The 40 Best TV Series of All Time
I’m one of those people who would rather binge a long series than sit down and watch a film. TV series give characters room to breathe – to live – and when they do eventually die, those deaths have more impact because you’ve been on their long journey with them. A good show can plant seeds and patiently wait for them to blossom into a Venus fly trap several seasons later, catching you in its leafy jaws.
They’re entertainment for the patient. Still, there’s a special art to good TV. The best TV shows keep you in suspense from episode to episode, weaving long and short narratives together, overlapping them, while ensuring each character has their moment. I’ve watched a lot of TV over the years, but here are what I think are the 40 best TV shows of all time.
Related: 7 Best Series of 2023 on Apple TV+ You Must Watch
Netflix
This coming-of-age miniseries about an orphaned chess prodigy shows Anya Taylor-Joy at her most mesmerizing. Even as someone who plays and enjoys chess, I found the premise of the show a bit of a tough sell, but the creators do an incredible job of imbuing drama into the action both on the board and off it as Taylor-Joy’s Beth Harmon strategizes her way out of poverty. It reminds me a bit of how Whiplash made me care about drumming. Checkmate, nerds.
Netflix
If you haven’t heard of Squid Game, you must have lived under a rock on an asteroid in a different solar system for the last few years. This Korean-made drama sees hundreds of down-and-out people enter a life-or-death contest where there can only be one winner. There’s a new series of Squid Game coming, but the first season works as a perfect bit of standalone television.
Mad Men follows the story of smooth-talking advertising executive Don Draper, who blurs the line between salesman and con artist. The series charts a course from the male-dominated workspaces of the ‘60s and the changing attitudes of the ‘70s, highlighting the fragile egos of the men who can’t keep up with the times. A fascinating character study where every character has more depth hidden behind their carefully curated facades.
This supernatural drama series begins with 2% of the human population (140 million people) vanishing without a trace. While there’s plenty of mystery, the show’s core is about nihilism, optimism, grief, and acceptance. A lot is left up to the viewer to decide, but that’s what makes it so special.
ABC
Lottery numbers, smoke monsters, polar bears – Lost just piles on the mystery and barely explains any of it, but goddamn is it captivating. Lost was a TV show ahead of its time, teasing viewers with alternate reality games (ARGs) on the internet between seasons and keeping speculation alive, lighting a fire under discussion boards and on social media sites, dominating the conversation. But even removed from all of that, Lost holds up surprisingly well thanks to its cast of excellent characters and masterful use of the carrot on a stick.
The Night Of sees Riz Ahmed at the top of his game, playing a man who wakes up the morning after partying to find the woman he hooked up with has been stabbed to death as he slept. While the courtroom drama that follows never quite reaches the high of the pilot episode, this miniseries is carried by the weight of the main cast’s performances.
Another dark and depressing miniseries, this one follows the story of a journalist who returns to her hometown to report on the murder of a local girl. Sharp Objects has a lot to say about trauma, how often people cope in silence, and how childhood neglect can lead to a person feeling as if they don’t deserve happiness.
Netflix
Beef shows how a single decision can alter your trajectory. Steven Yeun and Ali Wong play two strangers who slam into each other’s lives in a car accident, creating their nemesis in the process. Revenge starts petty and slowly spirals out of control until it threatens to ruin both of their lives, but they might just discover something new about themselves along the way. Beef is violent, funny, and smart – the very definition of, “Well, that escalated!”
Nick Offerman gets under your skin in Alex Garland’s limited sci-fi series. It’s a hard show to speak about without spoiling, but what starts as a murder mystery soon becomes a warning about the future of technology. If nothing else, Devs is worth watching for its striking black-and-gold visual direction.
This long-running series does the impossible by killing off the main characters and getting away with it. Constantly. Instead of focusing on one person, it follows the fortunes of a famous Viking, Ragnar Lothbrok, and his family as they grow from farmers to warriors and the bane of the English kings. It’s got the battles, the characters, the sex, and the violent rituals.
Amazon Prime Video
Invincible seems like a Saturday morning cartoon when you first start watching – complete with the cheese – but there’s a lot more going on if you stick with it. Similarly to The Boys, Invincible asks what would really happen if a superior race of aliens came to Earth and dressed like superheroes. You only have to look at the cast – Steven Yeun, Sandra Oh, Mark Hamill, J.K Simmons, Walton Goggins, Jon Hamm, and more – to know you’re in for a treat. A bloody, bloody treat. There's an Invincible video game coming at some point, too.
Canceled and then picked back up at Prime, it’s a testament to the quality of this spacefaring sci-fi show that it got saved from the Netflix landfill. The Expanse follows the crew of a salvage ship as they get wrapped up in complex solar politics between Earthers, Martians, and Belters – three human factions completely at odds and with different needs. What makes The Expanse stand out is how grounded it is, from the space battles to the zero-gravity grapples. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a man’s head get sucked through a bullet hole in a prison cell.
