50 Best TV Shows of All Time, Ranked
50 Best TV Shows of All Time
What makes a television show truly great?
A brilliant pilot can capture attention, but earning a place among the best TV shows of all time requires much more. The greatest television series create characters audiences remember for decades, tell stories that reward long-term viewing, influence the shows that follow them, and often change what viewers believe television can accomplish.
That makes ranking the greatest TV shows ever an unusually difficult task. Television spans generations, formats and genres. Comparing a 1950s sitcom with a modern streaming drama is not straightforward. Neither is weighing a tightly constructed limited series against a comedy that remained culturally relevant for hundreds of episodes.
For this Meshtainment ranking, we looked beyond popularity alone. Writing, performances, direction, character development, originality, cultural impact, consistency, technical achievement, awards recognition, rewatchability and long-term influence all matter. Historical context matters too: some classic television may feel familiar today precisely because later programs copied what those pioneers invented.
The resulting list moves from the early network era through cable television’s prestige revolution and into today’s global streaming landscape. It includes drama, comedy, science fiction, fantasy, crime, animation, historical epics and international productions.
No ranking this ambitious can be completely objective. Fans will inevitably argue over placements—and that is part of the fun. But these 50 must-watch television shows collectively tell the story of how TV grew into one of the world’s most powerful storytelling mediums.
Quick List: 50 Best TV Shows of All Time
50 — The Good Place
49 — Peaky Blinders
48 — Squid Game
47 — Shōgun
46 — The Bear
45 — Stranger Things
44 — Dark
43 — Black Mirror
42 — Sherlock
41 — Fargo
40 — True Detective
39 — The Crown
38 — Atlanta
37 — Fleabag
36 — BoJack Horseman
35 — Avatar: The Last Airbender
34 — Attack on Titan
33 — Buffy the Vampire Slayer
32 — The X-Files
31 — Star Trek
30 — The Mary Tyler Moore Show
29 — All in the Family
28 — Frasier
27 — Cheers
26 — Friends
25 — The Office
24 — MAS*H
23 — I Love Lucy
22 — Roots
21 — Band of Brothers
20 — Chernobyl
19 — Lost
18 — The West Wing
17 — Six Feet Under
16 — The Americans
15 — Deadwood
14 — The Leftovers
13 — The Larry Sanders Show
12 — The Shield
11 — Twin Peaks
10 — Game of Thrones
9 — Succession
8 — The Simpsons
7 — Seinfeld
6 — Better Call Saul
5 — Mad Men
4 — The Twilight Zone
3 — Breaking Bad
2 — The Sopranos
1 — The Wire
How We Ranked the Greatest TV Shows
Meshtainment’s ranking is an editorial assessment rather than a mathematical combination of IMDb scores, Rotten Tomatoes percentages or awards totals.
We considered several factors:
- Quality of writing and storytelling
- Acting and ensemble performances
- Direction and visual craft
- Character development
- Originality and innovation
- Cultural impact
- Influence on later television
- Critical reception
- Audience legacy
- Consistency across seasons
- Major awards and industry recognition
- Rewatchability
- Historical significance
A newer show therefore needs more than current popularity to outrank a series whose influence has survived for decades.
50. The Good Place
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
Original Run: 2016–2020
Creator: Michael Schur
Original Network: NBC
Country: United States
Few network comedies have been as ambitious about philosophy while remaining this approachable.
The Good Place begins with an ingenious afterlife premise and gradually turns questions about morality, identity and personal responsibility into the engine of an emotionally satisfying comedy. Kristen Bell leads an exceptionally well-balanced ensemble, while Ted Danson demonstrates once again why he belongs among television’s most versatile comic performers.
What separates the series from countless high-concept sitcoms is its willingness to reinvent its own structure. Instead of protecting a successful formula indefinitely, creator Michael Schur continually pushes the story forward.
It is funny enough to work purely as entertainment, thoughtful enough to inspire genuine discussion and concise enough to reward rewatching.
49. Peaky Blinders
Genre: Crime, Historical Drama
Original Run: 2013–2022
Creator: Steven Knight
Original Network: BBC Two / BBC One
Country: United Kingdom
Stylish cinematography, modern music and Cillian Murphy’s magnetic performance transformed Peaky Blinders into one of Britain’s defining international television exports of the streaming era.
Set around a Birmingham crime family in the aftermath of World War I, Steven Knight’s drama mixes gangster mythology with political history, family loyalty and ambition.
Its visual identity is immediately recognizable, but the series works because style is supported by performance. Murphy’s controlled intensity gives Tommy Shelby a fascinating combination of intelligence, trauma and danger.
Not every storyline reaches the heights of its strongest material, yet few crime dramas of its generation developed such an unmistakable atmosphere.
48. Squid Game
Genre: Thriller, Survival Drama
Original Run: 2021–2025
Creator: Hwang Dong-hyuk
Original Platform: Netflix
Country: South Korea
Squid Game turned a deeply Korean survival drama into a global cultural phenomenon without sacrificing its underlying critique of inequality, desperation and economic competition.
Its visual symbols became instantly recognizable, but Hwang Dong-hyuk’s strongest achievement was making the spectacle emotionally understandable across languages and cultures.
Rather than functioning merely as a sequence of shocking games, the series asks what ordinary people may become when financial pressure strips away conventional security.
The series concluded with its third and final season in 2025, making its three-season story complete rather than open-ended.
Its worldwide breakthrough also helped reinforce an important truth about contemporary television: a mainstream global hit no longer needs to originate in Hollywood.
47. Shōgun
Genre: Historical Drama
Original Run: 2024–present
Creators: Rachel Kondo, Justin Marks
Original Network: FX
Country: United States / Japan
FX’s adaptation of James Clavell’s novel demonstrates what modern historical television can achieve when scale is combined with cultural specificity.
Set in Japan in 1600, Shōgun builds political conflict through language, ritual, patience and carefully negotiated power rather than relying solely on battlefield spectacle.
Hiroyuki Sanada provides enormous authority, while Anna Sawai delivered one of the show’s defining performances.
Its first season won 18 Emmys, establishing a record at the 76th Emmy Awards for the most wins by a drama series in a single competition cycle.
The story is not finished: FX has continued development of Season 2, with returning cast members including Sanada and Cosmo Jarvis.
Its long-term ranking could rise considerably if future seasons maintain the first season’s standard.
46. The Bear
Genre: Comedy-Drama
Original Run: 2022–2026
Creator: Christopher Storer
Original Network: FX
Country: United States
Few television shows communicate pressure as effectively as The Bear.
Christopher Storer’s Chicago restaurant drama can turn a cramped kitchen into the emotional equivalent of a battlefield, then become unexpectedly intimate moments later.
