CONTAINS SPOILERS
Every few years, a television series comes along that makes you cancel your plans for the weekend. You sit down after dinner, start the first episode, and look up 4 hours later wondering where the time went. The next night you do it again. And the night after that. By the end of the week you are recommending it to friends with a sincerity that borders on desperation, because you need someone to talk to about what you saw.
We have been chasing that feeling for a long time at Plex. It is the reason we built a platform around finding great things to watch, and it is the reason we made this list. These are the 10 TV shows we believe are the best ever produced, ranked and argued with data from critical aggregation scores, audience ratings, award counts, and cultural impact. Every pick on this list appears on at least 4 major all-time rankings. But we are not aggregating those lists into a consensus. We are making our own case, in our own voice, for the 10 shows we think earned the title.
#10 — Atlanta (2016–2022)
What Atlanta Is (And What It Refuses to Be)
Earn Marks is broke, adrift, and trying to manage his cousin Alfred’s rising rap career in Atlanta. That is the show’s premise, and it stops being useful after about 3 episodes. Atlanta ran 4 seasons, 41 episodes. Created by and starring Donald Glover. It has a 96% score on the major critical aggregation platform and an 8.6 audience rating. Glover became the first Black director to win the Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series. The show won 5 Emmys total and appeared on year-end best-of lists every season it aired.
But describing Atlanta by its premise or its awards is like describing a song by its time signature. The show is a comedy that forgets to be funny for entire episodes. A drama that breaks into surreal fantasy without warning. A horror anthology wearing a half-hour cable format. It treats genre as a suggestion rather than a contract, and it never explains the rules it is breaking while it breaks them.
Why Plex Chose Atlanta for This List
We chose Atlanta because it proved that a television show does not need to explain itself to be great. Most prestige TV tells you what it is in the pilot. Atlanta tells you what it is over 4 years, and the answer keeps changing. The “Teddy Perkins” episode alone, a 40-minute horror film dropped into the middle of a comedy season, is a standalone argument for inclusion on any list.
The obvious objection: 4 seasons and 41 episodes is short for an “all time” ranking. We considered that. And we decided that quality per episode matters more than volume. Atlanta has a higher concentration of extraordinary individual episodes than most shows with twice the runtime. Every season takes a different formal risk. Season 3 leaves Atlanta entirely for a collection of European short stories that share almost nothing with the previous 2 seasons. Season 4 returns to its home city but with a different sensibility than seasons 1 and 2. No other show on this list, or on television, has reinvented itself this aggressively from year to year while maintaining a coherent artistic identity.
#9 — The Simpsons (1989–Present)
35+ Seasons and the Argument for Inclusion
We need to address the obvious problem: The Simpsons has been on the air for over 35 years, and a large number of those seasons are mediocre at best. We are not putting The Simpsons on this list for seasons 20 through 35. We are putting it here because seasons 3 through 8 represent the greatest sustained run of comedy writing in the history of television. That is not a casual claim. We mean it literally.
The show holds the record for most episodes of any American animated program. It has won 35 Emmys. The overall audience rating has been diluted by decades of uneven later seasons, but individual golden-era episodes score above 9.0 regularly. The Simpsons added words to the English dictionary (“D’oh” was entered into the Oxford English Dictionary in 2001, “cromulent” and “embiggen” have entered common usage). Every animated comedy that followed, from South Park to Bob’s Burgers, was built in a space The Simpsons carved out first.
Why Plex Picked The Simpsons Over Other Animated Shows
We debated this slot. Other animated shows have stronger overall consistency across their full runs. But no animated series has matched The Simpsons‘ influence on the medium, on comedy writing as a craft, and on the way Americans talk about their own culture. The golden-era episodes remain the standard against which all TV comedy is measured. We chose cultural gravity over consistency, and we would make the same call again. If you have never watched seasons 3 through 8, you are missing a foundational piece of what comedy can do on television.
