The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time

When it comes to this game show that requires answers in the form of a question, we have to ask: What is an early-evening institution we took for granted until beloved host Alex Trebek was diagnosed with cancer three years ago? With the loss of the reassuringly affable Trebek, these past two seasons have been tumultuous for Jeopardy!. But the format, the challenging and diverse array of subjects, and the enthusiastically nerdy contestants remained addictive even during the bumpy transition that eventually led to actor Mayim Bialik and former champ Ken Jennings splitting Trebek’s old job.

What if they chose an earlier title, like Six of One? What if Hank Azaria had in fact been hired to play Joey, or Nancy McKeon had been cast as Monica? The success of Friends was so miraculous, and so dependent on every piece of it existing in total harmony with every other piece — most of all, the chemistry among the six pals (Courteney Cox’s uptight Monica, Jennifer Aniston’s pampered Rachel, Lisa Kudrow’s spacey Phoebe, Matt Le Blanc’s goofy Joey, Matthew Perry’s sarcastic Chandler, and David Schwimmer’s mopey Ross) — that it could have failed if any one thing was changed even slightly. But all the ingredients came together in the right proportions, leading to a show so warm it’s been embraced by a younger generation that has no frame of reference for Chandler’s “I think this is the episode of Three’s Company where there’s some kind of misunderstanding” joke.

The creative revolution kicked off by The Sopranos and Sex and the City might have stayed limited to HBO if not for the quick success of The Shield on a barely noticed stop on the basic-cable channel guide. Michael Chiklis was so instantly magnetic as brazenly corrupt LAPD detective Vic Mackey that it kicked off a rush of other cable channels and, eventually, streaming services, finding their own signature series. But even beyond historical importance, the show (created by Shawn Ryan) is pretty great, blending network cop-drama tropes with Sopranos’ antihero framing and mature content. It also surrounds Vic with a worthy group of allies (Walton Goggins’ reckless Shane), wary colleagues (CCH Pounder’s tenacious detective Claudette; Glenn Close for a season as Vic’s new boss), and outright enemies (most notably Forest Whitaker’s erratic internal-affairs cop Jon Kavanaugh, but eventually even Shane himself). And for as much as The Shield seemed to be celebrating Vic’s swagger early on, the series always understood exactly who and what he was, culminating in the devastating “Family Meeting” chapter, which is the best drama finale ever.

Like Freaks and Geeks, it’s a one-season wonder about high schoolers who don’t run with the popular crowd. This one, though, has a lyrical, intimate tone reflective of Claire Danes’ remarkable debut performance as Angela Chase, a teenager rebelling against her family and friends’ good-girl expectations, but too lost in her own head to understand exactly what she’s doing and why. Created by Winnie Holzman and produced by the Thirtysomething team of Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, My So-Called Life has no peers in its ability to re-create that distinctive adolescent mix of terror and abandon.

The past few years of American life haven’t been kind to this White House drama’s innate belief that anyone can be swayed on any political issue if presented with a cogent argument. Yet that belief is in many ways more appealing in this time of great division than it was when West Wing debuted at the end of the Clinton administration — especially when accompanied by the crackling dialogue and soaring rhetoric of creator Aaron Sorkin, and delivered by lovable characters like eloquent President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen), pragmatic White House chief of staff Leo McGarry (John Spencer), idealistic speechwriter Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff), and harried press secretary C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney).

Each Columbo episode follows the same structure: A rich and powerful person commits what they think is a perfect murder that can’t possibly be traced back to them. Lt. Columbo turns up, and his rumpled appearance and distracted, deferential manner convinces each killer that he’s an easily manipulated fool. Instead, he is shockingly tenacious and clever, talking each of these would-be masters of the universe into incriminating themselves, often for missing an incredibly minor detail, like a pair of shoelaces being tied the wrong way or a ribbon being left in a typewriter. A show this formulaic only works with a hugely likable lead, and this one fortunately had the benefit of the superhumanly charming Peter Falk in the title role.

Letterman’s version of Late Night was defined as much by what it wasn’t as what it was. It was a talk show hosted by a man with only a passing interest in talking with celebrities (even though he had memorable interviews over the years, like the time Crispin Glover nearly kicked him in the face). It featured comedy bits that still defy explanation, like Letterman climbing into a vat of liquid while wearing a suit filled with Alka-Seltzer tablets. But his disdain for talk-show and comedy norms only made every segment funnier, and helped define the ironic sensibilities of generations of comedy writers who grew up watching him. When Letterman lost the post-Carson Tonight Show job to Jay Leno, he left NBC to start over under the old Late Show title. His CBS years were ever so slightly more traditional, but Letterman’s trademark comic indifference could still appear when you least expected it.

