50 Best TV Dramas of All Time, Ranked

It's hard to know where to begin when talking about The Sopranos. It all but reinvented what TV shows were capable of being, with it instantly feeling cinematic, complex, and engrossing in a way very few—if any—other TV shows had ever managed. It was both a crime show and a family drama, and it proved to be incredibly funny at times while also being crushingly sad at other times.

It also followed perhaps the greatest fictional character of all time: Tony Soprano, played to perfection by James Gandolfini. There were dozens upon dozens of other great performances, and the rest of the cast beyond Gandolfini was phenomenal, too. It's a thrilling, sad, funny, thought-provoking, and tense show, and only gets better with age, as well as with every rewatch. It's not just TV at its best; you could argue that The Sopranos is quite simply fiction in general at its very best.

The Wire has a huge and compelling cast of characters and a scope that widens with each one of its five compelling seasons. It begins with a look at street-level drug dealers and the efforts of police to stop their operations, and then goes on to cover more and more areas within the city of Baltimore, all without ignoring characters from previous seasons.

By the end of the show, viewers have gotten an insight into the dockworkers, the political side of the city, the way its public schools function, and those who work within its media circles. Somehow, it wraps all these storylines and character arcs up perfectly by the end of the show, successfully becoming one of the most dense and perfectly written shows of all time. Not to mention, it's also fantastically acted, well-paced, and shot in a way that makes everything feel very believable. TV simply doesn't get much better.

Exploding onto the scene in 2008 and becoming the rare show that got better and better with every season, Breaking Bad quickly became legendary TV. It started small, following a chemistry teacher who turned to making meth after a cancer diagnosis, hoping that he could fund his medical treatment and provide for his family, should he pass away from the illness.

Complications arise—and further seasons are made possible—when he enjoys the power and fame this new venture brings, and the ex-teacher eventually becomes a drug kingpin. It's a thrilling modern-day tragedy, and easily one of the most binge-worthy TV shows in recent memory, thanks to its dense and satisfying narrative that never stops moving forward.

Running for seven seasons, close to 100 episodes, and covering most of the 1960s, Mad Men follows the enigmatic Don Draper, an executive for a prestigious advertising agency. Throughout the show, his backstory is explored, his complex family life is unpacked, and the lives of those he works with are uncovered.

Its premise might not leap out immediately as one that seems super exciting; at least not compared to other intense drama TV shows it's often compared to. Yet Mad Men has the ability to slowly suck viewers in, and it ends up making for enthralling TV, with character drama and dialogue proving just as engaging as shocking deaths or dramatic plot twists in other shows might. It's great TV, and one of the most impressively consistent, seeing as it ran for eight years and never really dipped in quality.

Succession is among the most recent drama series to join the ranks of the all-time greats. It began in 2018 as a show about a wealthy, unwell, old media mogul looking to pass on his huge company to one of his children, with said children—and others—competing to get the biggest piece of the empire, so to speak. Things become complex in later seasons, however, when it looks like the man at the top may not be so willing to pass on what he has to his offspring.

It's a show that can be just as funny as it is surprisingly tense, with some amazingly profane dialogue, overall pitch-perfect writing, and amazing performances making a story about very unlikable people become a very likable show. Its four seasons (through the highly satisfying, fitting finale) were consistently great and surprising, making it a modern classic, and up there as one of the very best TV dramas, ever.

A candidate for the most idealistic drama series of all time, The West Wing can sometimes feel like a fantasy more than a grounded drama series. It follows a fictional U.S. President and his hyper-competent, genuinely decent team of staff, working in the titular wing of the White House for seven seasons and 155 episodes, fighting the good fight and trying to make the United States a better place.

It presents a view of how politics could function at its best, though, because of its optimism, it isn't exactly representative of how it really functions. Still, it's a wonderful and entertaining fantasy, and even those who don't find politics particularly interesting will find enjoyment in the likable characters, the fast-paced dialogue, and the skilled mix of humor and more dramatic moments.

