The 84 Best TV Shows of the 21st Century

Prestige dramas, one-season wonders and shows whose finales people are still arguing about.

1. 1
   Breaking Bad

   A chemistry teacher's five-season transformation into a drug kingpin, the default answer to this question.
   1000pts
2. 2
   I May Destroy You

   Michaela Coel wrote, co-directed and starred in this 2020 drama about a London writer rebuilding her life after she is drugged and sexually assaulted.
   778pts
3. 3
   Atlanta

   Donald Glover's surreal, genre-hopping portrait of ambition and race in the rap world.
   778pts
4. 4
   The Office

   The American mockumentary that reshaped sitcom comedy and never left streaming charts.
   746pts
5. 5
   The Wire

   David Simon's Baltimore epic, a season-by-season autopsy of an American city.
   712pts
6. 6
   Dark

   Netflix's first German original series is a time-travel mystery tangling several generations of four families in the small town of Winden.
   689pts
7. 7
   The White Lotus

   Mike White's anthology satire checks wealthy guests into a different luxury resort each season, in Hawaii, Sicily and Thailand, with a death in every story.
   653pts
8. 8
   The Good Wife

   Julianna Margulies plays Alicia Florrick, a politician's wife who returns to legal work after his public scandal, in this CBS legal drama.
   653pts
9. 9
   Game of Thrones

   Fantasy at unprecedented scale, and the biggest shared TV event of the 2010s.
   614pts
10. 10
    Sherlock

    Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman moved Arthur Conan Doyle's detective and Dr Watson to modern London in Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss's series.
    614pts
11. 11
    The Pitt

    Noah Wyle leads a Pittsburgh emergency department through one fifteen-hour shift, an hour per episode, in the medical drama that won the 2025 Emmy for best drama.
    614pts
12. 12
    Gilmore Girls

    Amy Sherman-Palladino's fast-talking dramedy follows single mother Lorelai and daughter Rory in the Connecticut town of Stars Hollow.
    614pts
13. 13
    Peaky Blinders

    Cillian Murphy leads the Shelby crime family in Steven Knight's stylised drama set in Birmingham after the First World War.
    614pts
14. 14
    It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

    Five selfish friends run an Irish bar in Philadelphia in this FX comedy, the longest-running live-action sitcom in American television history.
    614pts
15. 15
    Arcane

    Fortiche's animated League of Legends series follows sisters Vi and Jinx in the divided cities of Piltover and Zaun, and won the Emmy for best animated program.
    614pts
16. 16
    Barry

    Bill Hader co-created and stars as a hitman from the Midwest who discovers acting classes in Los Angeles in this dark comedy.
    570pts
17. 17
    Deadwood

    David Milch's profane western about a lawless 1870s South Dakota mining camp gave Ian McShane the role of saloon boss Al Swearengen.
    570pts
18. 18
    The Shield

    Michael Chiklis plays corrupt Los Angeles detective Vic Mackey in Shawn Ryan's FX drama, which ran for seven seasons from 2002 to 2008.
    570pts
19. 19
    Stranger Things

    Netflix's 80s-soaked monster saga and its biggest global word-of-mouth hit.
    570pts
20. 20
    Happy Valley

    Sarah Lancashire plays police sergeant Catherine Cawood in Sally Wainwright's Yorkshire crime drama, told across three series between 2014 and 2023.
    570pts
21. 21
    The Americans

    Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys play Soviet spies posing as a suburban American couple in Reagan-era Washington in this FX Cold War drama.
    570pts
22. 22
    Friday Night Lights

    Coach Eric Taylor and his family anchor the small Texas town of Dillon in this football drama, kept alive for its last three seasons by a deal with DirecTV.
    570pts
23. 23
    Reservation Dogs

    Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi's comedy follows four Indigenous teenagers in rural Oklahoma, with Indigenous writers, directors and series regulars.
    570pts
24. 24
    The Bear

    Jeremy Allen White plays a fine-dining chef who returns to Chicago to run his late brother's sandwich shop in this FX series.
    521pts
25. 25
    Better Call Saul

    The prequel that turned a joke lawyer into one of TV's most complete character studies.
    521pts
26. 26
    The Office (UK)

    Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's two-season mockumentary about a Slough paper merchant introduced boss David Brent and inspired remakes around the world.
    521pts
27. 27
    BoJack Horseman

    Raphael Bob-Waksberg's animated series follows a washed-up sitcom horse in Hollywood, mixing animal puns with a serious study of depression.
    521pts
28. 28
    Homeland

    Claire Danes plays CIA officer Carrie Mathison, who suspects a rescued American prisoner of war has been turned by al-Qaeda, in this Showtime thriller.
    521pts
29. 29
    Veep

