50 Best TV Shows, Ranked

1 The Last Kingdom

This show is based on Bernard Cornwell’s series of thirteen books, The Saxon Tales. In the story (both the show and the books), Uhtred son of Uhtred (Alexander Dreymon) takes a circuitous path to become the rightful ruler of Bebbanburg (pronounced Bebbanborough, now Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland), along the way both conquering and uniting the Danes who have invaded England, and alternately supporting and fighting the man who became Alfred the Great, the first king to unite (mostly) all of England. Uhtred’s opening quote in the show is “Destiny is All”; in the books, that is written in Old English as “wyrd bid ful araed”: Fate is inexorable. Usually it shows up when something does not go Uhtred’s way, and he uses it to mean that he will accept what happens. It does not mean that all will work out well.

It is incredibly exciting and complex, and most of the cast is astounding. Uhtred and his allies are captured several times, eventually fight and escape; he keeps uniting various English and Danish groups against either other Danes or the corrupt alderman’s army; he is granted status by Alfred, then has it taken away by Alfred’s wife, restored, taken away again by various nobles opposed to Alfred; he has an incredibly heartwarming then ultimately heartwrenching relationship with Lady Aethelflaed; his dream of reclaiming Bebbanburgh is always in the distant background, until finally late in the series it is not, and he rallies his friends to take it back.

2 Karen Pirie

This show was a complete surprise. Karen Pirie is a young detective sergeant unexpectedly promoted and assigned an old cold case. Her fellow detectives are surprised that a woman has been brought into this role, and some of them think it’s a “diversity” hire. She herself is not sure, but hopes it’s because her new boss thinks she deserves it. It turns out that her supervisors don’t expect her to succeed and brought her in counting on her to bungle the case. As she pursues it, her boss’s boss looks for ways to stop her. But she’s Karen Pirie, and she won’t be stopped.

3 Justified

For years, Justified (based on the books by Elmore Leonard) was at the top of my list. Then The Last Kingdom came out, and by the second season, it was clear that it would be my new top show. Then Karen Pirie was released two years ago, and Justified dropped down one more spot. It’s as long-running as The Last Kingdom, and like that show, each season covers a complete story (or two); it’s not episodic, and the show builds throughout each season. But where The Last Kingdom is set in a bigger world and each season has a lot of battles, Justified focuses on one Deputy U.S. Marshal (Raylan Givens, played by Timothy Olyphant, in his best and most complex performance). There is an occasional battle, plenty of bad guys, and Givens carries and occasionally uses his gun, but it’s a cerebral show, more about Givens’ off-the-books investigations, his family, and his on-again off-again relationship with the recurring criminal Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins, who is more complex and unpredictable here than in his other great works).

4 Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

There have been many Star Trek shows over the years. The best one is Strange New Worlds, which has released two ten-episode seasons so far. The seasons are exactly the right length to avoid any wandering episodes or extraneous filler. There have been two episodes so far that are not perfect and compelling throughout, and quite a few episodes that individually are worth sustained applause, tears, and rewatching. It’s as if someone looked back at the history of the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet and decided to focus on specific moments that changed its history.

The episodic format is a return to what made the original Star Trek so compelling, without the drawn-out arcs of the other recent series. Each episode is important and dramatic, and usually someone overcomes significant odds to do “the right thing”. You can feel the Federation being improved in each episode. There are numerous little touches that pay attention to The Original Series and reward its fans, but each episode also stands alone; those homages are incidental to the story. Strange New Worlds is not just a better version of Star Trek; it’s a massive tribute to Starfleet’s history, its evolution, and the characters who built and reformed it. We’re left with such appreciation for everything that went into making Starfleet and the United Federation that we see in all the later Star Trek series.

5 Shetland

For seven seasons, this show was excellent: nothing superficial about it, at least three almost-overlapping plots each season, Jimmy Perez (Douglas Henshall) as a relentless detective who ruffles a lot of feathers by chasing down old leads and secrets, with Tosh McIntosh (Alison O’Donnell) as his detective sergeant. Every season is complex, and while the ending is usually a success, it’s always mixed. I thought it ended after seven seasons, then a new one came back last year. Tosh is finally fully in command of her new role as (acting) Detective Inspector, and she does everything right: she doesn’t back down, turns up old secrets, follows every lead, expects the same from her team, and is in every way the amazing lead detective we always hoped she would become.