Riot Games
This animated series is set in the world of League of Legends, but don’t hold that against it. I genuinely could not care less about League, but Arcane had me and my family gripped from the very start. From the vivid animation style to the voice cast, the fight scenes, and the story, Arcane has it all. Arcane Season 2 is coming soon and will be the show's final chapter.
Bill Hader writes, directs and stars in this series about a former marine turned hitman who finds his passion in an LA acting class. It perfectly balances absurdity with emotional heft, and comedy with sudden, shocking violence. There’s nothing else like it.
Max
The first season will always be the best, but this anthology of detective stories is all worth a watch. It gave us all-timer quotes such as “time is a flat circle” and one of the best one-shot action sequences ever committed to film.
With the budget of a big Hollywood war film like Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers follows East Company as they move from army training to the end of World War II. Based on true events, the show follows the moral and mental stress of making it through a war alive (or not) when you’re just a cog in the machine.
Kate Winslet plays a troubled detective whose only claim to fame is scoring the winning hoop in the state championship in her high school days. Since then, she’s been a middling detective dogged by personal issues who can’t close a case. We catch up with her as she’s tasked with finding the murderer of a teenage mother. Winslet steals the show completely as Mare, a complex and nuanced character who’s imperfectly perfect.
Another anthology show, Fargo keeps things surprising every season and gives you a story you didn’t know you wanted, from discontented men turned serial killers to a Bonnie and Clyde-style couple fumbling their way out of their comfort zone. This black comedy boasts an incredible cast of actors, including Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, Jesse Plemons, Kirsten Dunst, and Ewan McGregor.
Courtesy of FX
While Season 3 of The Bear doesn’t move the characters forward as much as I’d have liked, this show proves you can squeeze drama out of any topic, including making food. It’s a proper character study, an acting masterclass, and a love letter to fine dining. Have a taste – you’ll like it.
For All Mankind imagines an alternate history where Russia won the space race. What followed was more racing, as the US and Russia competed to create a lunar base and land the first manned mission on Mars. There’s a ten-year gap between each season, so we see characters get old, die, and step aside so family members can take their place as we imagine a world where technological advancements are fuelled by intergalactic exploration. Joel Kinnaman and Shantel VanSanten deserve all the awards for their work on this show.
HBO
I toyed with the idea of not including this in this list since it’s not finished and might be a complete disaster by Season 3, but House of the Dragon’s best bits are up there with peak Game of Thrones. There’s a chasm in quality between the first season of this and the first season of Game of Thrones, in which the unknown actors were still finding their feet. House of the Dragon goes all-in from the outset with an ensemble cast featuring Matt Smith, Emma D’Arcy, Rhys Ifans, Paddy Considine, Graham McTavish, and more. Everyone brings their A-game. Oh, and there are dragons. Big dragons.
Courtesy of HBO
Look, I know the ending was rushed, but there’s no denying that Game of Thrones gave us some of the best TV of all time. Battle of the Bastards, the Red Wedding, and Joffrey finally getting what’s coming – the biggest and best moments from this series will stay with me for all time. Some of the music still gives me chills.
HBO
Adapted from a video game of the same name, The Last of Us follows a drifter and a young girl as they travel across a post-apocalyptic America afflicted by a fungus-based virus that turns people bitey. So far so The Walking Dead, but The Last of Us stands apart because of its brilliant character writing, helped along by career-best performances from Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. The Last of Us Season 2 will be shorter than the first, but expect plenty of shockers.
Another adaptation, this time from a seriously middling Australian movie of the same name. The Animal Kingdom TV series follows a group of brothers based in LA as they plan robberies under the watchful eye of the family matriarch – a woman with no maternal instincts at all. Things kick up a notch when another brother (played in a brilliantly unhinged fashion by Shawn Hatosy) is released from jail to find their estranged nephew living with them.
Netflix
To track down serial killers, the police needed to understand what they were dealing with. Mindhunter follows the story of the trailblazers in the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit who profiled jailed killers and used that information to predict what active killers might do. Unfortunately, the one killer they couldn’t stop was Netflix, which canceled the show after two seasons.
HBO
The Wire was ahead of its time. A cop show that wasn’t afraid of slowing down and showing the other side – the streets – without glamorizing either faction. It might sag a bit with Season 2’s focus on union bosses and dock workers, but it’s worth sticking with for when it gets back on track. Without The Wire, modern TV wouldn’t be the same.
Created by The Last of Us’s Craig Mazin, Chernobyl is a dark period drama about the Chornobyl reactor disaster of 1986. It follows the people trying to prevent the nuclear fallout from spreading while also highlighting the government failures and cover-ups that led to it happening in the first place. Some scenes are unbelievably harrowing, but Chernobyl is no less gripping when it switches into a mini courtroom drama.
