Best TV Shows of The Century by The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter set out to map the TV landscape of the 21st century - and what emerged is a portrait of an era where television eclipsed cinema as the medium of choice for bold storytelling. From the streaming boom to the last gasp of network dominance, this list captures the series they changed the conversation.
Items in this hypelist
Ranked from 1 to 50 (highest to lowest)
Review
Andy Daly · 2014
A review of a movie, or a restaurant, or a car—or whatever else that typically falls under a critic's domain—is all well and good, and can even be helpful at times. But how can one find out about myriad other experiences that are never tackled in reviews? Enter Forrest MacNeil, a critic who goes beyond overviews of life's more-common subjects—way beyond—to satisfy the curiosity of others: The adrenaline rush of stealing; the danger of drug addiction; the delight of sleeping with a celebrity. MacNeil tries anything suggested by viewers of his TV show, then presents a 1-to-5-star review. But his unwavering commitment to experiencing intense adventures means he must deal with the unintended consequences of such a goal.
Battlestar Galactica
Ronald D. Moore · 2003
A re-imagining of the original series in which a "rag-tag fugitive fleet" of the last remnants of mankind flees pursuing robots while simultaneously searching for their true home, Earth.
Parks and Recreation
Michael Schur, Greg Daniels · 2009
In an attempt to beautify her town — and advance her career — Leslie Knope, a mid-level bureaucrat in the Parks and Recreation Department of Pawnee, Indiana, takes on bureaucrats, cranky neighbors, and single-issue fanatics whose weapons are lawsuits, the jumble of city codes, and the democratic process she loves so much.
How To with John Wilson
John Wilson · 2020
In a uniquely hilarious odyssey of self-discovery and cultural observation, documentary filmmaker and self-described "anxious New Yorker" John Wilson covertly and obsessively films the lives of his fellow New Yorkers while attempting to give everyday advice on relatable topics. The awkward contradictions of modern life are eased by Wilson’s candid, unpolished commentary. Building upon Wilson’s previously released "how to" short films, each episode takes wildly unexpected turns but is grounded in John's refreshing honesty.
Broad City
Ilana Glazer, Abbi Jacobson · 2014
Broad City follows two women throughout their daily lives in New York City, making the smallest and mundane events hysterical and disturbing to watch all at the same time.
Game of Thrones
David Benioff, D. B. Weiss · 2011
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.
Fleabag
Phoebe Waller-Bridge · 2016
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.
Veep
Armando Iannucci · 2012
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.
Orange Is the New Black
Jenji Kohan · 2013
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.
Jane the Virgin
Jennie Snyder Urman · 2014
Una joven devota descubre que ha sido inseminada artificialmente por error. Cuando Jane Villanueva era niña, su abuela le dejó claras dos cosas: las telenovelas son la mejor forma de entretenimiento y perder la virginidad es lo peor que le puede pasar a una mujer. A sus 23 años y en el corazón de Miami, Jane es una chica responsable y piadosa, ilusionada por labrarse un futuro con un novio perfecto con el que, por supuesto, no tiene relación. Pero todos sus planes se van al traste cuando es inseminada accidentalmente por error de un ginecólogo que atraviesa una mala racha. Paradojas del destino, Rafael, antiguo enamorado de Jane, ahora casado con una mujer retorcida y dueña del hotel donde ella trabaja. Jane se ve entonces obligada a cambiar radicalmente de perspectiva: ahora su vida es la mejor telenovela y ella es la protagonista.
Chernobyl
Craig Mazin · 2019
En Abril de 1986, la Central Nuclear de Chernóbil en Ucrania (en aquel entonces, la Unión Soviética), sufrió una explosión masiva que liberó material radioactivo en Bielorrusia, Rusia, Ucrania, así como en zonas de Escandinavia y Europa Central. La serie relata lo que aconteció en 1986, en uno de los mayores desastres provocados por el hombre en la historia reciente, así como los sacrificios realizados para salvar al continente de un desastre sin precedentes.
The Shield
Shawn Ryan · 2002
The story of an inner-city Los Angeles police precinct where some of the cops aren't above breaking the rules or working against their associates to both keep the streets safe and their self-interests intact.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Aline Brosh McKenna, Rachel Bloom · 2015
Rebecca Bunch is a successful, driven, and possibly crazy young woman who impulsively gives up everything - her partnership at a prestigious law firm and her upscale apartment in Manhattan - in a desperate attempt to find love and happiness in that exotic hotbed of romance and adventure: suburban West Covina, California.