6 His Dark Materials

This show has tangents that you don’t understand as you’re watching them, incredible evil, conflicted main characters, plots that range from church corruption to fanciful technology to angels and witches and armored bears, heroes who die, and a young heroine who doesn’t understand how she got caught up in all this corruption. And yet all of that makes sense as you watch it, ultimately culminating in a classic confrontation between the church that has always called Eve “evil” and the originator of sin, and the long-oppressed people who have united, and come to realize that Eve was not evil: Eve was the originator of free will, not sin, and the church across all the dimensions is trying to destroy her influence, to suppress women and free thought, to rule without mercy. It’s a remarkable, rousing, and triumphant show.

7 The Newsroom

This show sort of crept under the radar in 2013, perhaps being too political and airing on HBO Max. Jeff Daniels won his first Emmy for his role in this show. (He won his second for Godless in 2018. He’s amazing in both shows.) Daniels plays Will McAvoy, a moderate Republican, not a liberal, but when MacKenzie (Emily Mortimer, in a powerful performance) re-enters his life, she leads him to challenge both the owners of their cable news network and the Republican orthodoxy. On stage at a public event, he is asked why America is the greatest country in the world. He thinks he sees MacKenzie in the audience telling him “It’s Not. But It Can Be.” He tries to duck the answer, but the moderator won’t let him. He finally raises his voice and says that we’re not one of the top countries in literacy, math, science, labor force, or exports, we’re low in life expectancy and near the bottom in infant mortality, and we only lead the world in three things: incarcerated prisoners, people who believe that angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined. The audience is silent; some are shocked. He goes on to say that we used to be the greatest country in the world: we stood up for what was right, fought for moral reasons, waged wars on poverty rather than poor people, cared about our neighbors, explored the universe, cured diseases, cultivated the world’s greatest artists and the world’s greatest economy, and didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election. He adds, “All of this happened because we were informed and led by great leaders. The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one.” It’s an incredible scene, perhaps the most powerful of the whole show—and it happens at the very beginning.

8 Doctor Who

David Tennant’s seasons are superb, and his return for three episodes last year was, to use a British phrase, “smashing”. Matt Smith’s seasons are mostly superb. Peter Capaldi, while half of his seasons drone on or wander, has perhaps six of the best episodes ever, plus an extraordinary arc with Clara Oswald that equals Matt Smith’s Clara arc, his Amy Pond and Rory Williams narrative, and Tennant’s Donna Noble and Martha Jones runs. (Nothing equals the Rose Tyler stories, and nothing ever will.) River Song is fun, engaging, important, and tragic throughout all her seasons with Tennant, Smith, and Capaldi. Ncuti Gatwa’s new season is often fun and suspenseful, with an extraordinary companion in Ruby Sunday. In short, Doctor Who is often a perfect show, but not always.

9 Deadwood

Deadwood was a great show for three seasons, but then unexpectedly canceled. (This was before violence and rough language had become accepted on HBO, and some viewers might not have been prepared for its excesses.) It was a critical success and one of the best TV shows of all time, but ending on a cliffhanger held it back. The movie was finally released thirteen years later, and it does a great job of tying up the story. Though the film is set ten years after the show’s ending, it keeps most of the same character, shows what’s happened since, and finally has the resolution(s) we wanted all along.

10 1923

1923 is a fantastic vehicle for Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren, but the other two plots, taking place in different locations, are even better. Cara and Jack Dutton (Ford and Mirren) are defending their ranch, and their position in town, against well-connected sheepherders who plan to take the Dutton’s land. Meanwhile, Spencer Dutton (Jack’s nephew, who was raised by Jack and Cara) is in Africa, a big-game hunter for hire, where he meets the upper class British noblewoman Alexandra, who is engaged to a member of the British royalty. There’s no way Alexandra or Spencer should fall for each other, but they do. They are called home to the Dutton ranch, and get married on the ship home, but then Prince Arthur (the father of Alexandra’s fiance) has Spencer evicted from the ship. Back in the U.S., the government works with the Catholic church to capture and torture Native American children, intending to remove all signs of Native culture and essentially stop that culture from having new children.

