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The 20 Best Political TV Shows

A ranked list of the 20 best shows about American politics, including ‘SNL,’ ‘The Wire,’ ‘Parks and Recreation,’ and more longtime favorites

Collage of political TV shows

Left to right: 'Parks & Recreation,' 'The West Wing,' 'Scandal,' '24,' 'Veep,' 'Who Is America?' PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY MATTHEW COOLEY. IMAGES IN ILLUSTRATION: NBC, 2; ABC, 2; HBO, 2. AMANDA EDWARDS/GETTY IMAGES.

From fantasies like The West Wing and Scandal to satires like Veep to historical dramas like Mrs. America, the small screen has given us a wide range of shows that channel our political hopes, fears, disappointments, and outrages. If our real-life system of government has you on edge, these shows will help you find renewed reasons for optimism, or explain the failures of the present by examining the past, or let you imagine you’re a covert operative who can blow the whole damn thing up, or just make you laugh with a bunch of really obscene nicknames.

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6

‘Saturday Night Live’

As a sketch variety show, SNL is an outlier on this list, but there’s no question it’s one of the most political programs in history. With a long tradition of satirizing American political life, the show has parodied every U.S. president and major candidate since it debuted in 1975. And when the impersonation really strikes a nerve — from Chevy Chase playing Gerald Ford as a clumsy idiot to Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin chirping, “I can see Russia from my house!” — it has at times altered how the public views the very people it’s skewering. —A.S.

5

‘Scandal’

Scandal is a show about politics as much as General Hospital is a show about the medical profession. But it is set — salaciously so — in and around the Oval, and from the moment D.C. fixer Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and her misfit team of “gladiators” get to work in the pilot, it braids plenty of campaign grudges, backroom intrigue, and international crises into its central story of a torrid love affair between Pope and the President of the United States (Tony Goldwyn). The blockbuster Shonda Rhimes series ran from April 2012 to April 2018, and its early episodes have an almost shockingly pre-#MeToo feel. Yet there is also something soothing about revisiting it today: It might be the only universe where the wild conspiracy theories and the capacity of government officials to do evil deeds are worse than reality. —M.F.

4

‘Parks and Recreation’

In the first episode of this classic mockumentary, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) says of her job as deputy parks and recreation director of the fictional Indiana city of Pawnee, “What I hear when I’m being yelled at is people caring loudly at me.” Over the course of seven seasons, Parks and Rec follows Leslie’s remarkable rise in political power, from ignored small-town civil servant all the way to the national stage. (Joe Biden, vice president during the show’s run, even has multiple cameos in the final seasons.) But no matter what office Leslie is seeking, or serving, the comedy never loses sight of that early quote, nor the way that Leslie’s superhuman optimism is forever at odds with the selfishness, cynicism, and outright stupidity of the constituents whose lives she is working so doggedly to improve. —A.S.

3

‘The Wire’

Maybe the only reason The Wire isn’t our number one pick is that, while it was incredible in how it dramatized modern politics, it was also incredible at how it dramatized everything about life in urban America at the turn of the century. In fact, it wasn’t even until the third season of David Simon an Ed Burns’ HBO drama that we even began to spend time in Baltimore’s City Hall, where councilman Tommy Carcetti (Aidan Gillen) ponders the uphill climb of running for mayor as a white candidate in a predominantly Black city. From that point on, The Wire deftly and devastatingly showed how political good fortune can often have little to nothing to do with the merits of a candidate, how quickly idealism can turn into opportunism, and how hard it is to effect meaningful change in a system that from most angles looks fundamentally broken. —A.S.

2

‘Veep’

If this list included shows about countries outside of America, Armando Iannucci’s satire of the British government, The Thick of It, would rank very high. Luckily, after ruthlessly mocking his own government, Iannucci came across the pond to do the same to ours with Veep. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, in an all-timer comedic performance, plays Vice President Selina Mayer, who has what’s theoretically the second-most powerful job in the world, but in practice has no power, no influence, and no opportunity except to repeatedly make a fool of herself thanks to her own shortcomings and those of her staffers. Veep takes the position that everyone who goes into politics is at best self-interested and amoral, and at worst a dangerous idiot. This gambit could play as relentlessly bleak, but the cast and the writing are so sharp that watching Selina and her cohort fail at everything they try becomes addictive, and hilarious. —A.S.

1

‘The West Wing’

There have been more realistic shows about American politics than this Aaron Sorkin-created drama about the administration of Martin Sheen’s Josiah Bartlet. But Sorkin’s conception of a world where well-meaning idealists get things done simply by being smart and caring deeply is an intoxicating family, and one buttressed by the fiery oratory of Sheen and the spectacular work of an ensemble that won many, many Emmys for Allison Janney, John Spencer, Richard Schiff, and others. Spend more than a few minutes following a walk-and-talk on the way to the Oval Office, and you, too, will want to declare that you serve at the pleasure of the president. —A.S.