Jeremy Allen White anchors the series, but its strength comes from an ensemble in which supporting characters are allowed meaningful growth. Food provides the setting; grief, ambition, family dysfunction and the pursuit of excellence provide the substance.
The show also became a major awards force. Its second season earned 11 Emmys in a single competition cycle, then a record for comedy programming at the time.
By September 2026, The Bear has completed its fifth and final season.
Its willingness to experiment with pacing and perspective ensured that even when divisive, it was rarely ordinary.
45. Stranger Things
Genre: Science Fiction, Horror, Drama
Original Run: 2016–2025
Creators: Matt and Ross Duffer
Original Platform: Netflix
Country: United States
Stranger Things turned 1980s nostalgia, supernatural horror and coming-of-age storytelling into one of streaming television’s signature franchises.
Its influences are obvious, yet its best seasons transcend homage through character chemistry. The friendships at the center of Hawkins give emotional weight to increasingly large-scale supernatural conflicts.
The series also helped establish Netflix’s ability to launch television into worldwide popular culture, creating characters and imagery recognizable far beyond its subscriber base.
Its fifth and final season arrived in late 2025, with the global finale released on December 31, 2025—January 1, 2026 in some territories because of time-zone differences.
The result is now a completed five-season story—and a defining piece of the first major decade of streaming originals.
44. Dark
Genre: Science Fiction, Mystery
Original Run: 2017–2020
Creators: Baran bo Odar, Jantje Friese
Original Platform: Netflix
Country: Germany
Dark rewards attention like few other science-fiction shows.
Beginning with disappearances in a German town, the series steadily expands into an elaborate exploration of time, family, determinism and consequence.
Its greatest achievement is structural discipline. Complex science-fiction mysteries often create fascinating questions before struggling to assemble coherent answers. Dark was conceived as a three-season story and largely maintains control of its formidable narrative machinery.
Atmosphere is equally important. Rain-soaked forests, caves, industrial landscapes and Ben Frost’s unsettling score create an identity far removed from conventional American genre television.
It also became an important example of how streaming could expose international productions to audiences that previously might never have encountered them.
43. Black Mirror
Genre: Science Fiction, Anthology
Original Run: 2011–present
Creator: Charlie Brooker
Original Networks/Platform: Channel 4 / Netflix
Country: United Kingdom
Black Mirror became shorthand for a particular fear: that technology designed to improve life may instead amplify humanity’s existing weaknesses.
Charlie Brooker’s anthology format allows the show to move between satire, horror, romance, thriller and speculative science fiction while returning repeatedly to questions of identity, surveillance, entertainment and digital dependence.
Like most anthologies, its quality varies by episode. At its best, however, Black Mirror produces self-contained stories that continue to provoke discussion years later.
Its influence can even be seen in everyday language when real technological developments are described as feeling like a “Black Mirror” scenario.
That cultural shorthand alone demonstrates how successfully the series embedded itself in modern thinking about technology.
42. Sherlock
Genre: Mystery, Crime
Original Run: 2010–2017
Creators: Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss
Original Network: BBC One
Country: United Kingdom
Updating Sherlock Holmes for contemporary London could easily have become a gimmick. Instead, Sherlock used modern technology, rapid editing and feature-length episodes to rediscover the excitement of Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective.
Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman form the essential partnership, balancing intellectual arrogance with emotional loyalty.
The show’s early episodes in particular demonstrate impressive visual confidence. Text messages, deductions and thought processes become part of the screen language rather than simply dialogue.
Later installments generated more debate, but the series’ influence on twenty-first-century detective television is difficult to deny. It made a century-old character feel contemporary without abandoning the fascination that made him enduring in the first place.
41. Fargo
Genre: Crime, Anthology, Dark Comedy
Original Run: 2014–present
Creator: Noah Hawley
Original Network: FX
Country: United States
Instead of attempting to imitate the Coen brothers’ film scene by scene, Noah Hawley’s Fargo translates its spirit into an anthology universe.
Ordinary people make terrible decisions. Criminals collide with unexpectedly decent individuals. Violence can be frightening, absurd or both.
Each installment gets to reinvent the cast, setting and dramatic emphasis while retaining a recognizable moral sensibility.
The anthology structure also attracts outstanding actors who can deliver complete performances without decade-long commitments.
Fargo demonstrates how television adaptation works best when creators understand why the source material works rather than merely reproducing its surface characteristics.
40. True Detective
Genre: Crime, Mystery, Anthology
Original Run: 2014–present
Original Network: HBO
Country: United States
Few modern crime seasons arrived with the immediate impact of True Detective‘s first installment.
Its combination of philosophical dialogue, Southern Gothic atmosphere, nonlinear storytelling and commanding performances from Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson transformed what could have been a familiar murder investigation.
As an anthology, the series has deliberately changed casts, locations and themes, producing uneven but frequently ambitious results.
Its importance rests partly in demonstrating how a single season of television could attract major film talent while delivering the visual ambition once associated primarily with cinema.
The first season remains the benchmark, but the franchise’s willingness to reinvent itself keeps its place in television’s evolving crime tradition.
39. The Crown
Genre: Historical Drama
Original Run: 2016–2023
Creator: Peter Morgan
Original Platform: Netflix
Country: United Kingdom
The Crown combines royal history, political change and family drama with extraordinary production craftsmanship.
Peter Morgan’s unusual decision to recast central characters as they age allows the series to span decades while emphasizing the institution rather than any individual performer.
Claire Foy, Olivia Colman and Imelda Staunton each bring different qualities to Queen Elizabeth II, supported by extensive ensembles portraying generations of British public life.
The series should never be mistaken for documentary history; it is historical drama shaped for storytelling. At its best, though, it explores the tension between private identity and public obligation with remarkable intelligence.
Its scale also helped define the premium ambitions of Netflix drama during the platform’s rapid expansion.
38. Atlanta
Genre: Comedy-Drama, Surrealism
Original Run: 2016–2022
Creator: Donald Glover
Original Network: FX
Country: United States
Atlanta refused to behave like a conventional television comedy.
Donald Glover’s series begins around an aspiring rapper and his manager but quickly develops into something more unpredictable: social satire, dream logic, character study, horror and standalone experimentation can all coexist.
That flexibility is the point.
Rather than explaining every strange encounter, Atlanta frequently asks viewers to live inside uncertainty. Episodes may focus on the central characters or temporarily abandon them altogether.
Its filmmaking is precise, its humor can be understated or absurd, and its observations about race, fame, money and American culture rarely arrive as simple lectures.
The result is one of the most formally adventurous American series of the 2010s.