#8 — Cheers (1982–1993)
11 Seasons, 275 Episodes, and a Final Episode Watched by 93 Million People
Cheers ran 11 seasons and 275 episodes on NBC. It won 28 Emmys, a record at the time it ended. Its finale drew an estimated 93 million viewers, making it the second most-watched series finale in American television history behind MAS*H. Those numbers tell you it was popular. They do not tell you why it belongs on this list.
Cheers created the modern ensemble sitcom. Before this show, sitcoms were built around a single star or a nuclear family. Cheers constructed a world where 6 to 8 characters were all equally capable of carrying an episode on their own. Every sitcom set in a workplace or a friend group since 1982 descends from this structure. The show also proved that a comedy could handle alcoholism, class tension, intellectual insecurity, and romantic longing while still being the funniest thing on television in any given week. Sam and Diane’s relationship treated romantic comedy with the same seriousness that prestige dramas would later bring to antiheroes, and it did it a full 17 years before Tony Soprano walked into a therapist’s office.
Why Plex Thinks Cheers Still Holds Up
We rewatched Cheers before making this list. Not out of obligation, but because we wanted to test if the comedy still lands when the laugh track and the nostalgia are stripped away. It does. The writing is sharper than most comedies being produced right now. The character work across 11 seasons is a long-form achievement that very few dramas have matched, let alone sitcoms. Sam Malone’s arc from charming bartender to a man who realizes the bar is all he has, and that this might be enough, is one of the most honest character portraits in the history of the format.
The show also did something with its ensemble that nobody talks about enough: it replaced half its cast and got better. When Shelley Long left after season 5 and Kirstie Alley joined, the show did not stumble. It recalibrated. When Woody Harrelson replaced Nicholas Colasanto, the show absorbed the change and kept moving. That ability to renew itself without losing its identity across 11 years is a feat that most long-running series never manage.
We think Cheers gets underrated because it looks old. The lighting is flat. The sets are clearly sets. The laugh track dates it. If you let those surface-level details keep you from watching, you are making a mistake. The writing underneath has not aged a day.
#7 — Game of Thrones (2011–2019)
73 Episodes, 59 Emmys, and the Show That Made Television a Global Event
Game of Thrones won 59 Primetime Emmy Awards, more than any other scripted series in Emmy history. It ran 8 seasons, 73 episodes on HBO. Its final season premiere drew 17.4 million live viewers. At its peak, it was the most-watched series on premium cable worldwide. It turned a dense, unfinished fantasy book series into the single biggest cultural event on television since the network-era finales of the 1990s.
Its audience rating on the largest review database remains a 9.2 despite years of vocal backlash over its final season. Its critical scores for seasons 1 through 6 sit in the mid-to-high 90s on the major aggregation platform. Those are the numbers. They tell a different story than the internet discourse would suggest.
Why Plex Refuses to Let Season 8 Erase Seasons 1 Through 6
We know what you are thinking. Season 8.
We thought about it too. We debated it at length. And we decided that 6 seasons of the best dramatic television produced in the 2010s cannot be erased by 6 episodes of rushed conclusions. “The Rains of Castamere,” “Hardhome,” “Battle of the Bastards,” “The Winds of Winter” are among the greatest hours of television ever filmed. Each of those episodes represents a level of ambition, production, and storytelling craft that most series never approach once in their entire runs.
Game of Thrones proved that fantasy could be taken seriously as prestige drama. It proved that television could compete with film on scale and spectacle while exceeding film on narrative complexity. It proved that a show could be a genuine global monoculture event in an era when audiences were fracturing across hundreds of platforms. For 6 seasons, tens of millions of people around the world watched the same episodes in the same week and talked about them the next morning. No streaming-era show has replicated that level of collective viewership since.
The idea that a weak ending retroactively cancels 60+ hours of extraordinary television is a position we have heard many times. We disagree with it. A bad final chapter does not unwrite the book. We stand by this pick.
#6 — The Twilight Zone (1959–1964)
156 Episodes That Invented Modern Genre Television
Rod Serling created The Twilight Zone in 1959. It ran 5 seasons, 156 episodes. Its critical aggregation score is 92%. It has been rebooted 3 times, and none of the reboots have matched the original. These statistics undersell it badly.