11 Wednesday

Jenna Ortega is a blast to watch and cheer on as Wednesday Addams. Her family forces her to attend Nevermore Academy because she has been kicked out of too many other schools for making trouble. Nevermore has many students with supernatural powers; Wednesday does not seem to be one of the more talented ones. But she is angry, and she knows how to investigate, and she keeps unearthing hidden secrets at the academy, and in town. The monster Hyde kills students and civilians, and Wednesday suspects the principal (who is in fact a shapeshifter, but not Hyde). It takes episodes for the true villain(s) to slowly emerge, and the supernatural element becomes all-important, bringing long-deceased characters back to life. When things are at their worst, Wednesday comes through. This show has been renewed for another season, and if the second season is half as good as the first one, it will be a thrilling blast.

12 Strike Back

Strike Back was for a while the equal of any action TV show: all the high marks of The Unit, Banshee, Six, SEAL Team, and Ray Donovan, but without any wandering sub-plots or family drama. It’s a British special forces team (Section 20) that gets sent into dangerous situations all over the globe, sometimes with covert support, and sometimes abandoned. Every use of technology, classified intelligence, subterfuge, and life-or-death battles is superb. Enough of the characters die that you don’t assume everyone will magically survive, and there’s enough political drama that you’re never sure if they will win, or be sacrificed.

13 The Missing (season 2)

If season 2 was the only season of this show, it would be number 4 on my list. But there’s also a season 1, and that makes it hard to rate this incredible show. Season 1 takes place in three different time periods, starting with a young boy being kidnapped, spending much of each episode in the present day, with a period in between gradually appearing. The time element works well, and the show is complex and engaging, but the father of the missing boy gets increasingly desperate, spending all these years searching for the boy, destroying his marriage in the process, and becoming crazed and violent along the way. We learn some things, such as who kidnapped the boy, and who aided him, and discover two different criminals who were not part of the abduction, but we never find out whether the boy survives, or where he is if he is still alive. It’s challenging and suspenseful, but the lack of a successful resolution left me with both an empty feeling, and some anger over how the father (and the mother’s second husband) behave.

Season 2 is, in contrast, a resounding success. Retired Detective Julien Baptiste spends all eight episodes searching for two (or three) abducted girls (“the missing”). But there’s a surprise in the very beginning: the long-lost daughter appears in the first episode. So what is the point of the show, if we’re not looking for the missing girl? We see pretty quickly that Baptiste does not believe it’s actually the missing girl, and her mother soon agrees with Baptiste. No one else believes him, and his situation gets increasingly complicated and almost-desperate, as in each of three time frames, he is dismissed or harassed by the military police and the local police. Yet he becomes convinced that the returned girl (who fakes her own death a few days after returning to her “family”) is not the missing girl, and that there are powerful figures involved in the deception. Some people get badly mistreated along the way, including a man unfairly accused (and convicted) of the abduction, his wife (who turns him in and is herself badly tortured), a very good detective who is killed, and the mothers of both missing girls. But Julien Baptiste never stops, risking his life and almost destroying his own family, because he keeps finding important clues, and is willing to travel the world, risk his own imprisonment, and antagonize the local military police, to keep searching for these missing girls. There is not a more persistent or dogged effort in any TV season, and while there are many times when it seems to go wrong, when Baptiste is ignored or threatened, when it seems like he is on the right track but everyone else tries to stop him (not because they’re bad, but because they don’t believe his story), when he is isolated, he won’t stop. He says that finding these girls is more important than his own health and safety. But the mother believes him, and sticks with him. By the time the last episode starts, we know he’s found the true perpetrator, we know the two girls are alive, and we’re still terrified that he won’t be believed or will be killed when he finds the man. It’s an almost-breathless final episode, with so many extraordinary triumphs. When I think of shows or films that made me cry at the end (tears of joy), there’s CODA, Station Eleven, Daisy Jones and the Six, Murder at the End of the World, Apollo 13, and season 2 of The Missing.