HBO
Game of Thrones if the throne was the CEO position of a multi-billion dollar media corporation. An ensemble cast, unreal production values, and plenty of gallows humor make this one of the best slow-burn shows out there.
Max
Speaking of slow-burns, The Sopranos takes its time, but it’s a brilliant character study that showed the world what prestige television could look like. James Gandolfini brings so much humanity to Tony Soprano, a mafia boss who puts himself through therapy after suffering from anxiety attacks. Don’t fuhgeddaboudit.
This period drama charts the final days of piracy across the Caribbean, forgoing the fantasy of Pirates of the Caribbean for the grim brutality of real history. Watching someone be keelhauled for their misdeeds makes you feel lucky you were born in the social media generation. What makes Black Sails special is its investigation of forbidden love in the face of adversity.
FX
Loosely based on the real case of police corruption in the LAPD’s Rampart anti-gang unit, The Shield follows a special unit of police who line their pockets, plant evidence, and kill anyone who gets in their way. There isn’t a single boring episode in The Shield and it has perhaps the most perfect ending in any TV show ever made.
Colin Farrell plays his most terrifying character in this five-part miniseries based on Ian McGuire's 2016 novel of the same name. Set during the last days of the whale oil trade in 1859, The North Water is a dark and unsettling character study of the kinds of people who might volunteer to leave civilization behind to kill whales in the endless blue.
It’s well documented that the CIA allegedly got involved with the importation of cocaine, leading to the crack epidemic of 1998, to fund its proxy wars in third-world countries. Snowfall follows the story of a young Black man from LA who partners with the CIA to profit from poison on the streets, and we watch him grow from a teenager trying to survive by any means to an unflinching drug kingpin with no morals, right up until the gut punch ending. Damson Idris deserves awards for his work as Franklin Saint.
Another nautical drama, The Terror follows the story of Franklin’s lost expedition, which is assumed to have been trapped in the ice while searching for the fabled “Northwest Passage”. Once trapped on the ice, the crew must deal with a seemingly supernatural threat as their supplies and trust in each other dwindles.
Warner Bros.
Perhaps the most perfect one-and-done season of television ever, Watchmen is based on the 1986 DC Comics series created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. While it follows the events of the comics, no prior knowledge of them is required and the twists and turns hit even harder if you go in blind. Watchmen has important things to say despite its superhero trappings.
AMC
A prequel to Breaking Bad that often exceeds it, slightly dragged down by a drawn-out plotline focused around Saul’s brother’s mental illness. When it hits its stride a couple of seasons in, Better Call Saul is one of the best shows ever made – one of those rare prequels that adds to the original story without resorting to fan service and easter eggs. Michael Mando’s Nacho Varga is one of the best characters in the entire Breaking Bad universe, and you’re in for a treat if you’re a fan of Jonathan Banks as former cop Mike Ehrmantraut.
Based on a true story, Apple TV’s Black Bird is one of the most unsettling shows I’ve ever seen. Taron Egerton plays James "Jimmy" Keene, a man sentenced to ten years in prison for weapon and drug charges. He’s offered a fully commuted sentence under one condition: he goes into maximum security jail and befriends Larry Hall, a serial killer and rapist accused of at least 14 murders, to uncover evidence of his crimes. Paul Walter Hauser is truly menacing as Hall, an average-looking American man who harbors dark desires.
FX
Just renewed for another season, Shogun still works perfectly well as a standalone series one season in. The show focuses on the political machinations that led to Japan crowning its first shōgun of the Tokugawa shogunate. We follow the story from the perspective of John Blackthorne, an English sailor who’s washed up on Japan’s shores before being thrashed around by its customs and traditions. He eventually comes to respect them after being forced to become a pawn in Lord Toranaga’s human chessboard.
If you haven’t seen Breaking Bad in 2024, now’s the time to correct that. It’s a story about an extreme midlife crisis, centered around a chemistry teacher who learns he has cancer and decides to start cooking meth with a former student. What follows is essentially an origin story for one of the worst villains the world has ever seen, and I’m not talking about the chicken shop man.
Apple TV+
Season 2 of Severance is currently being filmed and reportedly costs 20 million dollars per episode – that’s how much faith Apple has in its flagship show, directed by Ben Stiller. It follows the story of a handful of workers at a company that offers a strange perk: a surgery that separates your working brain from your social brain, allowing you to disconnect completely, do your work day, and leave as if it never even happened. It’s the ultimate NDA. But these people don’t realize that they’ve created a compartmentalized version of themselves who are trapped at work forever. Layer over that some of the weirdest mysteries since Lost (their job, seemingly, is to look for “scary numbers”) and you’ve got the most original and gripping show I’ve seen in years, carried to even greater heights by incredible performances – there’s something truly unsettling about the way the characters’ faces shift as they enter the elevator at work.