The 2010s were a good decade for creators of web comedies to level up to TV. Some have been straightforward translations, like the stoner buddy comedy of Broad City or the extremely Canadian content of Letterkenny. Insecure co-creator and star Issa Rae, meanwhile, took some elements of her popular web show The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl with her when she made the leap to premium cable, even though she was playing a (somewhat) new character. Over the course of five seasons of incisive comedy and character study, Rae’s Issa Dee struggled to figure out relationships of various kinds as she exited her late twenties and had to accept the burdens of unequivocal adulthood. Would she end up with on-again, off-again boyfriend Lawrence (Jay Ellis), or one of the many charismatic men who wander into her life? Would she ever feel comfortable as a Black woman in a well-meaning but patronizing white-run nonprofit that helps children of color? Would she and best friend Molly (Yvonne Orji) be able to prioritize each other with so much drama in their lives? And most important, would Issa ever make peace with the face in the mirror that questioned every choice she made? By the end, both Insecure and Issa had all the answers we wanted from them.

When you remake a classic, there is nowhere to go but down. The smarter play is what happened here, when Star Trek vet Ronald D. Moore transformed a corny late-Seventies Star Wars rip-off into a gripping sci-fi allegory about 9/11 and the never-ending War on Terror, where the religious fundamentalist killers happen to be robots (like Tricia Helfer’s vivacious but multifaceted Number Six) who can pass for human. Cool space battles peacefully co-exist with grounded character stories, played by a superb cast led by Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell. The new BSG proved to be such a revelation that there’s already another remake in the works, which brings us back to the warning in this blurb’s first sentence.

None of the pieces of this animated comedy have any business fitting together. It’s set in a world where humans live and work alongside animals that walk on two legs, talk, and wear clothes. Its title character (Will Arnett) is a washed-up Nineties sitcom star struggling with substance abuse, depression, and an inability to stop hurting anyone who cares about him, including his daffy roommate Todd (Aaron Paul), manager/ex-girlfriend Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris), and biographer/friend Diane (Alison Brie). BoJack is filled with silly wordplay, Hollywood satire, and dumb humor presented in brainy fashion. But it’s also a poignant, tragic character sketch where the character just happens to be a horse-man — a parody of antihero dramas that ask you to empathize with assholes, yet one that succeeds in making you empathize with this asshole. And somehow, all of these disparate elements combine for by far the best show Netflix has ever made.

This metaphysical comedy from Parks and Recreation co-creator Michael Schur makes several big assertions as part of its premise: Heaven is irreparably broken. The universe is without meaning. Life is just a series of petty little tortures. Are you laughing yet? Somehow, The Good Place finds hilarity in every corner of its version of hell, which has just admitted four new arrivals — Kristen Bell’s unrepentant con woman, Eleanor Shellstrop; William Jackson Harper’s anxious philosopher, Chidi Anagonye; Jameela Jamil’s narcissistic do-gooder, Tahani Al-Jamil; and Manny Jacinto’s deeply stupid Florida man, Jason Mendoza — as part of a plan by demon-in-disguise Michael (Ted Danson, having the time of his life) to emotionally hurt people rather than using the traditional fire-and-brimstone approach. As Eleanor and the other dum-dums figure out that they are really in the Bad Place, and begin (with help from D’Arcy Carden’s all-powerful Janet, who is both not a robot and not a girl) journeying back and forth among death, life, and various cosmic realms, The Good Place taps endless reserves of silliness in its debates about the purpose of existence, along with a stubbornly optimistic belief that the world we know, and the people in it, can all be better. Humor and special effects can be a dangerous mix, but The Good Place strikes a healthy balance between the two. It is a comedy bursting with imagination and heart, all the way to the surprisingly profound use of “Take it sleazy” in its final scene.

The unspoken theme of Curb is the fictionalized Larry David’s struggle to find something to do with his life that will live up to co-creating Seinfeld. But the actual David has somehow turned his follow-up show into a Seinfeld sequel, a remake of it, and a rebuttal to it, posing an argument that the show about nothing might have been even funnier if George Costanza had been fabulously wealthy and able to curse up a storm. All these years later, the familiar Seinfeld-esque convergence of subplots at the end of episodes still pays huge comic dividends, whether the stories were familiar (like Jerry, Larry winds up befriending a key participant from the 1986 World Series) or wildly different (Larry hires a sex worker so he has an excuse to drive in the carpool lane and avoid freeway traffic). And if Curb has proved more uneven than its predecessor, its best moments (say, Larry’s love of Palestinian chicken and wild sex conflicting with his pride in his Jewish heritage) surpass even Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer at their peak.