Like Six Feet Under, The Americans is particularly well-regarded for how it ends, with its sixth and final season being its best overall, and its last episode being one for the ages. That being said, the rest of the show is also great, with the story following a pair of Russian spies who pose as a seemingly ordinary American family during the 1980s, relaying findings back to the Soviet Union.

The Americans is a drama and thriller series that's not afraid to take its time, with an overall slow-burn narrative that always makes the waiting worth it, thanks to often spectacular payoffs. It's an extremely well-acted and well-paced show, and maintains a good level of suspense and intrigue throughout its six compelling seasons.

It might be hard to believe, but there are almost 500 episodes of the original Law & Order series, and it's been around for more than 30 years. Granted, it hasn't been on the air for every year between 1990 and 2023, as it had a lengthy hiatus between 2010 and 2021, returning in 2022 for its 21st season.

Its spin-off, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, has aired even more episodes, but the original remains the best (as originals tend to do). The show follows numerous criminal cases, splitting time between the police procedural side of things, and the prosecution presenting their case in court. It's a landmark American TV show with similarly successful spin-offs, and deserves recognition for its longevity and popularity.

Six Feet Under is a show all about death, and investigates the topic with brutal honesty and occasional humor. It centers on a family-run funeral home, and what happens to the members of the family after the patriarch passes away (in the first episode, so it's not a spoiler).

It's probably definable as a dramedy, though it leans into drama more often than comedy, given the heavy subject matter. It's a moving and often very engaging look at an interesting ensemble cast, and is especially highly regarded for its final season, as well as the series finale, which is regarded as one of the greatest of all time.

A death-heavy TV show that frequently traumatized millions of loyal fans throughout the 2010s (who couldn't pull themselves away regardless), Game of Thrones was a monumental show at its peak. It took place on the continent of Westeros, primarily revolving around a war over who should be king, all the while people largely ignored a mysterious force—known as the White Walkers—marching towards the continent, ready to lay it to waste.

Admittedly, its later seasons didn't live up to its earlier ones, and the final season in particular was heavily criticized (often for understandable reasons). Yet if the show had never been great, people wouldn't have been nearly as frustrated with how it ended, showing that even if its overall legacy is complicated, Game of Thrones at its best was a show unlike any other. It managed to grab the attention of fantasy and non-fantasy fans alike with its compelling story, great characters, unpredictable plot twists, and massive scale.

David Lynch already had a reputation for making wonderfully strange movies by 1990, with the early 1990s seeing him turn to TV to create Twin Peaks, along with co-creator Mark Frost. It was a mix of soap opera, comedy, fantasy, crime, and surreal horror, being a wonderfully eccentric, unusual, and unpredictable series.

Tragically, it was cut down in its prime, as the writers were pressured to wrap up the show's central murder mystery prematurely, leaving things feeling aimless for numerous episodes before it was canceled at the end of Season 2. A 1992 prequel movie followed, as did a groundbreaking (and even stranger) new season called Twin Peaks: The Return in 2017, meaning that though the main show was canceled, it at least didn't spell the end for Twin Peaks as a whole.

Though the original series that aired in the 1960s will always be beloved for coming first, Star Trek: The Next Generation is often considered the best Star Trek TV show. It ran for an impressive seven seasons and 176 episodes overall, with its story set about a century after the adventures of Captain Kirk and his crew.

It follows a new generation of Starfleet officers as they set out with roughly the same mission the original crew had, only doing so in an even more advanced and less predictable sci-fi world. A sequel series to a beloved TV show from the 1960s was always going to be risky, but The Next Generation was a soaring success, running for four more seasons than the original series did.

Deadwood is a staggering achievement in TV production, even by the standards of HBO—a company that's funded some of the most expensive shows in history. Deadwood follows an entire town in the late 1800s, becoming something of a cross between a historical drama, a Western, and a crime show, thanks to the lawless nature of its setting.

