# 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?

*By YPB Team · Published October 24, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-42-best-showtime-series-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Dexter** — score 1000/1000
   Michael C. Hall stars as a Miami forensic analyst who moonlights as a vigilante serial killer in Showtime's biggest hit (2006-2013).
2. **Homeland** — score 871/1000
   Claire Danes's bipolar CIA officer anchors the Emmy-winning espionage thriller that ran eight seasons (2011-2020).
3. **Kidding** — score 640/1000
   Jim Carrey plays a children's TV host coming apart in Michel Gondry's melancholy comedy (2018-2020).
4. **Sleeper Cell** — score 640/1000
   An undercover FBI agent infiltrates a Los Angeles terrorist cell in the Emmy-nominated miniseries (2005-2006).
5. **United States of Tara** — score 640/1000
   Toni Collette won an Emmy as a mother with dissociative identity disorder in the Diablo Cody-created comedy (2009-2011).
6. **The Good Lord Bird** — score 567/1000
   Ethan Hawke's ferocious turn as abolitionist John Brown anchors the acclaimed 2020 limited series.
7. **The Curse** — score 567/1000
   Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone's unnerving A24 satire about an HGTV-style couple (2023-2024).
8. **Couples Therapy** — score 524/1000
   The acclaimed docuseries follows real couples through sessions with psychoanalyst Orna Guralnik (2019-).
9. **Huff** — score 475/1000
   Hank Azaria's psychiatrist unravels after a patient's suicide in the Emmy-winning drama (2004-2006).
10. **SMILF** — score 475/1000
   Frankie Shaw's semi-autobiographical comedy about a young single mother in South Boston (2017-2019).
11. **The Big C** — score 419/1000
   Laura Linney's suburban teacher upends her life after a cancer diagnosis in the Emmy-winning comedy-drama (2010-2013).
12. **The Chi** — score 419/1000
   Lena Waithe's ensemble drama about life on Chicago's South Side has run since 2018.
13. **Dead Like Me** — score 419/1000
   Bryan Fuller's cult comedy about a dead teenager recruited as a grim reaper (2003-2004).
14. **Yellowjackets** — score 419/1000
   A girls' soccer team's plane crash spirals into survival horror across two timelines in Showtime's biggest 2020s breakout (2021-).
15. **Super Pumped** — score 419/1000
   Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Uber founder Travis Kalanick in the 2022 anthology drama about tech disruption.
16. **Fellow Travelers** — score 419/1000
   Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey's decades-spanning romance set against the Lavender Scare earned wide acclaim (2023).
17. **Episodes** — score 355/1000
   Matt LeBlanc plays a version of himself in the transatlantic comedy about British writers adapting their sitcom for US TV (2011-2017).
18. **Penny Dreadful** — score 355/1000
   Eva Green headlines a gothic horror mash-up of Victorian literary monsters that became a cult favourite (2014-2016).
19. **Twin Peaks: The Return** — score 354/1000
   David Lynch's 18-hour 2017 revival of Twin Peaks, hailed by many critics as the decade's best television.
20. **Soul Food** — score 354/1000
   The Chicago family drama became the longest-running Black drama in US TV history at the time (2000-2004).
21. **The Borgias** — score 354/1000
   Jeremy Irons rules as Pope Alexander VI in Neil Jordan's Renaissance crime-family saga (2011-2013).
22. **Stargate SG-1** — score 354/1000
   The sci-fi franchise's flagship series launched on Showtime and ran its first five seasons there before moving to Sci Fi (1997-2007).
23. **Shameless** — score 279/1000
   The Chicago-set Gallagher family dramedy led by William H. Macy became Showtime's longest-running scripted series (2011-2021).
24. **House of Lies** — score 279/1000
   Don Cheadle's ruthless management consultant fronts the fast-talking corporate satire (2012-2016).
25. **The Affair** — score 279/1000
   A Montauk affair is retold from shifting perspectives in the Golden Globe-winning relationship drama (2014-2019).
26. **Californication** — score 279/1000
   David Duchovny's self-destructive novelist Hank Moody stumbles through Los Angeles in the raunchy comedy-drama (2007-2014).
27. **City on a Hill** — score 279/1000
   Kevin Bacon's corrupt FBI agent prowls 1990s Boston in the Ben Affleck-produced crime drama (2019-2022).
28. **Weeds** — score 279/1000
   Mary-Louise Parker's suburban widow turns pot dealer in the dark comedy that defined Showtime's mid-2000s rise (2005-2012).
29. **Your Honor** — score 279/1000
   Bryan Cranston's New Orleans judge covers up his son's hit-and-run in the tense legal thriller (2020-2023).
30. **Queer as Folk** — score 279/1000
   The American remake following gay friends in Pittsburgh was the first hour-long US drama centred on gay characters (2000-2005).
31. **Ray Donovan** — score 279/1000
   Liev Schreiber's Hollywood fixer cleans up celebrity messes while his own family unravels (2013-2020).
32. **I'm Dying Up Here** — score 279/1000
   Jim Carrey-produced drama about 1970s Los Angeles stand-up comedians (2017-2018).
33. **Nurse Jackie** — score 279/1000
   Edie Falco plays a brilliant, pill-addicted ER nurse in the Emmy-winning dark comedy (2009-2015).
34. **Masters of Sex** — score 190/1000
   Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan dramatise the pioneering 1950s sex researchers Masters and Johnson (2013-2016).
35. **Black Monday** — score 190/1000
   Don Cheadle leads a coke-fuelled comedy about Wall Street traders in the run-up to the 1987 crash (2019-2021).
36. **Dexter: New Blood** — score 190/1000
   The 2021 revival relocates Dexter Morgan to upstate New York and became Showtime's most-watched series ever.
37. **The Tudors** — score 190/1000
   Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays a young Henry VIII in the lavish, sexed-up period drama (2007-2010).
38. **The L Word** — score 190/1000
   The groundbreaking drama about a group of lesbian friends in Los Angeles ran six seasons and spawned a revival (2004-2009).
39. **Brotherhood** — score 190/1000
   Two Providence brothers, a politician and a gangster, collide in the acclaimed Irish-American crime drama (2006-2008).
40. **Patrick Melrose** — score 190/1000
   Benedict Cumberbatch plays a damaged aristocrat in the five-part adaptation of Edward St Aubyn's novels (2018).
41. **Escape at Dannemora** — score 0/1000
   Ben Stiller's Emmy-winning limited series recreates the 2015 prison break with Benicio del Toro and Patricia Arquette (2018).
42. **Billions** — score 0/1000
   Hedge-fund titan Bobby Axelrod and US Attorney Chuck Rhoades wage a seven-season war of wealth and power (2016-2023).

Tags: streaming, tv shows, all time, showtime