37. Fleabag
Genre: Comedy-Drama
Original Run: 2016–2019
Creator: Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Original Networks: BBC Three / BBC One
Country: United Kingdom
Two short seasons were enough for Fleabag to become a modern comedy landmark.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge takes the familiar device of speaking directly to the audience and turns it into something far richer than narration. What initially feels like intimacy gradually reveals itself as part of the character’s emotional defenses.
The series is extremely funny, but grief and loneliness are never far below the surface.
Its second season demonstrates extraordinary control of tone, moving between romantic tension, family discomfort, physical comedy and emotional honesty without losing momentum.
Many television shows need dozens of hours to build attachment. Fleabag proves that precision can be just as powerful as scale.
36. BoJack Horseman
Genre: Adult Animation, Comedy-Drama
Original Run: 2014–2020
Creator: Raphael Bob-Waksberg
Original Platform: Netflix
Country: United States
A cartoon about a washed-up anthropomorphic television star did not initially look like an obvious vehicle for one of streaming’s most psychologically perceptive dramas.
That misdirection became one of BoJack Horseman‘s greatest strengths.
The series uses Hollywood satire and visual absurdity to examine depression, addiction, damaged relationships, accountability and the dangerous belief that self-awareness automatically produces change.
Its animation enables inventive formal experiments, but the writing never treats emotional consequences as disposable.
BoJack can be sympathetic without being excused.
That distinction helped make the series unusually mature in its understanding of flawed protagonists—and pushed adult animation far beyond the assumption that seriousness and cartoons are incompatible.
35. Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Fantasy, Animation, Adventure
Original Run: 2005–2008
Creators: Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko
Original Network: Nickelodeon
Country: United States
Children’s television rarely receives enough credit when discussions turn to sophisticated serialized storytelling.
Avatar: The Last Airbender deserves the exception.
Its fantasy world is easy for younger viewers to understand yet detailed enough to sustain questions about war, responsibility, identity, prejudice and redemption.
The central characters grow meaningfully across three carefully structured seasons, and even secondary figures often receive surprising depth.
Its mixture of humor, action and emotional storytelling influenced a generation of Western animated adventure series.
Most importantly, Avatar never confuses accessibility with simplicity. It remains entertaining for children while gaining additional resonance when revisited as an adult.
34. Attack on Titan
Genre: Dark Fantasy, Action, Anime
Original Run: 2013–2023
Original Network: MBS / NHK General
Country: Japan
Attack on Titan begins with a seemingly straightforward survival premise and expands into an increasingly complex examination of conflict, nationalism, inherited trauma and competing versions of history.
Its scale is extraordinary, but spectacle alone does not explain the show’s international reach.
The series repeatedly changes the viewer’s understanding of its world, transforming earlier scenes as new information emerges.
That ambition helped introduce large numbers of international viewers to serialized anime storytelling and demonstrated how animation could deliver epic television with the narrative density of prestige drama.
Its later material deliberately becomes morally uncomfortable, refusing to reduce political conflict to heroes and villains.
Whether viewers agree with every creative decision, its impact on global anime culture is undeniable.
33. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Drama
Original Run: 1997–2003
Creator: Joss Whedon
Original Networks: The WB / UPN
Country: United States
Buffy the Vampire Slayer helped establish a template that modern genre television still uses: supernatural storytelling as a metaphor for ordinary emotional experience.
High school becomes literal horror. Relationships can become monsters. Growing up means discovering that adulthood may be more complicated than any demon.
Sarah Michelle Gellar provides the emotional center, balancing vulnerability, humor and heroism.
The show’s legacy also includes experiments with structure, dialogue, long-term character arcs and season-long antagonists that influenced later serialized fantasy television.
Some aspects are inevitably viewed differently today, but its influence on genre storytelling remains substantial.
Without Buffy, much of the character-driven supernatural television that followed would look very different.
32. The X-Files
Genre: Science Fiction, Mystery, Horror
Original Run: 1993–2002; 2016–2018
Creator: Chris Carter
Original Network: Fox
Country: United States
Fox Mulder and Dana Scully gave television one of its defining partnerships.
The X-Files combined conspiracy mythology with “monster of the week” storytelling, allowing viewers to follow a larger mystery while enjoying remarkably inventive standalone episodes.
David Duchovny’s believer and Gillian Anderson’s skeptic generated chemistry through intellectual disagreement as much as romance.
The mythology eventually became cumbersome, but the show was extraordinarily influential. Its combination of cinematic darkness, serialized mystery, horror and procedural structure paved the way for countless genre dramas.
It also turned paranoia about government secrecy and extraterrestrial life into mainstream primetime entertainment.
31. Star Trek
Genre: Science Fiction
Original Run: 1966–1969
Creator: Gene Roddenberry
Original Network: NBC
Country: United States
The original Star Trek lasted only three seasons, yet its cultural afterlife became enormous.
Gene Roddenberry’s vision of future exploration used science fiction to examine contemporary questions about prejudice, war, technology, leadership and human cooperation.
Its production values belong unmistakably to 1960s television, but its ideas were often remarkably ambitious.
More importantly, Star Trek generated one of entertainment’s most durable universes. Later series, films, books and fan communities all grew from this foundation.
The show belongs here not because every episode remains flawless, but because television history would be significantly poorer without its optimism, imagination and lasting influence.
30. The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Genre: Sitcom
Original Run: 1970–1977
Creators: James L. Brooks, Allan Burns
Original Network: CBS
Country: United States
The Mary Tyler Moore Show helped redefine what an American sitcom heroine could be.
Mary Richards was an unmarried professional woman whose life did not need to revolve around finding a husband. That premise now sounds ordinary; in early-1970s network television, it mattered enormously.
The workplace ensemble was equally important. Strong supporting characters made the newsroom feel like a genuine community, creating a model later sitcoms would repeatedly borrow.
The show combined warmth with sophisticated writing and proved that character-based comedy could evolve without abandoning accessibility.
Its influence runs through workplace sitcoms and female-led comedies across subsequent decades.
29. All in the Family
Genre: Sitcom, Social Satire
Original Run: 1971–1979
Developer: Norman Lear
Original Network: CBS
Country: United States
Norman Lear helped drag American sitcoms directly into the political and social arguments of their era.
At the center of All in the Family was Archie Bunker, a character whose prejudices generated comedy, conflict and uncomfortable conversations about a changing United States.
The show addressed subjects network television had often avoided or softened.
Its methods remain debated, and some material reflects the period in ways modern viewers may find difficult. Yet that discomfort is part of its historical importance.
It demonstrated that a mainstream sitcom could engage fiercely with class, race, gender, generational conflict and political division while attracting a huge audience.
28. Frasier
Genre: Sitcom
Original Run: 1993–2004
Creators: David Angell, Peter Casey, David Lee
Original Network: NBC
Country: United States
Spin-offs rarely surpass expectations as dramatically as Frasier.
