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The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time

A ranking of the most game-changing, side-splitting, tear-jerking, mind-blowing, world-building, genre-busting programs in television history, from the medium’s inception in the early 20th century through the ever-metastasizing era of Peak TV

Better Call Saul

Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk in 'Better Call Saul.'

Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Tel

HOW DO YOU identify the very best series in a medium that’s been commercially available since the end of World War II? Especially when that medium has experienced more radical change in the nine years between the finales of Breaking Bad and its prequel, Better Call Saul, than it did in the 60-odd years separating Walter White from Milton Berle? The current Peak TV era is delivering us 500-plus scripted shows per year, many of them breaking boundaries in terms of how stories are told and who’s doing the telling. So, we decided to update our list of television’s all-time best offerings, originally compiled in 2016. Once again, we reached out to TV stars, creators, and critics — from multihyphenates like Natasha Lyonne, Ben Stiller, and Pamela Adlon to actors like Jon Hamm and Lizzy Caplan as well as the minds behind shows like The X-Files, Party Down, and Jane the Virgin — to sort through television’s vast and complicated history. (See the full list of voters here.) Giving no restrictions on era or genre, we ended up with an eclectic list where the wholesome children’s television institution Sesame Street finished one spot ahead of foulmouthed Western Deadwood, while Eisenhower-era juggernaut I Love Lucy wound up sandwiched in between two shows, Lost and Arrested Development, that debuted during George W. Bush’s first term. Many favorites returned, and the top show retained its crown. But voters couldn’t resist many standouts of the past few years, including a tragicomedy with a guinea-pig-themed café, an unpredictable comedy set in the world of hip-hop, and a racially charged adaptation of an unadaptable comic book. It’s a hell of a list.

5

‘Fleabag’ 

Sure, it’s rewarding when a TV show can provide dozens of hours of mirth across many seasons. Sometimes, though, the most satisfying experience comes from series that have a few things to say, say them perfectly, and then shake their heads and walk away before you can follow them into less-interesting story arcs. Never has that short-and-sweet approach been more impeccably executed than with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s tragicomic tour de force, where she played a self-destructive woman so lonely that her healthiest relationships were with her unseen television audience, and with the Hot Priest (Andrew Scott) with whom she fell madly in lust in the second season. And whether she was talking directly to us or not (in TV’s best-ever use of breaking the fourth wall), Waller-Bridge held the audience in the palm of her hand throughout. She made Fleabag as raunchy, as funny, and as sad — sometimes more than one of those at the same time — as she wanted it to be. And then she said goodbye.

4

‘The Wire’

Whenever you hear a contemporary showrunner refer to their work as “a novel for television” or “a 10-hour movie,” odds are they spent a lot of time watching David Simon and Ed Burns’ drama and mistakenly assumed that it would be easy to copy. It was an urban epic that gradually touched every corner of its fictionalized Baltimore, from cops and drug dealers to middle school students and politicians. The Wire preached that “all the pieces matter,” then put the concept into action, so that the slow pacing and narrative sprawl made all the show’s tragedies — visited upon one of the most amazing casts of characters ever assembled, from ambitious drug dealer Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) down to sweet junkie Bubbles (Andre Royo) and stickup artist Omar Little (Michael Kenneth Williams) — and all of its criticisms of the state of modern America, hit harder each time. Often imitated, never duplicated — not even by Simon on impressive follow-ups like Tremé or The Deuce. As D’Angelo Barksdale (Larry Gilliard Jr.) puts it while using chess as a metaphor for the drug game, “The king stay the king.”

3

‘Breaking Bad’

High school teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston) tells his students that he likes to think of chemistry as “a study of change,” which conveniently is the major theme of the crime saga built around him. No series before or since has taken better advantage of the medium’s ability to track a character’s journey over a long period of time, while also crafting the kind of memorable individual installments that distinguish TV from movies. Breaking Bad travels step by agonizing step through Walt’s journey from lower-middle-class breadwinner to lord of his own crystal-meth empire, where he’s alternately helped and hurt along the way by former student Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), criminal lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), calculating kingpin Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), and even his own victimized wife Skyler (Anna Gunn). And the series is only as thrilling and as devastating as it is because it keeps methodically showing you how Walt and the others got from there to here.

2

‘The Simpsons’

What is there left to say about the best, longest running, most influential, most acclaimed TV comedy of them all? (Krusty the Clown, before spitting in disgust: “Acclaimed?!?!”) Should we offer loopy quotes at random, like when Abe Simpson had an onion on his belt, which was the style at the time? Should we push back against the bogus sentiment that The Simpsons hasn’t been funny in decades, since even in its 32nd season, it was able to put -together an episode as sharp as the Comic Book Guy-focused Wes Anderson tribute? Talk about Homer Simpson as an avatar of all that is great and terrible about the American male? Marvel at the wide range of tones and subjects it’s made room for, such that the poignant “You are Lisa Simpson” scene from the end of “Lisa’s Substitute” belongs on the same show where Homer went into space with NASA or once asked George Harrison where the Quiet Beatle got his brownie? Hum a few bars of the monorail song? Start ranking all of the guest stars, from Phil Hartman all the way down to the guy from Joe Millionaire? Or should we just admit that after all these years, The Simpsons’ genius speaks for itself?

1

‘The Sopranos’ 

The winner — and still undisputed champion — from North Caldwell, New Jersey, coming in heavy at 86 medium-transforming episodes filled with whacking, psychiatric analysis, and cunnilingus and fart jokes, it’s The Sopranos! Of course David Chase’s creation topped the list again, because we are still living in the new world of television ushered in by Mob boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini). As Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) helped Tony better understand himself and his relationships with wife Carmela (Edie Falco), mother Livia (Nancy Marchand), nephew Christopher (Michael Imperioli), and the dangerous idiots in his crew, Chase’s unapologetically dark examination of turn-of-the-century America took a torch to every written and unwritten rule that TV storytelling had been governed by since the days of Gunsmoke. Simplicity and holding the audience’s hand were out, and narrative and moral complexity were in, all the way through a final edit that we still can’t stop—