Its cast of characters is one of the strongest of all time, and its beautifully written (and profanity-filled) dialogue needs to be heard to be believed. The show's first season is maybe its best, but the quality remains high throughout the other two seasons, and though it was canceled after its third, it at least got a 2019 movie to tie up as many loose ends as possible.

A spin-off/prequel series to Breaking Bad that some would argue surpassed its parent show, Better Call Saul focuses on the character of Saul Goodman before he adopted the name/persona he's shown to have in Breaking Bad. For much of Better Call Saul, he's actually known as Jimmy McGill, with the show demonstrating how he gradually becomes the Saul Goodman viewers know.

It's a slower show than Breaking Bad, but one that ultimately rewards patient viewers by gradually increasing the tension, building to an impactful sixth and final season. It's amassed a similar popularity to its parent show, and can proudly stand as one of the few TV spin-offs that equals—or sometimes even surpasses—what came before.

There are various crime/cop shows—particularly in the 21st century—that owe some degree of gratitude to Hill Street Blues. To borrow a clichéd saying, it was one of those shows that walked so that other similar shows could run (for any number of seasons—sometimes more, and sometimes less than Hill Street Blues' seven).

It was ambitious for its attempts to balance a large ensemble cast, as well as provide a more realistic and gritty look at police work than TV audiences at the time might've been used to. Its ambition paid off, as the show won a staggering 26 Emmys while it was on the air, and helped give writers like David Milch (the creator of Deadwood) and Mark Frost (the co-creator of Twin Peaks) experience in TV writing, with both going on to help create even better shows later in their careers.

Running for over 300 episodes and spanning 15 seasons, ER was a mammoth show and is widely considered one of the best medical dramas of all time. It had a huge cast of characters that came and went over the show's run, all shown to struggle with their professional and romantic lives while working at Chicago's County General Hospital.

It's perhaps best known today for the famous actors who starred in it before they had their big movie breaks, the most notable of course being George Clooney, who was a member of the main cast for the show's first five seasons. Did it run too long? Maybe. But it was a seminal series for TV, and a significant work within pop culture, enabling it to be counted among other greats within the realm of TV drama.

Few TV shows from the 1990s are quite as iconic as The X-Files, which has endured in pop culture thanks to two seasons (in 2016 and 2018) that aired long after the show's original run (1993-2002). It's also had two theatrically released films: one in 1998 and one in 2008.

The show primarily revolves around two FBI agents—one who believes in alien and/or supernatural forces, and one who's a skeptic—investigating various paranormal cases, uncovering surprising conspiracies in the process. It effectively combined overarching stories with single, "case-of-the-week" episodes, making for an iconic and addictive show that may have peaked in the 1990s but is still looked back upon fondly to this day.

Elmore Leonard adaptations are more common in film rather than TV, but Justified shows his style works just as well in the format of a serialized TV show. Running for six seasons between 2010 and 2015, Justified follows a US Marshal returning to Harlan County—where he grew up—and enacting his own unique brand of justice there.

There's an unending stream of crime/thriller shows out there, but Justified stands out from the crowd because of its great characters and extremely well-written dialogue. Each season generally follows a different storyline while retaining a main cast and numerous recurring characters, effectively making the show's world feel believable and lived in. It's also been given a reboot/revival of sorts with Justified: City Primeval.

Before 2022's fourth season aired, it might have been tempting to call Stranger Things the TV equivalent of a one-hit wonder. 2016's first season was a cultural phenomenon upon release, offering a nostalgic, funny, and emotional story set during the 1980s that followed various people in a small town working together to find a young boy after his mysterious disappearance.

Seasons 2 and 3 naturally broadened the scope, with the results sometimes being a good deal of fun, but sometimes feeling strained. Season 4 successfully managed to up the stakes, thankfully, and though the show still feels like it's in the process of chewing the huge amount of stuff it bit off, the intense, genuinely creepy, and overall very impactful fourth season has got things back on track for a (hopefully) equally good fifth and final season.