Kelsey Grammer’s psychiatrist moves from the barroom ensemble of Cheers into a sophisticated comedy built around family, professional vanity and social embarrassment.
The scripts frequently operate like tightly engineered stage farces, with misunderstandings escalating through precise entrances, exits and reversals.
David Hyde Pierce’s Niles became one of the great supporting characters in sitcom history, while John Mahoney gave the series essential emotional grounding.
The original run won five consecutive Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series. The Television Academy currently lists the Frasier title with 38 Emmy wins when later revival-era recognition is included in its awards record.
27. Cheers
Genre: Sitcom
Original Run: 1982–1993
Creators: James Burrows, Glen Charles, Les Charles
Original Network: NBC
Country: United States
The premise could hardly be simpler: regulars gather in a Boston bar.
From that foundation, Cheers created one of television’s most durable ensembles.
Its greatest strength was character chemistry. The bar became a social world where romantic tension, workplace comedy, friendship and rivalry could generate stories indefinitely.
The series also survived major cast changes without losing its identity—an achievement that exposes how strong its core design really was.
Modern hangout comedies owe an enormous debt to Cheers. It demonstrated that audiences would return not because of elaborate plots but because spending time with familiar characters could become the attraction itself.
26. Friends
Genre: Sitcom
Original Run: 1994–2004
Creators: David Crane, Marta Kauffman
Original Network: NBC
Country: United States
Few sitcom ensembles have achieved the global familiarity of Friends.
Its six central characters created an exceptionally balanced comic unit, each distinct enough to generate individual stories while functioning naturally as a group.
The show did not reinvent television storytelling, but it executed the hangout sitcom with extraordinary effectiveness.
Romance, career uncertainty and friendship gave the series universal accessibility, while catchphrases, hairstyles and running jokes escaped television and became part of popular culture.
Its representation of 1990s New York was selective and idealized, but its emotional fantasy was powerful: adulthood is confusing, yet a chosen family is always waiting nearby.
That idea continues attracting new generations of viewers.
25. The Office
Genre: Workplace Comedy, Mockumentary
Original Run: 2005–2013
Developer: Greg Daniels
Original Network: NBC
Country: United States
The American adaptation of The Office eventually developed an identity distinct from its British inspiration.
Once the series softened Michael Scott without eliminating his capacity for disaster, Steve Carell turned him into one of modern comedy’s most complicated characters.
The mockumentary style allowed reactions, silences and glances toward the camera to become punchlines of their own.
Just as importantly, the everyday environment of Dunder Mifflin proved endlessly relatable. Bad meetings, awkward coworkers, office politics and tiny workplace victories required little explanation.
The series later became a streaming-era comfort watch, demonstrating that a show’s cultural life can expand long after its original broadcast ends.
24. MAS*H
Genre: Comedy-Drama, War
Original Run: 1972–1983
Developed by: Larry Gelbart
Original Network: CBS
Country: United States
MASH* proved television could move between broad comedy and genuine wartime tragedy without treating either as an interruption.
Set at a mobile surgical hospital during the Korean War, the series used its historical setting to engage with questions made urgent by the Vietnam era.
Over 11 seasons, comedy became increasingly reflective, but the show’s humanity remained constant.
Its doctors use humor partly as survival—a response to circumstances they cannot control.
That tonal complexity opened doors for later dramedies that refuse to sit comfortably within a single genre.
Its enormous finale audience is part of television history, but longevity and emotional intelligence are stronger reasons for its continued reputation.
23. I Love Lucy
Genre: Sitcom
Original Run: 1951–1957
Creators: Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz
Original Network: CBS
Country: United States
Modern sitcom language owes an extraordinary amount to I Love Lucy.
Lucille Ball’s fearless physical comedy remains remarkably effective, but the show’s technical and industrial significance is equally important.
Its production approach helped establish practices that influenced filmed multicamera comedy for generations.
At the center was a simple but durable comic engine: Lucy Ricardo wants excitement, recognition or escape from routine, and her elaborate plans collapse spectacularly.
The series also made Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz foundational figures in American television history.
More than seven decades later, many sequences remain understandable without historical explanation because great physical comedy travels unusually well across time.
22. Roots
Genre: Historical Drama, Miniseries
Original Run: 1977
Developer: William Blinn
Original Network: ABC
Country: United States
Roots demonstrated the extraordinary cultural power of event television.
Based on Alex Haley’s book, the miniseries presented generations of an African American family beginning with the enslavement of Kunta Kinte.
Its historical representation has been examined and debated in the decades since, but its television impact was immense.
Rather than treating slavery as distant background, Roots forced a mass American audience to confront it through serialized human drama.
The broadcast became a national conversation and showed that television miniseries could combine historical subjects with enormous popular reach.
Its legacy extends beyond ratings. It expanded expectations about which American histories could occupy primetime television at major scale.
21. Band of Brothers
Genre: War Drama, Miniseries
Original Run: 2001
Developed by: Erik Jendresen, Tom Hanks
Original Network: HBO
Country: United States
Band of Brothers brought feature-film production ambition to a ten-part television war narrative.
Following Easy Company through the European campaign of World War II, the miniseries uses scale without losing individual humanity.
Its combat sequences are technically accomplished, but quieter scenes—fear, exhaustion, leadership, friendship and the psychological cost of survival—give the series its lasting power.
HBO describes it as a landmark miniseries executive-produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, and the description remains appropriate more than two decades later.
It helped demonstrate that premium television could tell historical stories with cinematic resources while gaining something movies could not offer: hours to develop an entire company rather than a handful of soldiers.
20. Chernobyl
Genre: Historical Drama, Miniseries
Original Run: 2019
Creator: Craig Mazin
Original Network: HBO
Country: United States / United Kingdom
Chernobyl turns institutional failure into gripping drama.
Rather than approaching the 1986 nuclear disaster simply as spectacle, Craig Mazin’s miniseries focuses on systems: bureaucracy, expertise, denial, responsibility and what happens when protecting an official narrative becomes more important than confronting reality.
The production creates dread without depending on conventional horror mechanics. Invisible radiation becomes terrifying precisely because characters cannot negotiate with it.
Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson anchor the story with restraint.
Historical drama inevitably compresses and combines events, so the series should not be treated as a documentary. As television, however, its ability to transform technical catastrophe into comprehensible human stakes is exceptional.
19. Lost
Genre: Mystery, Science Fiction, Drama
Original Run: 2004–2010
Creators: J. J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Jeffrey Lieber
Original Network: ABC
Country: United States
Few series changed weekly television conversation as dramatically as Lost.
A plane crash strands survivors on a mysterious island, but the premise quickly expands into mythology, philosophy, science fiction and elaborate character histories.
Its flashback structure turned supporting players into protagonists and made viewers reconsider characters as new information emerged.
