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Crime thrillers, sitcoms, sci-fis and period epics: the finest scripted TV ever made, as selected by Time Out critics
Television used to be considered one of the lowest forms of entertainment. It was derided as ‘the idiot box’ and ‘the boob tube’. Edward R Murrow referred to it as ‘the opiate of the masses’, and the phrase ‘I don’t even own a TV’ was considered a major bragging right. And for a long time, it was hard to say that television’s poor reputation was undeserved.
A lot has changed. Television is now the dominant medium in basically all of entertainment, to the degree that the only thing separating movies and TV is the screen you’re watching on. Now, if you don’t own a television – or a laptop or a tablet or a phone – you’re basically left out of the cultural conversation completely.
The shift in perception is widely credited to the arrival of The Sopranos, which completely reinvented the notion of what a TV show could do. But that doesn’t mean everything that came before is primordial slurry. While this list of the greatest TV shows ever is dominated by 21st century programs, there are many shows that deserve credit for laying the groundwork for this current golden age. Chiseling them down to a neat top 100 is difficult, so we elected to leave off talk shows, variety shows and sketch comedy, focusing on scripted, episodic dramas, comedies and miniseries.
So don’t touch that dial – these are the greatest TV shows of all-time.
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100 best TV shows
Photograph: Ursula Coyote/AMC
1. Breaking Bad [2008-2013]
‘You know the business, and I know the chemistry.’ And so begins the unholiest of on-screen partnerships and, for our bag of non-sequential bills, the greatest TV show in the history of the medium. Terminally ill chemistry teacher Walter White [the revelatory Bryan Cranston] and druggy deadbeat Jesse Pinkman [Aaron Paul, its tragic soul] are creator Vince Gilligan’s cooly calculating yin and sketchy, insecure yang as they slowly build a meth empire. Their arc heads only one way, but backdropped by a parched New Mexico desert that slowly fills up with shallow graves, it’s an extraordinary ride, balancing light and darkness with enough dexterity and dark humour [the bath tub! The fly!] to provide respite from the moral decay. But while Breaking Bad is, of course, a morality tale – a Faust riff – its political edge is sharp enough to cut yourself on. Walter has done everything he was supposed to do: working two jobs, paying his bills and sharing his chemistry knowledge with generations of bored teens, but a cancer diagnosis still leaving him needing to pick between the ruin of family or that of his soul. That is, of course, until he picks both. In short? Class A television.
Photograph: Lynch Frost Productions
2. Twin Peaks [1990–1991]
As Jaws was to the blockbuster, so Twin Peaks is to TV drama: it changed everything. For 50-odd years, a handful of actors and creatives might transcend their small-screen origins and enter the Hollywood pantheon, but only those whose star had faded would suffer the return journey. But David Lynch didn’t care for tradition – and in the process of bolting his worldview to the clichés of weekly detective shows, teen romance and small-town soap opera, he and collaborator Mark Frost elevated the medium. Gorgeously shot, perfectly cast and sporting the greatest TV soundtrack of all time, the result was a huge popular success: check out the contemporary Peaks-themed magazine covers, spin-off novels and even coffee ads. The second season fell victim to studio interference – and the aggressively alienating, fabulously inventive 2017 reboot can be a challenging watch – but at its best, Twin Peaks is simply one of the great works of modern art.
Photograph: HBO
3. The Sopranos [1999-2007]
It’s tough being a TV writer in the wake of David Chase’s The Sopranos. Put simply, the Bayeux Tapestry of televisual entertainment provided the last word in antiheroes. The late James Gandolfini walked through darkness as Tony Soprano, a violent wiseguy with a soft spot for ducks and a patriarchal family man with a belief in therapy. Our moral compasses were found spinning in perpetuity thanks to the vast psychological terrain covered – and that’s before we talk Edie Falco’s complex, complicit Carmela, Michael Imperioli’s touchpaper sensitive Cousin Christopher, Drea De Matteo as the tragic, lacquered Adriana and, of course, Lorraine Bracco as Dr Melfi, the most ethically elastic therapist in the biz. Even after six seasons, the opening theme was an adrenaline shot, and the divisive finale set a standard for when to just... cut.
Photograph: HBO
4. The Wire [2002–2008]
McNulty, Bunk, Lester, Kima, Prez, Herc…when season 5 wrapped, the messy but dedicated surveillance cops [plus sidekick Bubbles] in David Simon’s crime opus proved harder to say goodbye to than one of those dingy Baltimore dive bars. Aside from the shaky final season, which cleaves closest to the showrunner’s own experiences at The Baltimore Sun, it’s hard to pick between its runs, such was the consistent quality of the writing of Simon, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos and co pulled off [the docks-set season 2 has its naysayers, but we’re not among them]. The casting is on point throughout its vast ensemble, with a young Michael B Jordan and a Londoner called Idris Elba grabbing the attention, and the late Michael K Williams cool AF as one-man crime wave Omar Little, a queer icon in a genre hardly known for them. Watch it as a violent odyssey along America’s social fault lines or a show about technology where crappy burners still trump hi-tech gadgets. Or just enjoy Isiah Whitlock Jr saying ‘Sheeeeeeeit!’ a lot, like these guys.