The Twilight Zone built the anthology format as a vehicle for social commentary on American network television. Before this show, science fiction on TV was aimed at children. Serling used the genre to address racism, McCarthyism, nuclear anxiety, and conformity on CBS in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a period when none of those subjects could be discussed directly on air. The genre gave him cover. If you frame a story about racial prejudice as a tale about aliens, the network censors let it through. Every anthology series on television today, from Black Mirror to American Horror Story, is a direct descendant. Every twist ending in the medium traces back here.
Serling wrote or co-wrote 92 of the 156 episodes. That level of singular creative authorship across 5 seasons has never been replicated in television. The closest comparison might be David Chase’s involvement with The Sopranos, and even Chase did not write the majority of his show’s scripts.
Why Plex Believes The Twilight Zone Belongs on Every All-Time List
We included The Twilight Zone because an “all time” list that only features shows from the last 25 years is not an “all time” list. It is a recency bias list with a dishonest title. The Twilight Zone is the oldest show on our ranking and arguably the most influential. We think any serious television viewer owes it to themselves to watch at least the 20 most celebrated episodes. The writing has not aged. The ideas have not aged. The twist endings still land because they are built on character and moral logic rather than cheap surprise.
If you skip this show because it is in black and white or because it aired before you were born, you are cutting yourself off from the foundation that modern television was built on.
#5 — Mad Men (2007–2015)
7 Seasons, 16 Emmys, and the Show That Made Silence Interesting
Mad Men ran 7 seasons on AMC. It won 16 Emmys, including 4 consecutive Outstanding Drama Series awards, tying the record at the time. Its audience rating is 8.7. Its critical aggregation score is 94%. Those are strong numbers, but Mad Men‘s legacy is not in its awards. It is in what it proved about pacing.
Most prestige dramas since The Sopranos were built on escalating tension and shocking plot turns. Mad Men moved laterally. Episodes where nothing “happened” were the best episodes. Don Draper staring out a window carried more dramatic weight than most shows’ action sequences because the show had spent hundreds of hours teaching you what that silence contained. On the surface, Mad Men is about advertising in the 1960s. Underneath, it is about American identity, self-invention, and the distance between who you present yourself as and who you actually are. Every character on the show is performing a version of themselves, and the drama comes from watching those performances crack.
Why Plex Considers Mad Men the Most Rewatchable Drama Ever Made
We have a specific reason for ranking Mad Men this high, and it connects to what we do at Plex. Rewatchability. Most great dramas lose their power on second viewing because the plot surprises are spent. You know who dies, who betrays whom, how it ends. Mad Men gains power on rewatch because the show was never about plot. It was about behavior, about detail, about the way a character holds a glass or pauses 2 seconds too long before answering a question. Every rewatch reveals something you missed, because the show buried its meaning in subtext rather than dialogue.
For a platform built around helping people find what to watch, rewatchability is not a minor consideration. A show you can return to 3 or 4 times and find new things is a show that keeps earning its place in your library. Mad Men is the single most rewatchable drama we have ever encountered, and that quality alone separates it from shows that might be more immediately impressive on first viewing.
#4 — Seinfeld (1989–1998)
9 Seasons, 180 Episodes, and the Comedy That Redefined American Humor
Seinfeld ran 9 seasons, 180 episodes on NBC. Its finale drew 76 million viewers. It has a 89% critical aggregation score and an 8.9 audience rating. It generated over $3 billion in syndication revenue, making it one of the most commercially successful television properties ever produced.
Those numbers still undersell the impact. Before Seinfeld, sitcom characters were supposed to be likable. Sitcom episodes were supposed to end with a lesson. Sitcom humor was supposed to be warm. Seinfeld rejected all 3 of those premises and replaced them with something television had never seen: a comedy about 4 selfish, petty, observational people who never learn from their mistakes and never grow as human beings. The show’s famous “no hugging, no learning” rule was a genuine structural revolution in what comedy television was allowed to be.