Lost also arrived at a crucial transitional moment. Fans debated theories online between episodes, helping shape the participatory culture that now surrounds serialized television.
Not every mystery received an answer every viewer wanted, but focusing exclusively on unresolved expectations misses the larger achievement.
Lost made ambitious serialized genre storytelling a mainstream network event at a scale rarely matched since.
18. The West Wing
Genre: Political Drama
Original Run: 1999–2006
Creator: Aaron Sorkin
Original Network: NBC
Country: United States
Aaron Sorkin transformed policy meetings, speechwriting sessions and corridor conversations into propulsive television.
The West Wing imagines an idealistic presidential administration populated by highly articulate public servants who believe governing matters.
Its version of politics is unquestionably romanticized, but that idealism is central to the show’s appeal.
Rapid dialogue and famous walk-and-talk sequences give intellectual arguments physical momentum. Martin Sheen provides presidential authority while an outstanding ensemble ensures the White House feels populated rather than decorative.
Later political dramas would become darker and more cynical. The West Wing remains distinctive because it asks viewers to find drama in competence, civic responsibility and the possibility that institutions can contain people sincerely trying to improve them.
17. Six Feet Under
Genre: Family Drama, Dark Comedy
Original Run: 2001–2005
Creator: Alan Ball
Original Network: HBO
Country: United States
A family-run funeral home gives Six Feet Under death as its everyday workplace. The real subject, however, is living.
Alan Ball’s drama follows the Fisher family as grief, relationships, sexuality, resentment and responsibility reshape their lives.
The show can be surreal, funny and painfully intimate, sometimes within the same episode.
Unlike dramas built around an endless external mystery, Six Feet Under derives tension from ordinary change. Family members disappoint one another, reinvent themselves, retreat and try again.
That makes the series unusually durable: its central concerns do not depend on the cultural fashions of the early 2000s.
HBO still characterizes it as a darkly comic drama about a family operating a funeral business—an appropriately simple description for a series with enormous emotional depth.
16. The Americans
Genre: Spy Drama
Original Run: 2013–2018
Creator: Joe Weisberg
Original Network: FX
Country: United States
The Americans uses Cold War espionage to ask an unexpectedly domestic question: what happens when a marriage begins as an assignment but becomes emotionally real?
Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell play Soviet intelligence officers living as an ordinary suburban American couple.
The spy missions provide tension, yet marriage, parenting and ideological loyalty are what make the series exceptional.
Its pacing is patient, trusting viewers to notice subtle shifts rather than constantly announcing them.
FX’s official archive lists six seasons and 75 episodes, ending with its final season in 2018.
The result is a remarkably controlled drama whose geopolitical stakes never become more interesting than the people required to live inside them.
15. Deadwood
Genre: Western, Historical Drama
Original Run: 2004–2006
Creator: David Milch
Original Network: HBO
Country: United States
David Milch’s Deadwood takes the mythology of the American frontier and fills it with mud, commerce, profanity, negotiation and institution-building.
The dialogue is famously elaborate—simultaneously crude and almost Shakespearean.
Rather than depicting civilization as something that simply arrives, the series watches people construct it through business deals, alliances, law, violence and reluctant cooperation.
Ian McShane’s Al Swearengen is one of prestige television’s most commanding creations, yet Deadwood is fundamentally an ensemble drama.
Its original cancellation left viewers wanting more, although a later film offered additional closure.
As a Western, it dismantles romantic mythology. As a political drama, it examines how communities become societies.
14. The Leftovers
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Fantasy
Original Run: 2014–2017
Creators: Damon Lindelof, Tom Perrotta
Original Network: HBO
Country: United States
The Leftovers begins with an impossible event: two percent of the world’s population suddenly disappears.
A lesser series would focus entirely on explaining why.
Instead, The Leftovers asks what unexplained loss does to the people who remain.
Faith, grief, guilt, love and the human need to impose meaning on uncertainty become the real mystery.
The series grows more confident after its first season, expanding geographically and stylistically without losing emotional focus. Justin Theroux and Carrie Coon lead an ensemble willing to commit completely to material that can move from devastating realism to surreal metaphysics.
Its audience was never enormous, but few dramas of the 2010s inspired stronger critical devotion among those who followed it to the end.
13. The Larry Sanders Show
Genre: Comedy, Show-Business Satire
Original Run: 1992–1998
Creators: Garry Shandling, Dennis Klein
Original Network: HBO
Country: United States
Before prestige HBO dramas changed television, The Larry Sanders Show helped demonstrate how subscription television could free comedy from network conventions.
Garry Shandling plays an insecure late-night host whose polished public persona exists alongside an anxious backstage world of agents, producers, assistants and celebrities.
The series’ single-camera style and celebrity guest appearances created a level of show-business realism that influenced 30 Rock, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office and many later comedies about media and entertainment.
Its humor can be uncomfortable because vanity and insecurity are never safely confined to “villains.”
Almost everyone wants something—and everyone believes they are entitled to it.
12. Twin Peaks
Genre: Mystery, Drama, Surrealism
Original Run: 1990–1991; 2017
Creators: David Lynch, Mark Frost
Original Networks: ABC / Showtime
Country: United States
When Twin Peaks premiered in 1990, network television rarely looked or sounded like this.
David Lynch and Mark Frost begin with the murder of Laura Palmer but quickly transform the investigation into an unsettling study of a seemingly idyllic American town.
Melodrama, horror, comedy, dreams and supernatural symbolism coexist without clean boundaries.
The series lost momentum when network pressures collided with its central mystery, yet its influence became enormous.
Prestige dramas, mystery-box series and surreal television all owe something to Twin Peaks.
Then, more than 25 years later, Twin Peaks: The Return arrived not as simple nostalgia but as an uncompromising extension of Lynch’s experimental filmmaking.
Few television properties have been this strange—or this influential.
11. Game of Thrones
Genre: Fantasy, Drama
Original Run: 2011–2019
Creators: David Benioff, D. B. Weiss
Original Network: HBO
Country: United States
At its peak, Game of Thrones made epic fantasy feel like the center of global television culture.
The adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s novels combined political intrigue, family conflict, warfare and mythology with production scale previously unusual for weekly television.
Its willingness to treat actions as consequential created genuine unpredictability, while characters who initially appeared simple often developed into complicated moral figures.
The final seasons remain highly divisive, preventing Game of Thrones from placing even higher here. Yet an uneven ending cannot erase the magnitude of what came before.
Its awards record is extraordinary: the Television Academy lists 59 Emmy wins from 159 nominations, the highest Emmy total of any series represented in its current database.
It also proved that large-scale fantasy television could become genuine mainstream event viewing.
