The 42 Best Showtime Series of All Time

Premium cable's second-biggest player built a catalogue of antiheroes, addicts and ambitious operators, plus a few quietly brilliant limited series that never got the hype. Which one earned its subscription?

1. 1
   Dexter

   Michael C. Hall stars as a Miami forensic analyst who moonlights as a vigilante serial killer in Showtime's biggest hit (2006-2013).
   1000pts
2. 2
   Homeland

   Claire Danes's bipolar CIA officer anchors the Emmy-winning espionage thriller that ran eight seasons (2011-2020).
   871pts
3. 3
   Kidding

   Jim Carrey plays a children's TV host coming apart in Michel Gondry's melancholy comedy (2018-2020).
   640pts
4. 4
   Sleeper Cell

   An undercover FBI agent infiltrates a Los Angeles terrorist cell in the Emmy-nominated miniseries (2005-2006).
   640pts
5. 5
   United States of Tara

   Toni Collette won an Emmy as a mother with dissociative identity disorder in the Diablo Cody-created comedy (2009-2011).
   640pts
6. 6
   The Good Lord Bird

   Ethan Hawke's ferocious turn as abolitionist John Brown anchors the acclaimed 2020 limited series.
   567pts
7. 7
   The Curse

   Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone's unnerving A24 satire about an HGTV-style couple (2023-2024).
   567pts
8. 8
   Couples Therapy

   The acclaimed docuseries follows real couples through sessions with psychoanalyst Orna Guralnik (2019-).
   524pts
9. 9
   Huff

   Hank Azaria's psychiatrist unravels after a patient's suicide in the Emmy-winning drama (2004-2006).
   475pts
10. 10
    SMILF

    Frankie Shaw's semi-autobiographical comedy about a young single mother in South Boston (2017-2019).
    475pts
11. 11
    The Big C

    Laura Linney's suburban teacher upends her life after a cancer diagnosis in the Emmy-winning comedy-drama (2010-2013).
    419pts
12. 12
    The Chi

    Lena Waithe's ensemble drama about life on Chicago's South Side has run since 2018.
    419pts
13. 13
    Dead Like Me

    Bryan Fuller's cult comedy about a dead teenager recruited as a grim reaper (2003-2004).
    419pts
14. 14
    Yellowjackets

    A girls' soccer team's plane crash spirals into survival horror across two timelines in Showtime's biggest 2020s breakout (2021-).
    419pts
15. 15
    Super Pumped

    Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Uber founder Travis Kalanick in the 2022 anthology drama about tech disruption.
    419pts
16. 16
    Fellow Travelers

    Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey's decades-spanning romance set against the Lavender Scare earned wide acclaim (2023).
    419pts
17. 17
    Episodes

    Matt LeBlanc plays a version of himself in the transatlantic comedy about British writers adapting their sitcom for US TV (2011-2017).
    355pts
18. 18
    Penny Dreadful

    Eva Green headlines a gothic horror mash-up of Victorian literary monsters that became a cult favourite (2014-2016).
    355pts
19. 19
    Twin Peaks: The Return

    David Lynch's 18-hour 2017 revival of Twin Peaks, hailed by many critics as the decade's best television.
    354pts
20. 20
    Soul Food

    The Chicago family drama became the longest-running Black drama in US TV history at the time (2000-2004).
    354pts
21. 21
    The Borgias

    Jeremy Irons rules as Pope Alexander VI in Neil Jordan's Renaissance crime-family saga (2011-2013).
    354pts
22. 22
    Stargate SG-1

    The sci-fi franchise's flagship series launched on Showtime and ran its first five seasons there before moving to Sci Fi (1997-2007).
    354pts
23. 23
    Shameless

    The Chicago-set Gallagher family dramedy led by William H. Macy became Showtime's longest-running scripted series (2011-2021).
    279pts
24. 24
    House of Lies

    Don Cheadle's ruthless management consultant fronts the fast-talking corporate satire (2012-2016).
    279pts
25. 25
    The Affair

    A Montauk affair is retold from shifting perspectives in the Golden Globe-winning relationship drama (2014-2019).
    279pts
26. 26
    Californication

    David Duchovny's self-destructive novelist Hank Moody stumbles through Los Angeles in the raunchy comedy-drama (2007-2014).
    279pts
27. 27
    City on a Hill

    Kevin Bacon's corrupt FBI agent prowls 1990s Boston in the Ben Affleck-produced crime drama (2019-2022).
    279pts
28. 28
    Weeds

    Mary-Louise Parker's suburban widow turns pot dealer in the dark comedy that defined Showtime's mid-2000s rise (2005-2012).
    279pts
29. 29
    Your Honor

    Bryan Cranston's New Orleans judge covers up his son's hit-and-run in the tense legal thriller (2020-2023).
    279pts
30. 30
    Queer as Folk

    The American remake following gay friends in Pittsburgh was the first hour-long US drama centred on gay characters (2000-2005).
    279pts
31. 31
    Ray Donovan

    Liev Schreiber's Hollywood fixer cleans up celebrity messes while his own family unravels (2013-2020).
    279pts
32. 32
    I'm Dying Up Here

    Jim Carrey-produced drama about 1970s Los Angeles stand-up comedians (2017-2018).
    279pts
33. 33
    Nurse Jackie

    Edie Falco plays a brilliant, pill-addicted ER nurse in the Emmy-winning dark comedy (2009-2015).
    279pts
34. 34
    Masters of Sex

    Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan dramatise the pioneering 1950s sex researchers Masters and Johnson (2013-2016).
    190pts
35. 35
    Black Monday

    Don Cheadle leads a coke-fuelled comedy about Wall Street traders in the run-up to the 1987 crash (2019-2021).
    190pts
36. 36
    Dexter: New Blood

    The 2021 revival relocates Dexter Morgan to upstate New York and became Showtime's most-watched series ever.
    190pts
37. 37
    The Tudors

    Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays a young Henry VIII in the lavish, sexed-up period drama (2007-2010).
    190pts
38. 38
    The L Word

    The groundbreaking drama about a group of lesbian friends in Los Angeles ran six seasons and spawned a revival (2004-2009).
    190pts
39. 39
    Brotherhood

    Two Providence brothers, a politician and a gangster, collide in the acclaimed Irish-American crime drama (2006-2008).
    190pts
40. 40
    Patrick Melrose

    Benedict Cumberbatch plays a damaged aristocrat in the five-part adaptation of Edward St Aubyn's novels (2018).
    190pts
41. 41
    Escape at Dannemora

    Ben Stiller's Emmy-winning limited series recreates the 2015 prison break with Benicio del Toro and Patricia Arquette (2018).
    0pts
42. 42
    Billions

    Hedge-fund titan Bobby Axelrod and US Attorney Chuck Rhoades wage a seven-season war of wealth and power (2016-2023).
    0pts

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