This ensemble cop series blended pieces of several seemingly incompatible genres — the serial storytelling of daytime soaps, the raw camerawork of documentary films, the social consciousness and twisted sense of humor of Seventies independent movies — into something that felt wholly new. Throw in a squad room full of memorable characters, including sensitive captain Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti), his public-defender sparring partner — and secret lover — Joyce Davenport (Veronica Hamel), perp-biting undercover officer Mick Belker (Bruce Weitz), troublemaking alcoholic J.D. LaRue (Kiel Martin), and bruising detective Norm Buntz (Dennis Franz), and you had the blueprint for most of the dramas that followed it in TV’s second golden age of the Eighties and Nineties, including some, like L.A. Law and NYPD Blue, that came from Hill Street co-creator Steven Bochco.

Mitchell Hurwitz’s Iraq War-era farce, about a family of rich morons forced to fend for themselves after the patriarch goes to jail, is as dense with jokes as a neutron star is with stellar matter. Every scene is packed with running gags, callbacks, impossible names, slapstick, and more, the impact of each building and building to irresistible payoffs. So when mama’s boy Buster (Tony Hale), for instance, tries to escape the controlling yoke of his mother, Lucille (Jessica Walter), he stubbornly ignores warnings that a loose seal is about to bite off his hand. That approach made Arrested impenetrable to newcomers after a few episodes, but viewers who were there from the start of the Fox seasons were consistently rewarded with the kind of richness the Bluth family had just lost access to.

In a ranking of the most important series in television history, this seminal comedy would probably finish ahead of even The Sopranos. Simply put, no show has been more influential or imitated than the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz vehicle that created the multicamera sitcom (shot on a stage in front of a raucous audience) as we know it. The gender politics haven’t aged well, as much of the series involves Arnaz’s nightclub bandleader, Ricky Ricardo, paternalistically dismissing the dreams of Ball’s Lucy each time his wife’s ambition to be anything other than a housewife gets her in trouble. But the slapstick genius of Ball — on display in iconic sequences like Lucy and best friend Ethel (Vivian Vance) struggling to keep up with a candy-factory conveyer belt, Lucy getting into a brawl while stomping grapes during a trip to Italy, Lucy getting drunk while filming a TV commercial, or Lucy re-creating the Duck Soup mirror scene with Harpo Marx — sure has.

Dangers ranging from a runaway polar bear to . . .  an immortal smoke monster? As one of the castaways asks early on, “Guys, where are we?” For much of its run, a civil war waged both within and without the sci-fi survival story about which was more important: solving the island’s many mysteries, or exploring the rich and diverse cast of characters trapped there  (including Terry O’Quinn’s stubborn survivalist Locke, Josh Holloway’s reforming con man Sawyer, and Jorge Garcia’s unlucky Hurley). The greatest pleasures of the experience ultimately came from the whole messy, exciting, bizarre emotional journey of it, rather than the destination that so many of the “I just want answers, dammit!” crowd was hoping to visit.

When Rolling Stone last asked our experts to rank the best shows ever, NBC’s Office remake finished behind the British original. Six years later, their positions have flipped. (The U.K. version landed just outside the top 50.) Perhaps it’s a testament to how much easier it is to feel affection for Steve Carell’s inept but lonely boss, Michael Scott, despite his countless failings as a manager and as a person, than it is for Ricky Gervais’ more hostile David Brent. Or perhaps it’s that there’s so much more of the American show to love, with more than 200 episodes versus a baker’s dozen for the Gervais series. Yes, Office U.K. was more consistent, but that’s easy to do in such a small sample size. Office U.S. has some terrible lows, especially after Carell left and the show unwisely promoted Ed Helms’ obnoxious Andy to replace him. But it offers so, so many comic and romantic highs along the way, from Dwight (Rainn Wilson) staging a disastrous, heart-attack-inducing fire drill to the slow-burning courtship of Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam (Jenna Fischer).

Never mind the bollocks, here’s the punk-rock sextet of sketch comedy. Together, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin exploded long-held beliefs about how comedy should function. Python could be simultaneously high- and lowbrow, like the slapstick-heavy government-satire sequence suggesting Britain had a Ministry of Silly Walks. Sketches could start and/or stop in midscene, abruptly segue into animation or meta-commentary, and go to comedic places bordering on the surreal. And for all the formal experimentation, Python still made you laugh until it hurt.