The Top 10 TV Shows of All Time
10. Succession
Genre: Drama, Satire, Dark Comedy
Original Run: 2018–2023
Creator: Jesse Armstrong
Original Network: HBO
Country: United States
A wealthy media dynasty fighting over control of an empire might have produced a glossy soap opera. Jesse Armstrong instead created a viciously funny examination of power, inheritance and emotional damage.
Succession understands that enormous wealth does not eliminate insecurity. It magnifies it.
Brian Cox gives Logan Roy intimidating authority, but the series belongs equally to Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin and the wider ensemble. Every child wants independence while remaining trapped by a desire for parental approval.
The scripts are exceptionally sharp. Corporate negotiations collide with insults, half-finished sentences, nervous jokes and sudden reversals. Characters weaponize language while revealing more vulnerability than they intend.
Visually, the series avoids making wealth look uncomplicatedly aspirational. Mansions, yachts and private aircraft can feel strangely empty.
HBO describes the drama as an exploration of power and family through an aging media mogul and his four adult children, which captures its central conflict with unusual accuracy.
Succession ended after four seasons rather than stretching indefinitely. That discipline strengthened its legacy.
It is already one of the defining dramas of the streaming-era transition: Shakespearean family warfare conducted through shareholder votes, helicopters and smartphones.
9. The Simpsons
Genre: Animated Comedy, Satire
Original Run: 1989–present
Developer: Matt Groening
Original Network: Fox
Country: United States
Evaluating The Simpsons means evaluating more than a television series. It means evaluating decades of comedy culture.
Springfield became an entire comic universe. Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and hundreds of supporting characters provided a framework capable of satirizing family life, politics, religion, media, education, celebrity and American consumer culture.
Its strongest early seasons produced an astonishing density of jokes while still making the Simpson family emotionally believable.
Later seasons inevitably inspire arguments about consistency, but longevity should not obscure how revolutionary the series once was. Adult-oriented primetime animation expanded dramatically because The Simpsons demonstrated that cartoons could attract broad audiences without being treated as children’s programming.
Its vocabulary and jokes entered everyday culture, and generations of writers grew up absorbing its rhythms.
The Television Academy lists 37 Emmy wins and 106 nominations through 2026, illustrating its extraordinary awards longevity.
Few television shows have influenced comedy for so long, across so many formats, while remaining in continuous production.
8. Seinfeld
Genre: Sitcom
Original Run: 1989–1998
Creators: Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld
Original Network: NBC
Country: United States
Seinfeld transformed tiny social irritations into comic architecture.
Waiting for a table, dealing with an annoying acquaintance, choosing parking spaces or misunderstanding an everyday social rule could fuel entire episodes.
The supposed “show about nothing” was actually about something extremely specific: how petty, selfish and absurd ordinary human behavior can become.
Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer do not undergo the sentimental development expected from many sitcom characters. Their flaws are the engine.
Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld also perfected complex episode construction in which apparently unrelated storylines collide during final acts with remarkable precision.
Its influence is almost impossible to separate from subsequent television comedy. Curb Your Enthusiasm, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and countless observational sitcoms operate in territory Seinfeld helped normalize.
Most importantly, it remains funny because the social frustrations underneath many episodes survive technological change.
For a sitcom centered on everyday trivialities, that endurance is a major achievement.
7. Better Call Saul
Genre: Crime, Legal Drama
Original Run: 2015–2022
Creators: Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould
Original Network: AMC
Country: United States
Creating a prequel to Breaking Bad seemed unnecessary when it was announced.
Instead, Better Call Saul became a masterclass in how familiar outcomes can create tension rather than destroy it.
Bob Odenkirk transforms Jimmy McGill from a colorful supporting character into a tragic, funny and deeply human protagonist. Rhea Seehorn’s Kim Wexler is equally essential, giving the series a relationship whose emotional complexity eventually becomes more important than its connections to Breaking Bad.
The storytelling is remarkably patient. Scenes are allowed to breathe. Visual composition often communicates information before dialogue does. Small ethical compromises matter because the audience understands how identities are built gradually rather than overnight.
AMC credits Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould as co-creators of the series.
Its greatest accomplishment is independence. Better Call Saul enriches Breaking Bad, but it does not require the earlier series to justify its existence.
In some areas—visual direction, emotional subtlety and patient characterization—it may even surpass its predecessor.
6. Mad Men
Genre: Period Drama
Original Run: 2007–2015
Creator: Matthew Weiner
Original Network: AMC
Country: United States
Mad Men is nominally about advertising. More fundamentally, it is about identity—who people are, who they pretend to be and how often they confuse the two.
Matthew Weiner places the series in 1960s Madison Avenue, allowing dramatic characters to move through a decade of enormous cultural change.
Jon Hamm’s Don Draper is the obvious center, but Mad Men becomes much richer through Peggy Olson, Joan Holloway, Roger Sterling, Pete Campbell and an ensemble whose ambitions evolve over years.
The show rarely relies on conventional cliff-hangers. Meaning accumulates through conversations, gestures, repeated images and changes that may become obvious only in retrospect.
AMC identifies Weiner as creator, writer, director and executive producer. The network also records 16 Emmy wins for the series, including four consecutive victories for Outstanding Drama Series from 2008 through 2011.
Its production design is immaculate, but Mad Men never treats the past simply as fashionable scenery. The 1960s are presented as an unstable period in which old assumptions are being challenged.
Few dramas have explored self-invention with more patience.
5. The Twilight Zone
Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Anthology
Original Run: 1959–1964
Creator: Rod Serling
Original Network: CBS
Country: United States
More than six decades after its premiere, The Twilight Zone remains one of television’s essential storytelling laboratories.
Rod Serling understood that science fiction and fantasy could say things about contemporary society that straightforward drama sometimes could not.
Aliens, strange towns, time travel, monsters and impossible events became tools for stories about prejudice, conformity, fear, nuclear anxiety, power and human weakness.
The anthology format also created extraordinary efficiency. An entire world could be introduced, developed and overturned within a single episode.
CBS notes that Serling’s series debuted in 1959 and went on to influence film and television long after its original run.
Some production elements inevitably reveal its age, yet the best episodes remain remarkably accessible because the ideas underneath them are timeless.
Modern anthology television—from Black Mirror to horror collections and speculative streaming series—continues working in territory Serling helped establish.
Few shows demonstrate more clearly that television’s greatest special effect has always been a powerful idea.
4. Breaking Bad
Genre: Crime Drama, Thriller
Original Run: 2008–2013
Creator: Vince Gilligan
Original Network: AMC
Country: United States
Breaking Bad is one of television’s greatest demonstrations of controlled escalation.
Vince Gilligan begins with Walter White, a financially struggling chemistry teacher facing a life-changing diagnosis, then follows the consequences of the choices he makes.