It's a shame that Hannibal only lasted three seasons and never got to finish on its own terms, but what viewers got is still great overall. The show presents an interesting spin on the iconic Hannibal Lecter, following his uneasy (and unusual) relationship with a young—and very troubled—FBI criminal profile named Will Graham.

Hannibal is certainly a slow burn, and some viewers may wonder what all the fuss is about during the solid yet sometimes underwhelming first season. Things build satisfyingly, though, with Season 1 ending strong, and much of Season 2 making for particularly great television. Time will tell if it ever gets "un-canceled" and granted a Season 4, though it looks unlikely at this point.

Fargo began airing the same year as True Detective, similarly stands as an acclaimed anthology series. It's based on the acclaimed 1996 crime movie of the same name, directed by the Coen Brothers, and aims to capture the tone and feel of that film with different stories each season.

Like True Detective, certain seasons seem to have a few more fans than others, though at least most will agree that Seasons 1 and 2 of Fargo made for great TV. With a dark sense of humor, unpredictable storylines, and a willingness to experiment more and more as the seasons go on, Fargo is undoubtedly one of the best TV anthology series of all time.

True Detective was a surprise hit back when its first season aired in 2014, and a show that seemingly everyone was talking about. It starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, following their characters—a pair of detectives—reopening a mysterious murder case many years after it took place, and making a series of disturbing revelations along the way.

The acting, writing, and overall storytelling felt unparalleled, with the show soon becoming an anthology series that followed different characters and different cases each season. These have proven to be more divisive than Season 1, though the show remains compelling and interesting TV, with an intriguing Season 4—starring Jodie Foster—surprising everyone with its high quality and clever use of supernatural elements.

Well over a decade since it ended, and almost two decades after it started, Lost remains a somewhat divisive show. It began with a group of plane crash survivors trying to get by on a mysterious island, with things feeling grounded and only occasionally fantastical for a good chunk of its first season.

As it went on, the mysteries increased. Lost pivoted into a show that was about more than just survival, with the island having a complex backstory, and later seasons involving time travel and differing timelines and/or dimensions. The ride was a wild one, but if you let Lost do its own thing and just keep up as best you can—while accepting you might not receive a concrete answer for literally every mystery—it's a fantastic, fun, and undeniably unique show.

While Buffy the Vampire Slayer was technically a drama series, it also excelled at being an action-packed fantasy/romance show and could be very funny at times, too, largely thanks to Buffy's lovable and often hilarious main cast. It followed the titular character as she fulfilled her demon-fighting destiny while making friends, falling in and out of love, and trying to make it in high school (during Seasons 1 to 3) and then the adult world (in Seasons 4 to 7).

With close to 150 episodes over seven seasons, it's natural that a few hours misfired here and there; this sometimes uneven quality technically makes it a flawed show. However, by and large, it was great TV, and when Buffy the Vampire Slayer was at its very best, few other shows could touch it when it came to quality.

The Shield began and ended the same year as another groundbreaking series revolving around police work and crime (more on that one much further down). It therefore helped usher in a new kind of cop drama; one that was grittier, more ferocious, and more morally complex than most that had come before, centering on a protagonist who was arguably too villainous to be considered an anti-hero.

That protagonist was Vic Mackey, a corrupt cop who'd brutally fight crime with his squad, technically helping their department while also doing things like profiting from illegal goods they confiscated, primarily drugs. Within its seven seasons, The Shield starts strong, sags a little in the middle, but then excels in its last couple of seasons, and delivers a series finale for the ages.

Though not everyone is a fan of the Royal Family, it seems that a huge number of Netflix users are a fan of watching a somewhat historically accurate account of the British Monarchy's behind-the-scenes drama from throughout the 20th century. The series about this drama, The Crown, focuses on Queen Elizabeth II, who admittedly has a remarkably long run as the United Kingdom's Queen between 1952 and 2022.

Those who aren't exactly into the lives of this family need not apply, but anyone who finds an interest in the UK's Monarchy will likely find the performances and production design on offer here to be very impressive. Each season of The Crown takes place over a different period of time, meaning numerous actors have portrayed various characters at different stages in their lives, which is one of the more interesting aspects of the show.