The formal innovation matters too. Seinfeld pioneered the multi-plot episode where 3 to 4 seemingly unrelated storylines converge in the final act through coincidence, irony, or both. That structure feels standard now. When Seinfeld introduced it in the early 1990s, nothing on television was doing anything like it.
Why Plex Ranks Seinfeld Above Every Other Comedy Except One
We ranked Seinfeld #4 overall, and it is our second-highest comedy. The reason is influence. Every comedy made after 1998 exists in a world that Seinfeld built. Curb Your Enthusiasm, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Arrested Development, Veep: none of these shows exist without the permission Seinfeld gave television to build comedies around terrible people doing terrible things and expecting the audience to laugh instead of moralize.
We think Seinfeld‘s cultural vocabulary alone earns it a spot in the top 5. “These pretzels are making me thirsty.” “Yada yada yada.” “Master of my domain.” “The close talker.” “Festivus.” These are not references. They are part of the American English language now, and they entered through a sitcom about nothing that turned out to be about everything.
#3 — The Wire (2002–2008)
5 Seasons, 60 Episodes, and Television’s Most Ambitious Sociological Project
The Wire ran 5 seasons, 60 episodes on HBO. Its audience rating is 9.3. Its critical aggregation score is 94%. Multiple publications have called it the greatest television series ever made. Harvard, Yale, and Johns Hopkins have taught courses built around it.
And it did not win a single Primetime Emmy in its entire run. Not one. That fact tells you something important about The Wire‘s relationship with the television establishment during its original airing: it was too structurally unusual, too slow, and too committed to its own storytelling rules to win over Emmy voters who wanted conventional drama.
Each season examines a different failing American institution through the lens of Baltimore. Season 1: the drug trade and the police department. Season 2: the collapse of working-class labor at the port. Season 3: the limits of political reform. Season 4: the public education system. Season 5: the media and its incentive structures. No other show has attempted this scope. The Wire is not a cop show, though it contains cops. It is not a crime drama, though it contains crime. It is a sociological argument about how American institutions fail the people they are supposed to serve, and it makes that argument through 60 hours of granular, accumulating narrative detail.
Why Plex Thinks The Wire Is the Most Important Show We Have Ever Recommended
We need to be honest with you. The Wire is not the easiest show to start watching. The first 3 to 4 episodes are slow by conventional television standards. The show does not hold your hand with exposition. Characters speak in Baltimore slang that is not subtitled or explained. Plot threads introduced in episode 2 do not pay off until episode 10 or later. We are telling you this because we do not want you to quit after 2 episodes and decide it was overrated.
We recommend it anyway, at #3 on this list, because nothing else on television has attempted what The Wire accomplished. It is the only show on this list where the word “important” feels as relevant as the word “great.” Those 2 qualities do not always overlap. A show can be important and boring. A show can be great and trivial. The Wire is both important and great, and the combination is the reason it ranks above shows that might provide a more immediately satisfying viewing session.
Season 4, which follows a group of middle school students in West Baltimore, is the single best season of television we have seen. It builds its case for how a school system fails children with such patience and specificity that by the final episodes you feel like you know these kids personally. That season is the reason we rank The Wire at #3 instead of #5 or #6. It is the proof that the show’s ambitions were not hollow. Creator David Simon was not interested in making prestige television that flatters its audience. He made television that asks its audience to pay attention, to follow dozens of characters across years of story, and to draw their own conclusions about what went wrong and who is responsible.
We are a platform that helps people find what to watch. Sometimes what you should watch is not the most instantly entertaining option. Sometimes it is the one that changes how you think about the city you live in, the institutions you rely on, and the systems that govern your daily life without your awareness.
#2 — Breaking Bad (2008–2013)
5 Seasons, 62 Episodes, and the Highest-Rated Drama in IMDb History
Breaking Bad ran 5 seasons, 62 episodes on AMC. Its audience rating is 9.5 on the largest user-review database, making it the highest-rated drama series in that platform’s history. Its critical aggregation score is 96%. It won 16 Primetime Emmys, including 2 Outstanding Drama Series awards. Bryan Cranston won Outstanding Lead Actor 4 times for the role of Walter White. The finale, “Felina,” drew 10.3 million viewers, a record for AMC at the time.