14 Sherlock (the BBC version with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman)

15 West Wing

For much of this show, it is superb. It is one of the only shows that I purchased the entire series, so I can watch it when I want. It is perhaps three different stories, as characters join later in the show and presidents change. Even the tangents are brought back together, but it feels like different shows rather than the logical continuation of the original. And there are just too many episodes. Still, #14 on my list is pretty good.

16 Lost in Space (the recent one on Netflix, not the original)

17 Sherwood (completely unexpected)

18 Shogun

19 Firefly

20 Counterpart

21 Animal Kingdom

This was a 5 star show for most of its run, but it lost steam the last two seasons. If it had ended earlier, it would be in my top 12.

22 Buffy The Vampire Slayer

This is also almost a 5, and for some of its run and several seasons it’s one of the best shows ever, but it doesn’t find its footing right away and too many episodes feel like filler. That’s a little disappointing, because interspersed among some of the filler episodes are some perfect episodes and arcs.

23 Endeavor

24 Unforgotten

25 Jack Ryan

26 The Night Agent

27 Luther

28 Sharpe

29 Poldark

30 Dark Winds (captivating, but disturbing)

31 Vikings ; Vikings: Valhalla

Vikings was great for the first three seasons, but it started to wander, and by the sixth season, it didn’t seem connected to the original show. Vikings Valhalla, on the other hand, at least completed its run in three seasons, so it held together well, and was perhaps more compelling than the first three seasons of Vikings. Unfortunately, the disgusting abuse committed by the English queen and the Catholic church (even including a season where the queen tortures her innocent handmaiden to death, with the blessing of the bishop), while historically true, really hurts this show. You want the heroes to be heroes, as they mostly are, but three different groups of Catholic rulers are active and avid participants in brutality and torture.

32 Trapped

33 Hanna

34 Stranger Things

35 A Discovery of Witches

36 Game of Thrones

This show had some great episodes, tragic and traumatic arcs, devastating losses and plot threads, and often compelling stories and battles (not to mention the iconic opening theme). But it really lost the thread and the drama in the last three seasons (most of which were not based on George RR Martin’s books, since those books hadn’t come out). The drama disappeared; the show felt rushed; the handful of amazing storylines were overwhelmed by the irrelevant rambling. If someone were to redo the last three seasons, tighter and more focused on the parts that matter, the show would have ended in triumph.

37 M*A*S*H

38 Line of Duty

39 Battlestar Galactica

40 Big Little Lies

41 The Tunnel

42 Banshee

Banshee is almost as good as adventure shows get, with an excellent lead role from an ex-con (Antony Starr), who steals the new sheriff’s identity. The interactions among the lead characters are superb. It’s held back by some weak subplots, particularly the crime kingpin Proctor and his ongoing battles with his Amish community. Every time it gets suspenseful and violent, it works, but when Proctor gets involved, it feels forced, pointless, and ugly.

43 Happy Valley

44 Invincible

45 The Old Man

46 Walking Dead, Walking Dead: Darryl Dixon, Walking Dead: Dead City

47 The Mandalorian

48 Lonesome Dove

49 House

50 Billy the Kid

51 Jack Irish

52 Mad Men

My reviews and rankings don’t include comedy shows (such as Dick van Dyke, Fleabag, Friends, How I Met Your Mother, Seinfeld, The Big Bang Theory, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Office) or gangster shows (such as Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Wire, The Boys). While many of those shows have good or great episodes and seasons, I don’t enjoy forced laughter or criminal violence. I prefer adventure, drama, suspense, and important historical shows and films.

M*A*S*H is sort of an exception, but the pathos, challenges, and commitment to doing right are more powerful, disturbing, and engrossing than the comedy. The comedy softens the blow of the urgent crises, rather than being the point of the story. M*A*S*H is one of the highest-rated and most-watched shows of all time because it tells such an important and hard story.