Netflix is a company that's really only been making TV shows for about a decade now, but has already risen up to become remarkably influential and behind numerous popular shows. One of the company's most critically acclaimed wseries as Ozark, which is a bleak crime/drama series that had a total of four seasons released on the Netflix platform between 2017 and 2022.

Broadly speaking, it's about a family that decides to become affiliated with a Mexican drug cartel by being money launderers, only to find that there are plenty of drastic consequences for engaging in such a dangerous line of work. It's a constantly tense and riveting show, and also a great showcase for the range of its star Jason Bateman, who's otherwise best known for his more comedic roles.

Yes, Battlestar Galactica would technically qualify as a science-fiction show, but it can broadly be considered a drama series, too, and was considered a drama series for the purposes of the Emmys, for example. It ran for 76 episodes over four seasons between 2004 and 2009 and had a considerable cult following that gradually became big enough to call the show a mainstream success.

It was a reimagining of a 1970s series of the same name and had a story that takes place in a distant galaxy, following a crew on a military ship that's searching for Planet Earth, given they're at risk of being killed by an android race. It's surprisingly epic and consistently engaging for a show of its kind, and though the show's finale was controversial, it's still an intergalactic trip worth taking for sci-fi fans.

Several years after he concluded being a lead writer on another acclaimed drama series, Damon Lindelof co-created The Leftovers, which many would consider his best TV show so far. It's a very grounded look at what happens to the world after a Rapture-like event which sees approximately 2% of humanity disappearing without a trace.

It's not so much of a dramatic change to the world that things become post-apocalyptic, but the event causes enough of a disturbance to radically alter the lives of those left behind, which is where much of the drama in the show comes from. Watching it can make for a strange and sometimes exasperating experience, but there isn't much else like it out there, making it a trip worth taking for anyone who finds the premise intriguing.

While it was a hit among critics, Friday Night Lights was never huge when it came to ratings, making it fortunate that it still managed to run for five seasons. It's centered on a high school football team in West Texas, but isn't only concerned with sports, given Friday Night Lights has a large cast of characters who are explored while being depicted as dealing with ups and downs in their lives.

It was based on a book that was also adapted as a movie in 2004, shortly before the TV series began airing. With the added length that comes from long-form, years-spanning television, the show was able to explore more characters than an ordinary movie ever could, and became arguably more engaging and emotionally resonant as a result.

Without Oz, HBO might not be the powerhouse that it currently is in the TV world. This drama series was an early indication of what could be shown on HBO, and it’s honestly still quite gnarly and harrowing by today’s standards, following the inmates and staff members at a brutal maximum security prison. The world the show takes place in is hellish, filled with racism, rampant illicit drug use, and near-constant violence/death.

That’s all to say that Oz isn't the most traditionally enjoyable show, but it is impressive and brilliantly acted. It wanes a little in its last couple of seasons, devolving into soap opera territory, to some extent, but when it was at its best, it was unlike anything else out there… even if some later HBO dramas did, admittedly, steal some of Oz’s thunder.

But for as long-running as 24 was, it has nothing on the likes of Doctor Who. Yes, this British series is technically science fiction, first and foremost, but “drama” has a broader definition when it comes to television, compared to movies. If something’s fictionalized, and it’s not broadly comedic or identifiable as a sitcom, it can be called a drama; that’s just the way it seems to be.

Anyway, Doctor Who is a series that’s maintained its longevity because the titular character is continually reborn in a different body, and played by a different actor, with each going on various adventures through time and space, usually accompanied by a companion (they change over time, too). It’s not always consistent, but the size and legacy of Doctor Who impresses, with the only real hiatus for the show being between 1989 and 2005 (and, even then, there was a TV movie in 1996).