The statistic that matters most, though, is this one: Breaking Bad‘s audience grew every single season. That almost never happens. Most prestige dramas peak in viewership early and decline as the story darkens or the novelty wears off. Breaking Bad did the opposite. The darker it got, the more people watched. By the time it ended, it was more popular than it had ever been.
The premise is clean enough to fit in a sentence: a high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with terminal cancer starts manufacturing methamphetamine to provide for his family after he dies. Creator Vince Gilligan described his goal as turning “Mr. Chips into Scarface,” and the show delivered on that promise with a precision no other character study has matched. Walter White’s transformation from sympathetic everyman to genuine monster unfolds over 62 episodes without a single moment where the writing shortcuts the logic of who he is becoming and why.
Why Plex Ranks Breaking Bad #2 (And What Kept It from #1)
Breaking Bad is, by most measurable standards, the most perfectly executed television drama ever produced. Every season is better than the previous one. The acting, writing, cinematography, and sound design operate at a level that never dips across 62 episodes. It is the easiest “great show” recommendation we can make to anyone: no caveats about slow starts, no asterisks about weak seasons, no warnings that you need to power through the beginning. It is great from episode 1, and it stays great through the final frame.
That consistency is rare enough to be worth dwelling on. Most shows on this list require some kind of disclaimer. The Simpsons has weak later seasons. Game of Thrones has a contested finale. The Wire has a slow on-ramp. Breaking Bad requires no disclaimer at all. You press play and the quality is there, every episode, for 5 years. The Ozymandias episode held a perfect 10/10 audience rating for over a decade, the only episode of any television series ever to achieve that. (It has since been targeted by review manipulation campaigns, but the achievement speaks for itself.)
That consistency is rare enough to be worth dwelling on. Most shows on this list require some kind of disclaimer. The Simpsons has weak later seasons. Game of Thrones has a contested finale. The Wire has a slow on-ramp. Breaking Bad requires no disclaimer at all. You press play and the quality is there, every episode, for 5 years. The Ozymandias episode held a perfect 10/10 audience rating for over a decade, the only episode of any television series ever to achieve that. (It has since been targeted by review manipulation campaigns, but the achievement speaks for itself.)
So why is it #2 and not #1?
Because perfection and importance are different qualities. Breaking Bad perfected a form that already existed. It took the antihero drama and executed it at the highest possible level. The show ranked #1 on our list invented that form. We think Breaking Bad is the best-executed drama in the history of the medium. We think another show mattered more. The distinction between those 2 things is what separates #2 from #1.
#1 — The Sopranos (1999–2007)
6 Seasons, 86 Episodes, and the Show That Invented Modern Television
The Sopranos ran 6 seasons, 86 episodes on HBO. Its audience rating is 9.2. Its critical aggregation score is 92%. It won 21 Primetime Emmy Awards, including 2 Outstanding Drama Series awards. James Gandolfini won Outstanding Lead Actor 3 times for the role of Tony Soprano.
Those numbers are respectable but not record-breaking. The Sopranos‘ statistical legacy is the least interesting thing about it. What matters is this: The Sopranos is the single most important television series ever created.
Before this show premiered in 1999, television was not considered a serious artistic medium by most of the people who make, fund, or write about entertainment. Film was art. Television was commerce, entertainment, something you watched while folding laundry. The Sopranos ended that hierarchy. It proved that a television series could sustain the narrative complexity, moral ambiguity, and visual sophistication of the best films, and then exceed them, because television had 86 hours instead of 2. You cannot do in a 2-hour film what David Chase did across 6 seasons with Tony Soprano’s psychology, his marriage, his family, his criminal organization, and the American culture that produced and enabled all of it.
Every prestige drama that followed exists because of this show. The Wire does not get greenlit on HBO without The Sopranos proving that complex, slow-burn drama can find and hold a paying audience. Breaking Bad does not get 5 seasons on AMC without The Sopranos proving that an antihero can carry a series. Mad Men does not get made without The Sopranos proving that a show about a morally compromised man operating within a specific American milieu can be the best thing on television. Game of Thrones does not get a $100 million-per-season budget without The Sopranos proving that HBO’s bet on prestige original programming was correct.