    Julia Louis-Dreyfus won six straight Emmys as Selina Meyer, the vain and foul-mouthed vice president at the centre of Armando Iannucci's HBO satire.
    521pts
30. 30
    Survivor

    CBS's reality competition strands contestants in remote locations to outwit, outplay and outlast one another, and has run since 2000 with host Jeff Probst.
    521pts
31. 31
    Shōgun

    FX's 2024 adaptation of James Clavell's novel, set in 1600 Japan and largely in Japanese, won a record 18 Emmys for a single season.
    521pts
32. 32
    The Crown

    Peter Morgan's drama follows Queen Elizabeth II's reign across six seasons, recasting the royal family with new actors as the decades pass.
    521pts
33. 33
    Schitt's Creek

    A rich family loses everything except a small town bought as a joke in Dan and Eugene Levy's comedy, which swept all seven major comedy Emmys in 2020.
    466pts
34. 34
    Black Mirror

    Charlie Brooker's anthology spins standalone stories about technology gone wrong, moving from Channel 4 to Netflix and winning Emmys for San Junipero.
    466pts
35. 35
    Adolescence

    Each episode of this 2025 Netflix drama about a 13-year-old boy arrested for murder was filmed in a single continuous take.
    466pts
36. 36
    Watchmen

    Damon Lindelof's 2019 sequel to the graphic novel opens with the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, stars Regina King and won eleven Emmys.
    466pts
37. 37
    Severance

    Office workers have their work memories surgically split from their private lives in Dan Erickson's Apple TV+ thriller, directed largely by Ben Stiller.
    466pts
38. 38
    Downton Abbey

    Julian Fellowes's period drama follows the aristocratic Crawleys and their servants from the sinking of the Titanic into the 1920s.
    466pts
39. 39
    Planet Earth

    David Attenborough narrated this 2006 BBC natural history series, the corporation's first nature documentary filmed entirely in high definition.
    466pts
40. 40
    Ozark

    Jason Bateman plays a financial planner who moves his family to the Missouri Ozarks to launder money for a Mexican cartel.
    466pts
41. 41
    The Queen's Gambit

    Anya Taylor-Joy plays chess prodigy Beth Harmon in this 2020 limited series, which set off a worldwide surge in chess set sales.
    466pts
42. 42
    Fleabag

    Two seasons of fourth-wall-breaking grief and comedy from Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
    404pts
43. 43
    The Handmaid's Tale

    Elisabeth Moss plays June in Hulu's adaptation of Margaret Atwood's novel, the first streaming series to win the Emmy for Outstanding Drama.
    404pts
44. 44
    Succession

    A media dynasty's children circling their father, written as comedy and played as tragedy.
    404pts
45. 45
    Mad Men

    Don Draper's advertising decade, told as a slow study of reinvention and self-deceit.
    404pts
46. 46
    Band of Brothers

    The Spielberg and Hanks miniseries following Easy Company from training to Germany.
    404pts
47. 47
    Ted Lasso

    Jason Sudeikis plays an American college football coach hired to manage an English Premier League club, a role that won consecutive best comedy Emmys.
    404pts
48. 48
    Twin Peaks: The Return

    David Lynch and Mark Frost returned in 2017 with an 18-part continuation of their 1990 mystery, including the experimental atomic-bomb episode Part 8.
    404pts
49. 49
    The Thick of It

    Armando Iannucci's satire of British government made Peter Capaldi's furious spin doctor Malcolm Tucker a byword for creative swearing.
    404pts
50. 50
    Community

    Dan Harmon's comedy about a study group at Greendale Community College became famous for genre-parody episodes like its campus paintball wars.
    404pts
51. 51
    Six Feet Under

    Alan Ball's drama about the Fisher family's Los Angeles funeral home opened nearly every episode with a death and closed with a famous final montage.
    404pts
52. 52
    Chernobyl

    A five-part reconstruction of the 1986 disaster and the lies around it.
    404pts
53. 53
    Parks and Recreation

    Amy Poehler leads the parks department of Pawnee, Indiana, as the endlessly optimistic Leslie Knope in this NBC mockumentary.
    404pts
54. 54
    The Leftovers

    Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta's drama follows a family and a town after two percent of the world's population vanishes without explanation.
    404pts
55. 55
    Peep Show

    David Mitchell and Robert Webb play mismatched Croydon flatmates in this comedy shot from the characters' point of view, with their thoughts heard aloud.
    333pts
56. 56
    Battlestar Galactica

    Ronald D. Moore's 2004 reboot follows the last humans fleeing the Cylons across space, using science fiction to examine war, faith and occupation.
    333pts
57. 57
    Louie

