TV Dramas, Ranked

Vince Gilligan's chemistry-teacher-turned-drug-lord saga is widely cited as one of the most complete series in TV history and holds a Guinness World Record as the most critically acclaimed show, its final season scoring a near-perfect 99 on Metacritic.

David Simon's Baltimore epic examined the drug trade, the docks, city politics, schools, and the press across its five seasons, and is routinely ranked among the greatest TV dramas ever made by critics.

HBO's 1999 mob drama is credited with launching the prestige-TV era, and James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano is regularly named the greatest character in television history.

Matthew Weiner's 1960s ad-agency drama won the Outstanding Drama Emmy four consecutive years (2008-2011) and set a benchmark for period detail and slow-burn character work.

Craig Mazin's 2019 miniseries about the 1986 nuclear disaster became one of the highest-rated shows ever on IMDb and won the 2019 Emmy for Outstanding Limited Series.

HBO's fantasy juggernaut was a global phenomenon that won a record 59 Emmys for a scripted series, though a rushed final season remains one of TV's most infamous landings.

Peter Morgan's lavish chronicle of Elizabeth II won the Outstanding Drama Emmy (2021) and is one of Netflix's most expensive and acclaimed productions.

The 2014 first season with McConaughey and Harrelson set a new bar for cinematic anthology drama, anchored by a celebrated roughly six-minute unbroken tracking shot in its fourth episode.

The Breaking Bad prequel earned a rare reputation as a spinoff that rivals its parent, yet became one of the most Emmy-nominated dramas ever to finish its run without a single win.

Hulu's adaptation of Atwood's novel was the first streaming series to win the Outstanding Drama Emmy (2017) and made Elisabeth Moss a defining lead of the era.

Jesse Armstrong's savage media-dynasty drama won Outstanding Drama three times and turned corporate boardroom sparring into must-see event television.

Noah Hawley's anthology extended the Coen brothers' film into acclaimed self-contained seasons, winning the Outstanding Miniseries Emmy in 2014 (the category was renamed Limited Series the following year).

The Duffer Brothers' sci-fi hit became a Netflix flagship and pop-culture engine, though later seasons ballooned in scale and runtime.

Cillian Murphy's Birmingham gangster drama built a devoted global following with its stylized swagger and anachronistic needle-drop soundtrack.

The CIA thriller won Outstanding Drama for its gripping first season (2012), though its plausibility wobbled as it stretched across eight seasons through 2020.

HBO's puzzle-box sci-fi launched with a stunning, Emmy-laden first season but lost mainstream viewers as its timelines grew impenetrable, and it was canceled after four seasons in 2022.

The zombie drama once posted record cable ratings but suffered years of viewer erosion from repetitive plotting and controversial deaths before ending in 2022.

A gripping first-season premise made it a hit, but the show ran out of prisons to break out of and coasted on increasingly absurd twists.

The teen drama drew enormous viewership but heavy criticism from mental-health experts over its handling of suicide, leading Netflix to remove a graphic scene from its first season in 2019.

The glossy Netflix hit is a guilty-pleasure ratings success but was widely panned for shallow writing and cartoonish French stereotypes.

What began as a moody teen mystery devolved into a byword for unhinged, incoherent plotting, from gargoyle cults to superpowers and musical episodes.