Every prestige drama that followed exists because of this show. The Wire does not get greenlit on HBO without The Sopranos proving that complex, slow-burn drama can find and hold a paying audience. Breaking Bad does not get 5 seasons on AMC without The Sopranos proving that an antihero can carry a series. Mad Men does not get made without The Sopranos proving that a show about a morally compromised man operating within a specific American milieu can be the best thing on television. Game of Thrones does not get a $100 million-per-season budget without The Sopranos proving that HBO’s bet on prestige original programming was correct.
Why Plex Gave The Sopranos the #1 Slot Without Hesitation
This was the easiest decision we made. We debated every other position on this list. Some of those debates took weeks. The Sopranos at #1 took about 5 minutes.
We ranked it here because without The Sopranos, this list does not exist. Not in a vague, abstract sense. In a concrete, traceable sense. The entire ecosystem of prestige television that produced the other 9 shows on this list, or at minimum the post-2000 entries, flows directly from what David Chase built between 1999 and 2007. That kind of foundational influence is something we have to account for, and no other show on this list has it.
On its own merits, separate from influence: Tony Soprano is the most fully realized character in television history. Gandolfini’s performance is so complete that it is difficult to discuss the character and the actor as separate entities. The show’s examination of American violence, masculinity, therapy, family obligation, and self-deception has grown more relevant with every passing year. It was ahead of its time in 1999, and it still feels contemporary today.
There is a specific quality to The Sopranos that we think gets overlooked in conversations about its legacy: it is funny. Genuinely, consistently, darkly funny in ways that make you uncomfortable for laughing. The comedy is load-bearing. It is not relief from the drama. It is part of the drama. Tony Soprano telling his therapist about his panic attacks while simultaneously running a criminal organization is funny and terrifying at the same time, and the show never asks you to choose between those reactions. That tonal complexity is something most shows still cannot pull off, more than 25 years after The Sopranos first demonstrated how to do it.
The final scene, the cut to black at Holsten’s diner, is the most debated moment in the history of the medium. We think it is perfect. The entire series trained the audience to expect resolution, catharsis, a climactic moment that would tell you what Tony Soprano’s story meant. Instead, Chase gave you silence and forced you to sit with everything the show had been doing for 86 episodes. That ending trusts the audience more than any ending in television before or since. We think the whole show earns that trust.
Honorable Mentions: 10 More TV Shows We Almost Included
The Shows That Were in the Room Until the Final Cut
Twin Peaks would have filled the genre-bending slot. David Lynch’s 1990 original and its 2017 return are among the most formally radical things ever aired on American television. It lost the slot to The Twilight Zone because Serling’s show had a larger structural influence on the medium, but Lynch’s fingerprints are on every “weird” show that has aired since.
Arrested Development would have taken the comedy-structure slot. Its first 3 seasons are the most densely constructed comedy in television history, with jokes that pay off episodes or even seasons later. Seinfeld took the comedy slot because its cultural influence was wider, but Arrested Development’s writing is tighter per minute than anything else on television.
The West Wing would have represented political drama. Aaron Sorkin’s first 4 seasons remain the best writing about American government ever produced for television. It lost out because Sorkin’s departure after season 4 created a steep quality decline that weakened the overall case.
Deadwood would have filled the literary-dialogue slot. David Milch’s profane Shakespearean western ran 3 seasons and a TV movie, and its writing is pound-for-pound the most ambitious in television. The short run and the unfinished narrative kept it off the final list.
Fleabag would have represented short-run brilliance. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s 2-season, 12-episode series is as close to a perfect show as television has produced. But 12 episodes is a difficult case to make on an “all time” list, even when every one of those episodes is operating at peak level.
The Office (US) would have taken the mockumentary slot. Its best seasons, roughly 2 through 5, redefined American workplace comedy. The weaker later seasons and the fact that Ricky Gervais’s original UK version did it first with more discipline made the case harder to sustain.
