The 39 Greatest TV Shows of the 2010s
The 2010s contribute 39 of the tv canon's all-time entries, led by Game of Thrones (2011). Rankings aggregate 13 authoritative lists; every entry links to its full evidence.
1. Game of Thrones
Seven noble families fight for control of the mythical land of Westeros. Friction between the houses leads to full-scale war. All while a very ancient evil awakens in the farthest north. Amidst the war, a neglected military order of misfits, the Night's Watch, is all that stands between the realms of men and icy horrors beyond.
2. Succession
Follow the lives of the Roy family as they contemplate their future once their aging father begins to step back from the media and entertainment conglomerate they control.
3. Veep
A look into American politics, revolving around former Senator Selina Meyer who finds being Vice President of the United States is nothing like she expected and everything everyone ever warned her about.
4. The Leftovers
When 2% of the world's population abruptly disappears without explanation, the world struggles to understand just what they're supposed to do about it. This is the story of the people who didn't make the cut.
5. Fleabag
A portrait into the mind of a dry-witted, sexual, angry, porn-watching, grief-riddled woman, trying to make sense of the world. As she hurls herself headlong at modern living, Fleabag is thrown roughly up against the walls of contemporary London, with all its frenetic energy, late nights, and bright lights.
6. Better Call Saul
Six years before Saul Goodman meets Walter White. We meet him when the man who will become Saul Goodman is known as Jimmy McGill, a small-time lawyer searching for his destiny, and, more immediately, hustling to make ends meet. Working alongside, and, often, against Jimmy, is “fixer” Mike Ehrmantraut.
7. Watchmen
Set in an alternate history where “superheroes” are treated as outlaws, “Watchmen” embraces the nostalgia of the original groundbreaking graphic novel while attempting to break new ground of its own.
8. Downton Abbey
A chronicle of the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants in the post-Edwardian era—with great events in history having an effect on their lives and on the British social hierarchy.
9. Bojack Horseman
Meet the most beloved sitcom horse of the '90s , 20 years later. He's a curmudgeon with a heart of...not quite gold...but something like gold. Copper?
10. Sherlock
A modern update finds the famous sleuth and his doctor partner solving crime in 21st century London.
11. The Good Place
Eleanor Shellstrop, an ordinary woman who, through an extraordinary string of events, enters the afterlife where she comes to realize that she hasn't been a very good person. With the help of her wise afterlife mentor, she's determined to shed her old way of living and discover the awesome (or at least the pretty good) person within.
12. Black Mirror
Twisted tales run wild in this mind-bending anthology series that reveals humanity's worst traits, greatest innovations and more.
13. Happy Valley
Happy Valley is a dark, funny, multi-layered thriller revolving around the personal and professional life of Catherine, a dedicated, experienced, hard-working copper. She is also a bereaved mother who looks after her orphaned grandchild.
14. True Detective
An American anthology police detective series utilizing multiple timelines in which investigations seem to unearth personal and professional secrets of those involved, both within or outside the law.
15. Girls
The assorted humiliations, disasters and rare triumphs of four very different twenty-something girls: Hannah, an aspiring writer; Marnie, an art gallery assistant and cousins Jessa and Shoshanna.
16. Orange Is the New Black
A crime she committed in her youthful past sends Piper Chapman to a women's prison, where she trades her comfortable New York life for one of unexpected camaraderie and conflict in an eccentric group of fellow inmates.
17. Line of Duty
A drama about the investigations of AC-12, a controversial police anticorruption unit.
18. Chernobyl
The true story of one of the worst man-made catastrophes in history: the catastrophic nuclear accident at Chernobyl. A tale of the brave men and women who sacrificed to save Europe from unimaginable disaster.
19. Insecure
Follows the awkward experiences and racy tribulations of a modern-day African-American woman.
20. The Crown
The gripping, decades-spanning inside story of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Prime Ministers who shaped Britain's post-war destiny. The Crown tells the inside story of two of the most famous addresses in the world – Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street – and the intrigues, love lives and machinations behind the great events that shaped the second half of the 20th century.
21. Halt and Catch Fire
During the rise of the PC era in the early 1980s, an unlikely trio - a visionary, an engineer and a prodigy - take personal and professional risks in the race to build a computer that will change the world as they know it.
22. Homeland
CIA officer Carrie Mathison is tops in her field despite being bipolar, which makes her volatile and unpredictable. With the help of her long-time mentor Saul Berenson, Carrie fearlessly risks everything, including her personal well-being and even sanity, at every turn.
23. The Americans
Set during the Cold War period in the 1980s, The Americans is the story of Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, two Soviet KGB officers posing as an American married couple in the suburbs of Washington D.C. and their neighbor, Stan Beeman, an FBI Counterintelligence agent.
24. Inside No. 9
An anthology of darkly comic twisted tales, each one taking place behind a door marked 'number 9'.
25. Atlanta
Two cousins work through the Atlanta music scene in order to better their lives and the lives of their families.
26. Enlightened
After a very public breakdown and a subsequent philosophical awakening in rehabilitation, Amy tries to get her life back together.
27. Stranger Things
When a young boy vanishes, a small town uncovers a mystery involving secret experiments, terrifying supernatural forces, and one strange little girl.
28. The Bridge
When a body is found on the bridge between Denmark and Sweden, right on the border, Danish inspector Martin Rohde and Swedish Saga Norén have to share jurisdiction and work together to find the killer.
29. Rick and Morty
Follows a sociopathic genius scientist who drags his inherently timid grandson on adventures across the universe.
30. Luther
A dark psychological crime drama starring Idris Elba as Luther, a man struggling with his own terrible demons, who might be as dangerous as the depraved murderers he hunts.
31. Hannibal
Both a gift and a curse, Graham has the extraordinary ability to think like his prey—he sees what they see, feels what they feel. But while Graham is pursuing an especially troubling, cannibalistic murderer, Special Agent Jack Crawford teams him with a highly respected psychiatrist – a man with a taste for the criminal minded – Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
32. Narcos
A gritty chronicle of the war against Colombia's infamously violent and powerful drug cartels.
33. Louie
Louis C.K. stars as a fictionalized version of himself; a comedian and newly divorced father raising his two daughters in New York City.
34. The Good Fight
Picking up one year after the events of the final broadcast episode of "The Good Wife", an enormous financial scam has destroyed the reputation of a young lawyer, Maia Rindell, while simultaneously wiping out her mentor and godmother Diane Lockhart's savings.
35. Fargo
A close-knit anthology series dealing with stories involving malice, violence and murder based in and around Minnesota.
36. The Walking Dead
Sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes awakens from a coma to find a post-apocalyptic world dominated by flesh-eating zombies. He sets out to find his family and encounters many other survivors along the way.
37. Peaky Blinders
A gangster family epic set in 1919 Birmingham, England and centered on a gang who sew razor blades in the peaks of their caps, and their fierce boss Tommy Shelby, who means to move up in the world.
38. Justified
A character drama based on the 2001 Elmore Leonard short story "Fire in the Hole." Leonard's tale centers around U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens of Kentucky, a quiet but strong-willed official of the law. The tale covers his high-stakes job, as well as his strained relationships with his ex-wife and father.
39. Boardwalk Empire
Atlantic City at the dawn of Prohibition is a place where the rules don't apply. And the man who runs things -- legally and otherwise -- is the town's treasurer, Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, who is equal parts politician and gangster.