24 ran for eight seasons throughout almost the entire 2000s (and a little into the 2010s), and then received two follow-ups, the continuation of Jack Bauer’s story in 2014’s 24: Live Another Day, and a kind of mishandled reboot of sorts in the form of 24: Legacy. Live Another Day was decent, but the core eight seasons of 24 deliver the most, and generally represent the long-running series at its best.

Each of those first eight seasons takes place over 24 hours, with events playing out in real-time, each dealing with a series of dramatic events that tend to put Bauer’s loved ones in danger, or threaten the safety of the entire U.S., or sometimes even both. It’s high-stakes and always building in intensity, and for as bombastic as it could sometimes get, it nevertheless almost always managed to remain exciting and addictive television.

There’s been a little stumbling when it comes to The Bear and its three seasons so far, but certainly nothing as drastic as Dexter, and nothing that can’t be recovered from. It hit the ground running as a frequently tense and expertly written show about a chef (struggling with personal demons) trying to manage things at the sandwich shop that his deceased brother used to run.

Also, The Bear is sometimes considered a comedy/drama series, but its dramatic elements tend to be its most compelling, and it gets heavy and stressful enough at times that it’s possible to forget about the whole “comedy” part. Even with some humor, it’s got one foot – probably two – in the “dram” part of “dramedy,” and so far (it is still running, as of 2024), it’s generally been high-quality enough to feel like one of the biggest must-watch shows of the 2020s so far.

Look, Dexter starts strong and definitely doesn’t finish strong, but for what works, it’s worth celebrating. The show about a serial killer who kills other serial killers (and criminals) while hiding in plain sight as a forensic expert, working among other detectives, was fun for a while. The first four (of eight) seasons were pretty great, and the fourth season in particular was phenomenal.

Fast-forward to seasons 5 and 6… there was some drop-off. Season 7 was fun, and a return to form of sorts. Season 8… it’s better to pretend Season 8 of Dexter never happened. Dexter still has enough high-quality episodes and seasons to be considered a minor classic. It has the sort of in-your-face thrills, plot twists, and various shocking moments to make for good pulp TV… just bow out at the right time, and you’re all good.

Bryan Fuller has had a hand in creating some offbeat, unusual, and compelling shows over the years, Dead Like Me included, even though he left the show fairly early on in its run. Said run wasn’t particularly long, either, with Dead Like Me airing for two seasons and then getting a feature-length finale of sorts in 2009, Dead Like Me: Life After Death.

That was enough for it to build up a cult following, though, and it was mostly about death, the afterlife, and the experiences of a group of grim reapers, all of whom lived and died at different points in history. Dead Like Me was quirky and offbeat enough to function like a comedy at times, with it effectively blending dark humor and drama—plus some obviously fantastical elements for good measure—into a unique cocktail of a TV show.

The Newsroom features an ensemble cast, is created by Aaron Sorkin, and, unsurprisingly, is centered around a cable news channel. It kind of does for that world what Sorkin’s other acclaimed TV show, The West Wing, did for American politics, with a comparable tone found in both shows and the two having the same fast-paced dialogue Sorkin has become famous for writing.

Perhaps The Newsroom also lays things on a bit thick at times, and you’d be hard-pressed to argue that it’s a subtle show necessarily, but the big ideas explored make it ambitious and at least interesting, even when it’s not at its best. The production value is consistently high (thanks to it being from HBO, naturally), and the performances in The Newsroom are all strong across the board, too.

What began as an Alfred Hitchcock movie back in 1960 has had a surprising legacy in the decades that have followed, with Psycho receiving interesting sequels, an infamous remake, and a prequel series in the form of Bates Motel. The series is mostly set before the events of the original Psycho (now set in the modern day, however), though the final season does catch up with the events of the first Psycho novel/movie.

The dynamic between Norman Bates and his mother, Norma, is the focus of much of the show, with a certain ominous atmosphere throughout, owing to the (hopefully common at this stage) knowledge that Norma is deceased by the events of Psycho. It works as a combination of the horror and drama genres, being pulpy at times, sure, but well-made and well-acted pulp nonetheless.

