decent, is one you can recommend happily. We all know, in any case, that early Simpsons is classic TV.
(2) With a list like this one there has to be, and here there is, a temporal cutoff. If I even open this list up to the last century, it swells markedly, with the addition of acknowledged classics such as 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 and a contingent of borderline calls like Cheers, Taxi, Family Ties, Golden Girls, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, NewsRadio, and Picket Fences. And of course the older a show is, the better the chance the intervening years have made selecting it problematic. Consider, for instance, The Cosby Show or (to a lesser degree) Roseanne.
(3) One can enjoy a series without feeling comfortable putting it on lists like these. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, for instance. I was even sucked into Poldark and Outlander, though in my defense, so were many. But as the primary goal of these lists is to distinguish transient pleasure from lasting value, guilty pleasures are avoided here.
Happy reading—and even more so, happy disagreeing! I invite your comments below!
Key
🔷 = New to the list
🔶 = Recently reevaluated
⭐ = Best of the best
⬜️ = Apple TV
🟥 = Netflix
🟧 = Peacock
🟨 = Disney Plus
🟩 = Hulu
🟦 = Amazon Prime
🟪 = Max
⬛️ = Paramount+ / Showtime
🟫 = AMC+
🔲 = YouTube
❌ = Currently unavailable in the United States
{Note: Many shows can be watched on multiple streaming platforms. To the best of my ability, I have listed below the streaming platform considered each show’s current “home” platform.}
Index
The Best of the Best TV Programs
🔘 Animated and Puppetry
🔘 Comedy
🔘 Crime
🔘 Documentary
🔘 Drama
🔘 Dramedy
🔘 Dystopian
🔘 Experimental
🔘 Fantasy
🔘 Food
🔘 Horror
🔘 Mystery
🔘 Political
🔘 Pulp
🔘 Reality
🔘 Science Fiction
🔘 Sports
🔘 Superhero
🔘 Thriller
🔘 War
🔘 Western
Notable Programs That Missed the Cut
Selected Planned Future Viewing
The Best of the Best TV Programs
Animated and Puppetry
🔰 | 🟥 | Arcane
🔰 | 🟩 | Archer ⭐
🔰 | ⬛️ | Avatar: The Last Airbender
🔰 | 🟥 | Bee and PuppyCat
🔰 | 🟥 | Big Mouth
🔰 | 🟥 | Blue Eye Samurai ⭐
🔰 | 🟩 | Bob’s Burgers ⭐
🔰 | 🟥 | BoJack Horseman ⭐
🔰 | 🟥 | Carol & the End of the World ⭐
🔰 | 🟥 | The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance
🔰 | 🟩 | Family Guy
🔰 | 🟩 | Futurama
🔰 | 🟩 | Krapopolis ⭐
🔰 | 🟦 | The Legend of Vox Machina
🔰 | 🟥 | Love, Death & Robots
🔰 | 🟥 | The Midnight Gospel
🔰 | 🟪 | Rick & Morty ⭐
🔰 | 🟪 | Robot Chicken ⭐
🔰 | 🟪 | Scavengers Reign ⭐
🔰 | 🟩 | Solar Opposites
🔰 | 🟪 | South Park ⭐
🔰 | ⬛️ | Star Trek: Lower Decks
🔰 | 🟨 | Star Wars Rebels
🔰 | ⬜️ | Strange Planet
Comedy
🔰 | 🟧 | 30 Rock ⭐
🔰 | 🟦 | Alpha House
🔰 | 🟥 | Arrested Development
🔰 | 🟧 | Brooklyn Nine-Nine
🔰 | 🟥 | Chapelle’s Show
🔰 | ⬛️ | The Colbert Report
🔰 | 🟥 | Community ⭐
🔰 | 🟪 | Crashing ⭐
🔰 | 🟥 | Cunk on Earth
🔰 | 🟪 | Curb Your Enthusiasm
🔰 | 🟪 | Da Ali G Show
🔰 | ⬛️ | The Daily Show
🔰 | 🟥 | Documentary Now!
🔰 | 🟪 | Extras ⭐
🔰 | 🟪 | Flight of the Conchords
🔰 | 🟦 | Hello Ladies
🔰 | 🟥 | I Think You Should Leave ⭐
🔰 | ⬛️ | Inside Amy Schumer
🔰 | 🟩 | It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
🔰 | 🟪 | Joe Pera Talks with You ⭐
🔰 | 🟥 | John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch
🔰 | 🟩 | Key & Peele ⭐
🔰 | 🟩 | Letterkenny
🔰 | 🟩 | The Mindy Project
🔰 | 🟩 | Modern Family
🔰 | 🟥 | The New Girl ⭐
🔰 | 🟩 | The Office (UK)
🔰 | 🟧 | The Office (US) ⭐
🔰 | 🟧 | Parks & Recreation
🔰 | 🟦 | Peep Show ⭐
🔰 | 🟫 | Portlandia
🔰 | 🟪 | The Rehearsal
🔰 | 🟩 | Scrubs
🔰 | 🟪 | Silicon Valley
🔰 | 🟦 | That Mitchell and Webb Look
🔰 | 🟥 | Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
🔰 | 🟪 | Veep ⭐
🔰 | 🟩 | What We Do in the Shadows
🔰 | 🟩 | Wilfred ⭐
🔰 | 🟩 | Workaholics