A terrible idea accidentally executed in astonishing fashion. Breaking Bad required no spinoff, especially not one built around a fun but one-dimensional character like Bob Odenkirk’s slick attorney Saul Goodman. Even Saul creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould struggled to find a direction for the prequel, assuming they would spend a little time on Saul’s true identity as sweet but mostly harmless grifter Jimmy McGill, then quickly move him into the familiar strip-mall office where he met Walter White. Instead, the creators and the audience fell in love with Jimmy — with a lot of help from Rhea Seehorn’s magnificent performance as his devoted partner, Kim Wexler — and suddenly no one was in any hurry to call Saul. The series also evolved into essentially two shows in one, each offering something to appeal to fans of Breaking Bad: The lawyer show with Jimmy and Kim delivered a Heisenberg-esque story of incremental moral descent, while the cartel show focused on Jonathan Banks’ unflappable fixer Mike Ehrmantraut got to fill in a lot of blanks in the franchise’s history, and to provide the type of explosive action not present while, say, Jimmy was discovering he had a talent for elder law. By the end, Better Call Saul eventually managed to match, and at times exceed, its parent series.

Welcome to the blockbuster age of television, as kicked off by this lavish adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novels set in a parallel version of England circa the War of the Roses. Thrones would eventually become known for its jaw-dropping spectacle: fire-breathing dragons burning armies into ash, a horde of icy zombies overwhelming a fishing village’s defenses, or an angry giant crashing through a castle’s gates. But all of that came later. What made Thrones a phenomenon in the first place was not only its willingness to brutally kill off major players like Sean Bean’s noble Ned Stark, but also its absurdly deep bench of colorful characters — fast-talking imp Tyrion (Peter Dinklage), aspiring young killer Arya (Maisie Williams), and towering warrior Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie), to cite just three — that allowed the show to be so ruthless with some of them, while the rest remained locked in thrilling physical or verbal combat with one another.

So many of the comedies on this list are built on pain and anxiety. Parks and Rec rests on a happier foundation, taking its cues from its heroine, Amy Poehler’s can-do civil servant Leslie Knope. The series deployed Leslie’s unbreakable hopefulness (and Poehler’s own bottomless reserves of energy) as a weapon, not only against intractable governing problems, but also against the cynicism of colleagues like mustachioed libertarian Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman, hilariously understated) or over-it intern April Ludgate (Aubrey Plaza). A series as capable of making you feel as good as it was of making you laugh at jokes like the town of Pawnee’s infatuation with a tiny horse called Li’l Sebastian, or a flu-ridden Chris (Rob Lowe) telling himself to stop pooping.

This landmark adaptation of Alex Haley’s novel about slavery was an event, unfurled over eight consecutive nights in front of an audience that at its peak comprised more than half of all Americans. As viewers sat mesmerized by the story of enslaved Mandinka warrior Kunta Kinte (played first by LeVar Burton, then by John Amos), Roots put our nation’s original sin back into the public conversation. It wasn’t just the terrible story itself, but the confident way it was told, including the tactic of casting endearing TV actors like Ed Asner, The Waltons patriarch Ralph Waite, and Robert Reed from The Brady Bunch as slave owners and slave traders. Roots almost single-handedly created the “prestige TV” notion that the small screen could debut projects as compelling as what audience members previously had to pay to see in a movie theater.

Witness a study in beliefs in conflict with one another. Friday Night Lights is a show about high school football that was adored by people with no stomach for real sports; a teen drama revered by people who hate teen drama; an adaptation made by the movie’s writer-director (Peter Berg) because he thought the film would have been better in long form; and a series that struck such a chord across demographics that in 2012, both the Obama and Romney campaigns used its “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose” catchphrase. That deep love is a testament to the unbridled emotion created by Berg’s cinema-verité technique, and to the ways it unleashed spectacular performances from all its actors — including future stars like Michael B. Jordan and Jesse Plemons — but especially from Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, as Eric and Tami Taylor (a.k.a. Coach and Mrs. Coach), the devoted spouses at the heart of so much turmoil. TV writers often argue that happy couples ruin shows. Obviously, those writers haven’t seen the Taylors in action.