You have to give credit to Mr. Robot for one thing beyond anything else: it sure is unique. It’s paranoid, mind-bending, and twist-filled in ways that may sometimes feel reminiscent of other works of fiction, but the entire show is aggressively its own thing visually and stylistically, with intentionally odd camerawork, framing, narrative choices, and persistently disorienting editing.

It’s a show that aims to capture societal unease while depicting a revolution of sorts in the modern world, with the main character being a hacker involved with all these strange events that are further warped through his unusual perception of the world. Mr. Robot may or may not partake in some shark-jumping every now and then, but it’s also weirdly admirable for just how out there it is, and those bold choices certainly paid off enough to ensure it ran for a respectable four seasons before ending on its own terms.

The medical drama genre isn't one typically associated with accuracy, because it’s possible to create compelling character drama without getting too bogged down in medical accuracy. But then there’s something like The Knick, which aimed to be a starkly realistic depiction of how the world of medicine functioned far back in the past, with the show being set right at the start of the 20th century.

On top of showcasing how things were in the past, it also deals with some intense themes surrounding drug addiction and racial conflicts in New York City at the turn of the century. Though The Knick only ran for two seasons, both were acclaimed, and notably, Steven Soderbergh was credited with directing all 20 episodes (and that’s on top of all the feature-length movies he churns out on a pretty much yearly basis).

Yes, to get the obvious out of the way, Firefly is a go-to “canceled too soon” show, but at least it got a finale of sorts, thanks to 2005’s Serenity doing a bit of a feature-length speed-run of what seasons 2 and 3 of the show might've looked like. And, as it stands, the single season of Firefly does mean the show’s pretty close to flawless, for what it is. It never got the chance to go slightly off the rails the way Angel did, for example.

Firefly is all about a group of people living on a spaceship during the 2500s, with standalone stories in each episode, to some extent, and hints of other bigger-picture things that could’ve been developed over seasons. Enjoying Firefly for what it is proves to be captivating television, while thinking too much about what it could’ve been proves saddening, so just enjoy the ride (and Serenity) as best as you can.

Transparent caused something of a stir when it first aired, but then it seems to have become a little forgotten in the years since. It deserves to be remembered, though, functioning as either a very dark sitcom or a sometimes funny drama show, depending on your definition. And, to be honest, it depends on the season, since some stretches of episodes of Transparent were bleaker than others.

At the core of the show was a group of flawed yet deeply human characters, the principal one being a trans woman who’s just come out, and the supporting characters being members of her family adjusting to how that changes the family dynamic. It ran a respectable and largely consistent four seasons, and got wrapped up with a feature-length musical episode that made the best of a difficult situation.

You could potentially put American Crime Story in the same category as Prison Break, because both shows are most well-remembered for their first seasons. It makes more sense with American Crime Story, though, given it’s an anthology series, with each batch of episodes revolving around the one event (involving crime in America, surprise, surprise), and different actors being featured in each one.

For the first season, the focus was entirely on the O.J. Simpson murder trial, and it aired the same year that a critically acclaimed documentary about the same event—O.J.: Made in America—was also released. Season 2 was about the assassination of Gianni Versace, while Season 3 focused on the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal (neither of those being as acclaimed as the first season, but they still made for solid TV).

Though destined to live in the shadow of another show, Angel is still pretty fantastic overall. Though not the most consistent of shows, Angel did run for more than 100 episodes and had the majority of those be at least solid. Season 4 dipped in quality to some extent, but the final season was phenomenal stuff, and redeemed/salvaged the show after it got a little lost in its penultimate season.

Angel began as a show about a trio of people working on supernatural-related cases in Los Angeles, and grew to become something a little bigger and more ambitious as it went along. Lots of it was dark, some of it was devastating, and other parts could be hilarious. The series did a bit of everything and maintained some consistency because the great characters from Angel—even when doing out-of-character things—remained worthy of one’s time.