Band of Brothers
2001
Drawn from interviews with survivors of Easy Company, as well as their journals and letters, Band of Brothers chronicles the experiences of these men from paratrooper training in Georgia through the end of the war. As an elite rifle company parachuting into Normandy early on D-Day morning, participants in the Battle of the Bulge, and witness to the horrors of war, the men of Easy knew extraordinary bravery and extraordinary fear - and became the stuff of legend. Based on Stephen E. Ambrose's acclaimed book of the same name.
The Deuce
David Simon, George Pelecanos · 2017
The story of the legalization and subsequent rise of the porn industry in New York’s Times Square from the early ’70s through the mid ’80s, exploring the rough-and-tumble world that existed there until the rise of HIV, the violence of the cocaine epidemic and the renewed real estate market ended the bawdy turbulence of the area.
Insecure
Issa Rae, Larry Wilmore · 2016
Follows the awkward experiences and racy tribulations of a modern-day African-American woman.
BEEF
Lee Sung Jin · 2023
A road rage incident between two strangers — a failing contractor and an unfulfilled entrepreneur — sparks a feud that brings out their darkest impulses.
Station Eleven
Patrick Somerville · 2021
The survivors of a devastating flu attempt to rebuild and reimagine the world anew – while holding on to the best of what’s been lost.
Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown
2013
Bourdain travels across the globe to uncover little-known areas of the world and celebrate diverse cultures by exploring food and dining rituals. Known for his curiosity, candor, and acerbic wit, Bourdain takes viewers off the beaten path of tourist destinations – including some war-torn parts of the world – and meets with a variety of local citizens to offer a window into their lifestyles, and occasionally communes with an internationally lauded chef on his journeys.
The Leftovers
Damon Lindelof, Tom Perrotta · 2014
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.
The Crown
Peter Morgan · 2016
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. Two houses, two courts, one Crown.
The Underground Railroad
Barry Jenkins · 2021
Follow young Cora’s journey as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. After escaping her Georgia plantation for the rumored Underground Railroad, Cora discovers no mere metaphor, but an actual railroad full of engineers and conductors, and a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil.
Vida
Tanya Saracho · 2018
Two Mexican-American sisters from the Eastside of Los Angeles who couldn't be more different or distanced from each other are forced to return to their old neighborhood, where they are confronted by the past and surprising truth about their mother’s identity.
South Side
Diallo Riddle, Bashir Salahuddin, Sultan Salahuddin · 2019
Two recent community-college graduates get stuck working at Rent-T-Own in the Chicago neighborhood of Englewood and work to achieve their entrepreneurial dreams.
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko · 2005
La historia transcurre en un mundo de gente principalmente asiática (el estilo de vida en la serie se basa en la primera mitad del siglo XIX), donde predominan las artes marciales y la manipulación de los elementos en combinación con el misticismo oriental, dando seguimiento a las aventuras de Aang, el más reciente sucesor de una larga línea de avatares, y sus amigos en un intento por salvar su místico mundo de la despiadada Nación del Fuego que busca conquistar a las demás naciones. Durante sus travesías son acechados insistentemente por el desterrado príncipe del fuego Zuko, cuyo objetivo es capturar al avatar para recuperar su honor. Esta serie es presentada como si se tratara de una serie de libros, en donde cada episodio actúa como un «capítulo», y cada temporada como un solo «libro», los cuales se titulan por el elemento temático de la temporada.
Sex and the City
Darren Star · 1998
Based on the bestselling book by Candace Bushnell, Sex and the City tells the story of four best friends, all single and in their late thirties, as they pursue their careers and talk about their sex lives, all while trying to survive the New York social scene.
I May Destroy You
Michaela Coel · 2020
Ambientada en Londres, donde la gratificación está a solo una aplicación de distancia, la historia se centra en Arabella, una londinense despreocupada y segura de sí misma con un grupo de grandes amigos, un novio en Italia y una floreciente carrera de escritores. Pero cuando su bebida se dispara, debe cuestionar y reconstruir cada elemento de su vida.
Survivor
Charlie Parsons · 2000
Better Things
Louis C.K., Pamela Adlon · 2016
Sam Fox is a single, working actor with no filter trying to raise her three daughters – Max, Frankie and Duke – in Los Angeles. She is mom, dad, referee and the cops.