The sacred and the profane came together in transcendent fashion in David Milch’s talkative Western, which used the lawless Dakota territory of the late 1800s as a case study for how communities and civilizations are built. Deadwood mixed historical figures like volcano-tempered lawman Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) and cutthroat bartender Al Swearengen (the fantastic Ian McShane) with fictional ones like wealthy widow Alma Garret (Molly Parker) and defiant sex worker Trixie (Paula Malcomson). More impressively, its dialogue placed harsh profanity that would make Gary Cooper blush alongside some of the most poetic language ever written for the screen, big or small. (Swearengen, in the midst of evolving from vicious mob boss to the series’ improbable moral center, offers this as a pep talk to an upset colleague: “Pain or damage don’t end the world. Or despair or fuckin’ beatings. The world ends when you’re dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back.”) Television in recent years has grown cluttered with unnecessary revivals of treasured old shows that already had proper finales. Deadwood, though, ended abruptly after a third season. Thankfully, the 2019 TV movie provided necessary closure for the characters and the audience who grew to love all those hoopleheads and cocksuckers.

A televisual rite of passage across multiple generations. The human cast keeps changing; the demise of actor Will Lee, who played store owner Mr. Hooper, led to the show using Big Bird to discuss the concept of death in terms preschoolers could understand. And Jim Henson’s Muppet creations have come and gone, with Kermit spinning off to hang with Fozzie and Miss Piggy, while the anxious Grover eventually took a back seat to the more eager and cuddly Elmo. (Cookie Monster remains a constant, even if the producers sometimes struggle to reconcile his addictive personality with the overall tone of the show, leading to well-meaning but misguided songs like “A Cookie Is a Sometime Food.”) But the mission remains the same: to educate and entertain both its young target audience and their exhausted parents through a mix of songs, sketches, and a voice that speaks to kids rather than at them. It’s a balance Sesame Street has long since mastered.

The United States’ involvement in the Korean War lasted about three years. M*A*S*H stuck around for more than a decade, including a supersize finale that is and will likely always be the most-watched single episode of television ever. That elongation of the core concept gave the show about Army doctors and nurses plenty of chances to reinvent itself. At the beginning, it was an anarchic anti-establishment comedy in the spirit of the Robert Altman movie it adapted, with Alan Alda’s Dr. Hawkeye Pierce staging wild pranks as a means of protesting the violence around him. By the end, it had become a sensitive drama about the physical and emotional toll of war, with former comic-relief characters like Jamie Farr’s cross-dressing Max Klinger or Loretta Swit’s imperious nurse, Margaret Houlihan, now taken as seriously as Hawkeye or Harry Morgan’s dignified Col. Potter. And a few lovely periods in between managed to straddle those tonal extremes.

The future of Hollywood comedy was assembled on one incredible show, and NBC was too blind to see it. Created by Paul Feig, produced by Judd Apatow, and featuring a murderers’ row of up-and-coming stars like James Franco, Seth Rogen, and Jason Segel, Freaks and Geeks went back to suburban Michigan in the 1980s for tales of high school outcasts, with frequent crossover between the teenage burnouts convinced that they have no future (newly joined by Linda Cardellini’s embittered good girl Lindsey) and the nerds just hoping the world will one day believe they’re cool (led by John Francis Daley as Lindsey’s awkward little brother, Sam). At times painfully funny, at others just painful, it showed great empathy for these kids, even as it was willing to put a spotlight on all their mortifying adolescent awkwardness. The network didn’t understand the show, it lasted only one season, and Feig et al. were set free to make their fortunes on the big screen. None of them have topped their work here, though.

We live in the age of IP, where familiar titles are adapted again and again, simply because of that familiarity, and not because anyone has an original thought about them. Then there is Watchmen. The original mid-Eighties comics masterpiece by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons proved impossible to adapt for decades. The 2009 Zack Snyder film managed to re-create most of the plot while utterly missing the point of the endeavor. Lost and Leftovers alum Damon Lindelof went a different way when the property fell into his hands, using the world Moore and Gibbons built to tell a fanciful yet raw story about the ugly history of American racism, as seen through the eyes of Sister Night (Regina King), a police officer who, like her colleagues, dons a mask and special uniform so she can do her violent work with impunity. (When some cops in our world began wearing masks while dealing with the post-George Floyd protests, the show proved unfortunately prophetic.) Sister Night finds herself at the center of a swirling narrative that incorporates the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, multiple trips to one of Jupiter’s moons, time travel, a space dildo, and a costumed hero whom cops dub “Lube Man.” Yet all those wildly disparate elements — including an all-time musical score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, plus terrific performances by King, Jean Smart, Jeremy Irons, Hong Chau, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II — feel of a transfixing piece with one another, and also with the elusive source material.