Look, Prison Break peaked with its first season, maybe even to the point where it really should’ve just been one season. But to put out 20+ episodes two decades ago, and have that entire season still hold up as quality television? That’s worth something, and Prison Break delivers as a TV show about… yeah, a prison break. You get what you expect.

Seeing a familiar premise play out across multiple hours rather than a single movie’s runtime made Prison Break thrilling stuff, and it was just very well-paced and polished; great popcorn television, if such a thing exists. And, if you like the characters enough and want to see them get wrapped up in more prison-related stuff, you do have the other, less essential seasons of Prison Break, sure (there were five seasons in total, plus a TV movie).

You might think working in a hospital would get stressful, but The Pitt seems keen to tell you that whatever you imagined, it can probably get a whole lot worse. It goes for realism above all else, and it’s also a TV show that uses real-time storytelling to make you feel not just the stress, but the sheer quantity of that stress, and all the different places it can come from.

There’s only been one season so far, at the time of writing, that depicts a gruelling 15-hour period inside the central hospital, but it was strong enough to suggest that The Pitt is already worthy of being considered a great drama series. If the second season tanks it, maybe its placement here could be called into question, but still, it’s one great season so far, and there is certainly potential for it to keep going on, maintaining the momentum and continuing to earn acclaim.

My So-Called Life is focused on all the sorts of things teenage girls are most concerned about, and it rides a pretty effective line between realistic and slightly heightened/romantic, maybe even a little idealized. It’s not an outright fantasy, and things aren’t always sunny, but it’s probably not as heavy or high stakes as some of the other dramas being mentioned here… by design, given the focus, though.

It was an early role for Claire Danes, who plays the lead character, Angela Chase, and it was similarly an early role for Jared Leto (with Danes going on to be in many other TV shows, and some movies, following this one, and Leto… well, certainly being prolific as a film actor, for better and sometimes worse). It’s an empathetic series that uses music pretty well – as one can usually expect a show about young people to do – and much of My So-Called Life, despite its age, still holds up pretty well.

A show that starred Kevin Costner, at least for a while, Yellowstone was a fairly big deal when it started, but then it really seemed to take off in popularity to a surprising extent in subsequent years. It felt unstoppable, and though it has now technically stopped, there are various other shows that are connected to the “universe” that was introduced with Yellowstone, and there’s a lot to keep track of.

Some might say some of those shows have topped Yellowstone, but the 2018 original came first and has probably had the biggest cultural impact so far, so it’s getting the edge here. It’s a pretty compelling epic Western/drama series about a family and various conflicts over their land, working as something like a melodrama – or maybe even a soap opera – just with more cinematic production value.

A profane and sometimes confronting show that’s funny at times, but probably more of a drama than a comedy, here’s Shameless, which aired well over 100 episodes across 11 seasons. It centered on a dysfunctional family living in Chicago, with the cast being a true ensemble one, with only a handful of actors – like William H. Macy and Jeremy Allen White – being credited with appearing in every single episode.

As a long-runner, Shameless wasn’t the most consistent of shows, but you could also argue that the scrappiness and general messiness were kind of in line with the characters and the lives they sometimes led. It was an occasionally dysfunctional show about dysfunctional people, and was an American remake of a British show that was, quite surprisingly, also on the air for 11 seasons, and ultimately had a few more episodes in total than the American one.

Don’t worry, Slow Horses is considered both a drama and a thriller series, so it’s not too slow. It takes its time, maybe, compared to some other spy-related stories out there, particularly big-screen ones, but the approach works when you’ve got a good cast of characters, and some truly talented actors in the main cast, including the likes of Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Slow Horses only began in 2022, but it’s already aired five seasons, with a sixth season planned for 2026 and a seventh for 2027. In a TV world where seasons sometimes take multiple years to come out, for whatever reason, it’s kind of refreshing to have a show like Slow Horses having a paradoxically fast production schedule. It should probably be the norm, but this is life now, with television. And, sure, Slow Horses has very short seasons, but even then, having seasons 1 and 2 both air in 2022 was pretty radical, and got the whole thing off to a good start.