Fargo would have represented the anthology format’s modern peak. Noah Hawley’s adaptation of the Coen Brothers’ sensibility into a seasonal television format produced at least 2 seasons (1 and 2) that belong on any short list of great television. The inconsistency across later seasons cost it the slot.
Succession would have filled the corporate-drama position. Its final 3 seasons are among the best television produced in the 2020s, and its dialogue has a caustic energy that no other show has replicated. It lost out to shows with longer runs and deeper track records.
Band of Brothers would have represented the limited series format. It remains the gold standard for war storytelling on television. But limited series are a different animal from ongoing series, and we weighted sustained runs more heavily.
Star Trek: The Original Series would have represented pure cultural impact. Its influence on science fiction, technology, and American culture is hard to overstate. The actual episode-by-episode quality of the original run, though, is more uneven than fans sometimes acknowledge, and The Twilight Zone covered the “foundational genre TV” position on our list.
Why Every Great Show Cannot Make a Top 10
A top 10 list is an argument, not a census. The point is not to include every great show. The point is to make 10 choices you are willing to defend and then defend them well. We defended ours across 10 sections and several thousand words. If your favorite show is not here, that is not an insult to the show. It is an invitation to argue about television, and arguing about television is one of the best things television gives us.
How We Built This List (And Why Ours Is Different)
What “Best of All Time” Actually Means to Us
No list like this is objective, and anyone who claims otherwise is selling something. This is Plex’s editorial opinion. We are stating that upfront because we think honesty about subjectivity produces better criticism than pretending rankings are science.
When we say “best,” we mean the show changed what television could do, maintained its quality across a meaningful portion of its run, and still rewards a new viewer who starts it today. Nostalgia alone does not earn a spot. Ratings alone do not earn a spot. A single iconic season surrounded by mediocrity does not earn a spot. All 3 of those factors matter. None is sufficient on its own.
The Data Behind Our Picks
We pulled from critical aggregation scores, the largest audience-rating database on the internet, Emmy and other major award counts, and cultural impact markers like syndication reach, franchise expansion, and academic study. Every show on this list appears on at least 4 major published “all time” rankings. This is not a hot-take list designed to generate arguments for the sake of traffic. These are consensus greats filtered through our editorial lens, which means we agree with the consensus more often than not, but we are willing to break from it when we think the consensus is wrong.
Why Genre Balance Matters in an All-Time List
Most “best ever” rankings skew heavily toward post-2000 prestige dramas. We built our list to span comedy, drama, genre fiction, animation, and anthology formats. A ranking that excludes comedy or genre television is not an “all time” list. It is a “best drama of the 21st century” list wearing a misleading title. We think the greatest sitcom ever made belongs in the same conversation as the greatest drama, and our list reflects that.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Best TV Shows of All Time
Our pick is The Sopranos. We chose it because it created modern television as we know it. Every prestige drama produced after 1999 exists in the space that David Chase and HBO opened with this show. This is an editorial decision, not a scientific ranking. You can read our full argument in the #1 section above.
Breaking Bad holds a 9.5 rating on IMDb, making it the highest-rated drama series on the platform. We ranked it #2 on our list. IMDb ratings were one data input in our selection process, but we did not use them as the sole or primary determinant. A show’s audience score tells you how much viewers liked it. It does not tell you how much it mattered.
Game of Thrones holds the record for most Primetime Emmy wins by a scripted series with 59 total awards. We ranked it #7 on our list. Emmy count is one measure of quality, but it is not the only one and it is not always the best one. The Wire won zero Emmys in its entire run, and we ranked it #3.
Some shows on this list are available to watch free with ads on Plex. Others are on subscription services. Plex helps you search across all your streaming services in one place through Plex Discover, so you do not need to open 5 different apps to figure out where a show is available. Add any show to your Plex Watchlist and you will always know where to find it, regardless of which service carries it.
This is our editorial ranking as of the publication date. Television keeps producing new shows that could earn a spot on future versions of this list. We revisit our picks periodically and will update this ranking when we believe a change is warranted.
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