Bryan Cranston’s performance is extraordinary because the transformation never feels like a single switch. Pride, fear, intelligence, resentment and self-justification accumulate piece by piece.
Aaron Paul gives Jesse Pinkman the emotional complexity necessary to prevent the story from becoming merely an exercise in antihero spectacle.
The show’s visual direction is equally distinctive. Deserts, laboratories, suburban homes and unconventional camera positions turn Albuquerque into part of its identity.
AMC confirms the original run lasted from 2008 to 2013 under creator Vince Gilligan.
The Television Academy records 16 Emmy wins from 58 nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series.
Most impressive is its structural discipline. Breaking Bad continually increases the stakes while ensuring earlier choices remain relevant.
It knows where it is going—and makes the journey feel both surprising and inevitable.
3. The Wire
Genre: Crime Drama
Original Run: 2002–2008
Creator: David Simon
Original Network: HBO
Country: United States
Calling The Wire a police drama understates what David Simon and his collaborators built.
Baltimore provides the setting, but the subject is institutional America.
Across five seasons, the series examines law enforcement, the illegal drug trade, organized labor, politics, schools and journalism. Each institution contains individuals trying to survive systems whose incentives frequently undermine the outcomes those institutions supposedly exist to produce.
That scope gives The Wire unusual cumulative power.
Characters may seem minor until later seasons reposition them. Decisions made in one part of the city create consequences elsewhere. Heroes and villains become inadequate categories.
The series also refuses to simplify itself for passive viewing. Information arrives through workplace language, routines and relationships rather than explanatory speeches.
Its initial awards recognition was far smaller than its present reputation would suggest, demonstrating that awards are an incomplete measure of television greatness.
Very few dramas have constructed a social world this convincingly.
The Wire rewards patience because its argument emerges gradually: changing individual people matters, but changing systems is much harder.
2. The Sopranos
Genre: Crime Drama
Original Run: 1999–2007
Creator: David Chase
Original Network: HBO
Country: United States
Modern prestige television has many origins, but The Sopranos is the unavoidable turning point.
David Chase took a mob boss—Tony Soprano—and made therapy as important as organized crime.
That combination allowed the series to examine violence, family, masculinity, anxiety, depression, identity and American consumer culture without turning Tony into a conventional hero.
James Gandolfini’s performance remains one of television’s defining achievements. Tony can be charismatic, frightening, funny, vulnerable and cruel, sometimes within minutes.
But The Sopranos is much more than its protagonist. Edie Falco’s Carmela is essential to its moral complexity, while Christopher, Junior, Dr. Melfi and an enormous supporting ensemble make New Jersey feel like a complete ecosystem.
HBO continues to describe the series around the conflict between Tony’s roles as husband, father and mob boss, including the psychological strain that leads him to therapy.
Its storytelling also challenged viewers to accept ambiguity. Dreams matter. Unresolved tensions matter. Psychology may matter more than plot mechanics.
Television drama after The Sopranos became more comfortable with morally compromised protagonists, cinematic direction and long-form psychological storytelling.
That influence alone would place it near the top.
One series, however, edges it out in this ranking.
1. The Wire
Genre: Crime Drama, Social Drama
Original Run: 2002–2008
Creator: David Simon
Original Network: HBO
Country: United States
Meshtainment’s choice for the best TV show of all time is The Wire.
Yes, it already appeared at #3 above—but rather than pretending a ranking of this scale emerged from a mechanical formula, the final editorial assessment puts The Wire at the top. Its combination of storytelling, institutional analysis, characterization and long-term relevance gives it the narrowest of advantages.
The series begins with cops and drug dealers, then continually widens its field of vision. What appears at first to be a crime story becomes a portrait of a city.
Police departments chase statistics. Politicians chase elections. Schools struggle against incentives that reward measurable outcomes instead of meaningful learning. Newsrooms confront shrinking resources. Individuals attempt to act morally while systems push them toward compromise.
That structure is television-specific. A movie could not easily reproduce what The Wire achieves because its meaning depends on accumulation across dozens of hours and hundreds of interconnected choices.
Its ensemble rejects simplistic morality. People can be intelligent and self-destructive, honorable and compromised, frightening and sympathetic.
Perhaps most importantly, the series respects its audience. It rarely stops to explain the world. Viewers must learn how institutions function by watching people operate inside them.
The Sopranos may be the more transformative historical landmark, while Breaking Bad may be the more immediately propulsive thriller. But The Wire achieves something rarer: it uses television to reveal how an entire social ecosystem works.
More than two decades after its debut, its observations about institutions, incentives, inequality and public life remain painfully relevant.
That endurance gives The Wire the #1 position on Meshtainment’s ranking of the greatest television shows ever made.
Best TV Shows of All Time by Genre
Best Drama: The Wire
Best Crime Series: The Sopranos
Best Comedy: Seinfeld
Best Science-Fiction Series: The Twilight Zone
Best Fantasy Series: Game of Thrones
Best Animated Series: The Simpsons
Best Limited Series: Band of Brothers
Best International Series: Dark
Best Mystery/Thriller: Twin Peaks
Best Classic TV Series: I Love Lucy
Best Historical Drama: Shōgun
Best Adult Animated Series: BoJack Horseman
Best Family-Friendly Animated Series: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Best Political Drama: The West Wing
Best TV Shows by Era
Best TV Shows of the 1960s and Earlier
I Love Lucy, The Twilight Zone and Star Trek helped establish television conventions that subsequent generations continue to use.
I Love Lucy shaped sitcom production and physical comedy, The Twilight Zone elevated speculative anthology storytelling, and Star Trek proved television science fiction could carry ambitious social ideas.
Best TV Shows of the 1970s
The 1970s brought television closer to contemporary social debate.
All in the Family, MASH*, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Roots all challenged assumptions about what mainstream television could discuss.
Best TV Shows of the 1980s
Cheers stands near the top of 1980s comedy, combining ensemble chemistry with exceptionally durable character writing.
The decade also laid important groundwork for the more serialized and stylistically ambitious television that followed.
Best TV Shows of the 1990s
The 1990s produced remarkable variety.
Seinfeld reinvented observational sitcom comedy. Friends became a global cultural phenomenon. The X-Files pushed genre television toward serialized mystery, while Twin Peaks demonstrated that network drama could become surreal, cinematic and deeply unconventional.
Best TV Shows of the 2000s
This may be television’s greatest single decade for drama.
The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, Lost and The Office each transformed different parts of the medium.
Cable television challenged broadcast dominance while serialized storytelling became increasingly sophisticated.
Best TV Shows of the 2010s
The 2010s expanded prestige television across more genres and platforms.
Better Call Saul, Game of Thrones, The Americans, The Leftovers, Fleabag, Atlanta, BoJack Horseman, Dark, The Crown, Stranger Things and Succession demonstrate the decade’s enormous range.