Photograph: BBC
5. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy [1979]
With apologies to Star Wars fans, Alec Guinness’s finest hour comes as John le Carré’s world-weary spook, George Smiley, in a magisterial espionage drama that spawned a barely-less-brilliant sequel in Smiley’s People [1982]. The plot couldn’t be simpler – there’s a mole inside British intelligence and the out-to-pasture Smiley must root him out and thwart Soviet spymaster Karla [a rarely seen but still mesmerising Patrick Stewart]. But every scene is alive with hidden meaning, with even its jargon – ‘scalphunters’, ‘chicken feed’, ‘treasure’ etc – and world-building, parlayed from le Carré’s own time at MI6, ushering you through the looking glass and into a decaying post-imperial Britain. Smiley speaks rarely, trusts almost no one and is tormented by the indiscretions of his rarely-seen wife Ann, and Guinness expresses multitudes through the merest eyebrow raise or exasperated sigh. The scheme to trap the mole, meanwhile, is proof that slow burn TV can electrify just as much as its brasher, 24-style counterpart.
Photograph: The WB
6. Buffy the Vampire Slayer [1997-2003]
In every generation there is a chosen teen idol to captivate audiences. For six years and seven seasons, starting in the late ’90s, the chosen one was Buffy Summers – and boy, did Sarah Michelle Gellar slay as Sunnydale High’s resident demon-battler. The small-screen continuation of Joss Whedon's 1992 horror-comedy film of the same name, the bloodsucking bonanza balances nerdy comedy with weighty themes like grief and consent, while never skimping on the action as Buffy and her Scooby Gang tackle an array of big bads. But what makes Buffy so enticing is a kitschy cross-genre formula that expertly spans sci-fi, body horror, supernatural frights and psychological thrills. There’s even a magnificent musical episode. And Buffy never lost sight of its heart and soul either. Battling the horrors of high school, the Hellmouth and beyond, it staked patronising stereotypes and took teen girls damn seriously.
Photograph: HBO
7. Game of Thrones [2011-2019]
When it arrived in 2011, David Benioff and DB Weiss’s adaptation of George RR Martin’s adult fantasy novels felt less like a sexed-up Lord of the Rings than a medieval Dallas – only with Starks and Lannisters rather than Ewings and Barneses. But by its ninth episode [which shockingly killed off its apparent main character], it was clear it was so much more: an astute, witty and subversive drama that, drawing from history rather than fantasy, was less a good-vs-evil battle than a horde of flawed but engaging characters creating a fiery mess of conflicting, usually selfish agendas, while their world teetered on the verge of catastrophe. As the show evolved and the budgets grew in step with its dragons, the action reached epic proportions, and it hit the kind of viewing figures and cultural proliferation you’d never have expected from such ‘nerdy’ fare. The show still gets a bad rap for its final two seasons, but while the writing lost some of its bite, it remained more spectacular, exciting and complex than most genre cinema.
Photograph: DR
8. The Office [UK] [2001-03]
Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s faux doc may just be the most influential TV show of this millennium. It only gave us 12 episodes [plus two Christmas specials] with David Brent [Gervais], Tim Canterbury [Martin Freeman], Gareth Keenan [Mackenzie Crook], Dawn Tinsley [Lucy Davis] and the staff of paper merchants Wernham Hogg, but it delivered a lifetime of painfully recognisable laughs. Few shows have skewered white-collar working life so astutely – the performance appraisals, the staff training days, the quiz nights, the romance across the printers – or captured the way people actually talk so intuitively. For all its rep for cringe comedy, it also has a real feel for people. Often mischaracterised as a horrible boss, Brent is so much more than a silly dance, a tragicomic figure who just wants to be loved and admired by his team. The result is one of the greatest TV characters in one of the greatest TV shows. Oh, and fuck the Swindon lot.
Photograph: Lionsgate
9. Mad Men [2007–2015]
This ad agency drama is a slow burn, yes, but one that’ll keep you coming back for as many drags as its chain smoking adulterers. It also erupts into soap opera-calibre reveals and occasional oddball action [lawnmower, meet foot]. Sopranos alum Matthew Weiner’s ’60s-set world is smoldering with visual nostalgia – though its unflinching looks at the in-flux era’s vices and social failures sure aren’t. However, aesthetics alone can’t fuel seven standout seasons: The characters here are astoundingly written and portrayed, particularly secretary Peggy Olson [Elisabeth Moss], the persistently punchable Pete Campbell [Vincent Kartheiser] and, of course, Don Draper [Jon Hamm], an iconically clever and talented fraud as vile as he is enviable.
Photograph: HBO
10. Succession [2018–2023]
On paper, it sounds like a snooze: a disgustingly rich family navigates bickering siblings and boardroom votes to crown a corporate heir. But creator Jesse Armstrong’s stressful plot twists and densely-packed insults keep allegiances on a swivel, both for the audience and between members of the Roy family. And that just might be this sublime tragicomedy’s greatest gift: Its characters are largely unrelatable and unlikeable, yet absolutely irresistible. Good luck picking a standout between Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook, and – ‘You can’t make a Tomelette without breaking some Greggs’ – Matthew Macfadyen and Nicholas Braun. Oh yeah, it’s very quotable, too.
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