The 15 Greatest TV Drama Pilots of All Time

An hour to explain a world, introduce a dozen people and make someone come back next week. A few of these did it in the first sixty seconds.

1

Breaking Bad

A teacher in his underwear points a gun down a desert road, and the show explains itself in one shot.

2

The Sopranos

A mob boss walks into a psychiatrist's waiting room, and prestige television starts.

3

Lost

An eye opens in bamboo and a plane crash plays out across the whole first hour.

4

Mad Men

"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" sells a cigarette campaign and hides its lead in plain sight.

5

The West Wing

Ninety seconds of overlapping dialogue before anyone explains who these people are.

6

Game of Thrones

"Winter Is Coming" ends by throwing a child out of a tower window.

7

True Detective

Two versions of the same detectives, seventeen years apart, in the same interview room.

8

ER

A live-wire county hospital shift, cut faster than television had tried before.

9

Six Feet Under

A hearse advert, a fatal crash, and a family funeral home in the first five minutes.

10

Battlestar Galactica

A miniseries opening that destroys twelve worlds before the credits settle.

11

The Shield

The Strike Team wins the audience over and then shoots one of their own.

12

Deadwood

A camp with no law, introduced in language nobody else on television was writing.

13

Homeland

A CIA analyst nobody believes watches a returning prisoner of war through a screen.

14

The Handmaid's Tale

"Offred" walks a converted republic through a shopping trip and a hanging.

15

Better Call Saul

A black-and-white Cinnabon and a man watching his own old commercials.