    Louis C.K. wrote, directed, edited and starred in this FX comedy about a divorced stand-up comedian raising two daughters in New York.
    333pts
58. 58
    Curb Your Enthusiasm

    Larry David plays a version of himself breaking unwritten social rules in this largely improvised HBO comedy, which ran from 2000 to 2024.
    333pts
59. 59
    Chappelle's Show

    Dave Chappelle's sketch show ran for two celebrated seasons on Comedy Central before he walked away from a reported $50 million deal.
    333pts
60. 60
    30 Rock

    Tina Fey's rapid-fire sitcom about the chaos behind a live NBC sketch show, with Alec Baldwin as network executive Jack Donaghy, ran from 2006 to 2013.
    333pts
61. 61
    Mr. Robot

    Rami Malek plays Elliot, a hacker with social anxiety recruited into an anarchist plot against a giant corporation, in Sam Esmail's thriller.
    333pts
62. 62
    Arrested Development

    Mitchell Hurwitz's dense, narrated comedy about the wealthy and dysfunctional Bluth family was cancelled by Fox after three seasons, then revived by Netflix.
    333pts
63. 63
    Halt and Catch Fire

    AMC's drama follows engineers and entrepreneurs through the personal computer boom of the 1980s and the early web of the 1990s.
    333pts
64. 64
    The Good Place

    Michael Schur's philosophical comedy follows Kristen Bell's Eleanor through a deceptively perfect afterlife, with Ted Danson as its architect.
    333pts
65. 65
    Dexter

    Michael C. Hall plays Miami police blood-spatter analyst Dexter Morgan, who secretly kills other murderers, in this Showtime drama.
    251pts
66. 66
    Normal People

    Lenny Abrahamson's adaptation of Sally Rooney's novel follows Connell and Marianne's on-off relationship at school in Sligo and later at Trinity College Dublin.
    251pts
67. 67
    Squid Game

    Hwang Dong-hyuk's 2021 survival thriller about debtors playing deadly children's games for a cash prize became Netflix's most-watched series.
    251pts
68. 68
    Key & Peele

    Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele's sketch show produced viral hits like the substitute teacher and Luther, President Obama's anger translator.
    251pts
69. 69
    Hacks

    Jean Smart plays a fading Las Vegas comedy legend paired with a young, disgraced writer in this comedy, which won the 2024 Emmy for best comedy series.
    251pts
70. 70
    House of Cards

    Netflix's first major original drama, launched in 2013, cast Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright as a scheming Washington power couple.
    251pts
71. 71
    Insecure

    Issa Rae turned her web series into this HBO comedy about two Black women navigating careers, friendship and dating in Los Angeles.
    251pts
72. 72
    Girls

    Lena Dunham created, wrote and starred in this HBO comedy-drama about four young women stumbling through their twenties in New York.
    251pts
73. 73
    Justified

    Timothy Olyphant plays US Marshal Raylan Givens, sent back to his native Kentucky, in this FX drama based on an Elmore Leonard story.
    251pts
74. 74
    Avatar: The Last Airbender

    Nickelodeon's animated epic follows Aang, the last Airbender, as he masters all four elements to end the Fire Nation's hundred-year war.
    251pts
75. 75
    RuPaul's Drag Race

    RuPaul's drag competition grew from a small Logo series into a global franchise and won multiple Emmys for outstanding reality competition.
    251pts
76. 76
    Lost

    The island mystery that invented modern week-to-week internet theorizing.
    155pts
77. 77
    True Detective

    Nic Pizzolatto's anthology began in 2014 with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as Louisiana detectives tracking a ritual killer across seventeen years.
    155pts
78. 78
    Andor

    Tony Gilroy's Star Wars drama follows thief Cassian Andor's path to rebellion over two seasons, ending where the film Rogue One begins.
    155pts
79. 79
    Slow Horses

    Gary Oldman plays Jackson Lamb, the slovenly boss of a unit of disgraced MI5 agents, in the adaptation of Mick Herron's novels.
    155pts
80. 80
    Mare of Easttown

    Kate Winslet plays a Pennsylvania detective investigating a local murder while coping with family grief in this 2021 limited series.
    155pts
81. 81
    Fargo

    Noah Hawley's anthology, inspired by the Coen brothers' film, tells a new Midwestern crime story with a new cast each season.
    0pts
82. 82
    Modern Family

    ABC's mockumentary sitcom about three related households in Los Angeles won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series five years in a row.
    0pts
83. 83
    The Last of Us

    Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey play Joel and Ellie in HBO's adaptation of the PlayStation game, set twenty years after a fungal pandemic.
    0pts
84. 84
    The Sopranos

    David Chase's HBO mob drama ran from January 1999 to 2007, with five of its six seasons airing from 2000 on. Tony Soprano set the template for the cable antihero.

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