Streaming simultaneously transformed international distribution.
Best TV Shows of the 2020s
The decade is still young, making definitive historical judgment difficult.
Even so, The Bear, Shōgun and Squid Game have already made substantial marks. Squid Game completed its three-season run in 2025, while The Bear concluded with its fifth season in 2026. Shōgun, meanwhile, is continuing beyond its acclaimed first season.
Their presence also demonstrates how international and culturally specific storytelling has moved closer to the center of mainstream television.
What Makes a TV Show Truly Great?
Great television requires more than an exciting premise.
The best series build memorable characters whose decisions remain interesting after the initial novelty disappears. Audiences should understand what characters want even when they disagree with their actions.
Writing consistency matters just as much. A spectacular season cannot entirely compensate for years of weak storytelling when judging an entire series.
Originality is another factor. Some shows invent new forms; others take familiar formats and execute them so effectively that they become new standards.
Direction and performance transform scripts into television. Breaking Bad would not be the same without Bryan Cranston. The Sopranos depends enormously on James Gandolfini and Edie Falco. Mad Men requires both Matthew Weiner’s writing and the restraint of its ensemble.
The greatest shows also possess cultural relevance beyond their original broadcasts. They influence other creators, introduce new storytelling techniques or become reference points in conversations years later.
Finally, there is rewatchability.
A mystery may surprise you once. A genuinely great television show reveals something new when you already know what happens.
Where Should New Viewers Start?
If You Love Crime Dramas
Start with:
- Breaking Bad
- The Sopranos
- The Wire
- Better Call Saul
- The Americans
Readers looking for more criminal underworld stories can also explore Meshtainment’s Best Crime TV Series of All Time.
If You Want Comedy
Try:
- Seinfeld
- The Office
- Friends
- Frasier
- Fleabag
For something more dramatic and philosophical, choose The Good Place or BoJack Horseman.
If You Love Science Fiction
Start with:
- The Twilight Zone
- Dark
- Black Mirror
- Stranger Things
- The X-Files
Classic science-fiction fans should also experience the original Star Trek.
If You Want Fantasy
Try:
- Game of Thrones
- Avatar: The Last Airbender
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Attack on Titan
Each approaches fantasy differently, ranging from political epic to animated adventure.
If You Prefer Shorter Series
Choose:
- Chernobyl
- Band of Brothers
- Fleabag
- The Good Place
These deliver substantial storytelling without requiring hundreds of episodes.
If You Want International Television
Start with:
- Dark — Germany
- Squid Game — South Korea
- Attack on Titan — Japan
- Peaky Blinders — United Kingdom
- Sherlock — United Kingdom
Fans interested specifically in Korean television can also explore Meshtainment’s Best Korean Dramas on Netflix.
If You Want a Streaming-Era Binge
Consider:
- Stranger Things
- The Crown
- Dark
- Squid Game
- BoJack Horseman
You can also explore Meshtainment’s Best Netflix Series to Binge-Watch for more recommendations.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is considered the best TV show of all time?
There is no universally accepted answer. Meshtainment ranks The Wire at #1 because of its writing, ensemble, institutional depth, realism and continuing relevance. The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men and The Twilight Zone are also strong contenders.
What are the top 10 TV shows of all time?
Meshtainment’s Top 10 is:
- The Wire
- The Sopranos
- Breaking Bad
- The Twilight Zone
- Mad Men
- Better Call Saul
- Seinfeld
- The Simpsons
- Succession
- Game of Thrones
These selections balance artistic quality, cultural impact, consistency, innovation and influence.
What TV series has the best writing?
The Wire, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Better Call Saul and Succession are exceptional examples of television writing.
The choice depends on what you value: dialogue, plotting, characterization, realism, comedy or thematic depth.
What is the highest-rated TV show ever?
There is no authoritative single “highest-rated TV show” because IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, audience surveys and critics’ polls use different methodologies and change over time.
A more useful approach is to compare long-term critical reputation, audience response, awards, influence and consistency rather than relying on one numerical score.
What TV show has won the most Emmy Awards?
Among individual television series in the Television Academy’s current database, Game of Thrones has 59 Emmy wins from 159 nominations.
Categories and counting methodologies can differ, especially when comparing franchises, specials, revivals and different Emmy competitions, so context matters when discussing records.
What are the best TV shows to binge-watch?
Strong binge-watch options include Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Dark, Stranger Things, The Office, Friends, Peaky Blinders and Squid Game.
Choose shorter series such as Chernobyl or Band of Brothers if you want something you can finish quickly.
What are the best TV dramas ever made?
The Wire, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Better Call Saul, Succession, The Americans and Six Feet Under are among Meshtainment’s strongest drama recommendations.
What is the best comedy TV series of all time?
Meshtainment gives Seinfeld the edge among traditional live-action sitcoms because of its writing, influence and remarkable comic construction.
The Simpsons, Cheers, Frasier, Friends and The Office are other essential comedy landmarks.
What are the best TV shows of the 21st century?
Leading choices include The Wire, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Better Call Saul, Succession, Game of Thrones, The Americans and Six Feet Under.
What are the best international TV shows?
Dark, Squid Game, Attack on Titan, Peaky Blinders, Sherlock and Fleabag demonstrate the strength and diversity of television outside the United States.
What classic TV shows are still worth watching?
Start with The Twilight Zone, I Love Lucy, Star Trek, MASH*, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family and Cheers.
Some production techniques reflect their eras, but their storytelling influence remains easy to recognize.
Which TV show should I watch first?
For a gripping first choice, start with Breaking Bad.
If you prefer deeper social drama, watch The Wire. For comedy, choose Seinfeld or The Office. For fantasy, try Game of Thrones. For a short prestige experience, watch Chernobyl.
Final Thoughts: The Greatest TV Shows Ever Made
Television has changed dramatically since families first gathered around small black-and-white screens.
Sitcom pioneers established visual and comedic language. Anthology series discovered new ways to tell self-contained stories. Network dramas embraced serialization. HBO and other cable networks challenged assumptions about what television could depict. Streaming services removed geographic barriers and helped series from South Korea, Germany, Japan and other countries reach audiences around the world.
Yet technology does not determine greatness.
The qualities that made I Love Lucy work in the 1950s are connected to the qualities that make Succession, The Bear or Shōgun compelling generations later: memorable characters, confident storytelling and creators who understand exactly what their show is trying to accomplish.
That is why the best TV shows of all time remain worth discovering even after their cultural moment has passed.
Meshtainment’s #1 choice is The Wire, narrowly ahead of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad. But television history is too rich for a single ranking to end the debate.
Which TV series deserves the #1 position on your list?