Deadwood
David Milch · 2004
The story of the early days of Deadwood, South Dakota; woven around actual historic events with most of the main characters based on real people. Deadwood starts as a gold mining camp and gradually turns from a lawless wild-west community into an organized wild-west civilized town. The story focuses on the real-life characters Seth Bullock and Al Swearengen.
Peep Show
Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain, Andrew O'Connor · 2003
Peep Show follows the lives of two men from their twenties to thirties, Mark Corrigan, who has steady employment for most of the series, and Jeremy "Jez" Usbourne, an unemployed would-be musician.
Rectify
Ray McKinnon · 2013
After 19 years on Death Row for the rape and murder of his teenage girlfriend, Daniel Holden is going home. His conviction has been vacated due to new DNA evidence. Now he has to return to a world he no longer knows and his reentry into the outside world may be as unforgiving as prison. Daniel is haunted by the past, dogged by the present, and uncertain of the future. As he struggles to adapt to his new life, his homecoming reignites the fears of a small town and threatens to shatter his family’s fragile peace. Daniel’s alleged crime divided a community. Will his freedom tear it in half?
Friday Night Lights
Brian Grazer, Peter Berg · 2006
The trials and triumphs of life in the small town of Dillon, Texas, where high school football is everything.
Halt and Catch Fire
Christopher Cantwell, Christopher C. Rogers · 2014
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.
Breaking Bad
Vince Gilligan · 2008
Un profesor de química con cáncer terminal se asocia con un exalumno suyo para fabricar y vender metanfetamina a fin de que su familia no pase apuros económicos.
Atlanta
Donald Glover · 2016
En Atlanta, dos primos se meten en el mundo del rap. Su evolución profesional será complicada por su percepción de lo que es el arte, el producto, el éxito y otras cosas.
Enlightened
Mike White, Laura Dern · 2011
After a very public breakdown and a subsequent philosophical awakening in rehabilitation, Amy tries to get her life back together.
30 for 30
Bill Simmons, John Dahl, Connor Schell · 2009
30 for 30 is the title for a series of documentary films airing on ESPN, its sister networks, and online highlighting interesting people and events in sports history. This currently includes four "volumes" of 30 episodes each, a 13-episode series under the ESPN Films Presents title in 2011–2012, and a series of 30 for 30 Shorts shown through the ESPN.com website. The series has also expanded to include Soccer Stories, which aired in advance of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and audio podcasts. This entry refers to the main Volumes of the series presented by ESPN
The Americans
Joe Weisberg · 2013
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.
The Daily Show
Madeleine Smithberg, Lizz Winstead · 1996
The World's Fakest News Team tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and pop culture.
BoJack Horseman
Raphael Bob-Waksberg · 2014
Conoce al caballo más querido de los 90… veinte años después. Vive en Los Ángeles donde humanos y animales antropomórficos coexisten, BoJack Horseman es la historia de un hombre (bueno, un caballo-hombre) que llegó muy rápido a la cima y ahora tiene que averiguar qué hacer.
Freaks and Geeks
Paul Feig · 1999
Liseli bir matematik olimpiyatçısı kız, aykırı gençlerden oluşan bir arkadaş grubu ile takılmaya başlar. Küçük erkek kardeşi ise lisenin ilk yılında hayatta kalmaya çalışıyordur.
Girls
Lena Dunham · 2012
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.
Better Call Saul
Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould · 2015
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. The series tracks Jimmy’s transformation into Saul Goodman, the man who puts “criminal” in “criminal lawyer".
Reservation Dogs
Sterlin Harjo, Taika Waititi · 2021
Four Indigenous teenagers in rural Oklahoma steal, rob and save in order to get to the exotic, mysterious and faraway land of California.
The Wire
David Simon · 2002
David Simon, creador y coguionista de la miniserie de HBO tres veces ganadora del premio Emmy The Corner, este sencillo y extremadamente realista drama sigue una caótica y controvertida investigación de drogas y asesinatos en Baltimore que conllevará peligrosos pinchazos telefónicos y continua vigilancia. Mostrando ambas perspectivas, de la policía y de sus criminales, la serie captura un universo donde distinguir entre el bien y el mal, el delito y la condena, es siempre desafío.
30 Rock
Tina Fey · 2006
Liz Lemon, the head writer for a late-night TV variety show in New York, tries to juggle all the egos around her while chasing her own dream.
Succession
Jesse Armstrong · 2018
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.
The Sopranos
David Chase · 1999
The story of New Jersey-based Italian-American mobster Tony Soprano and the difficulties he faces as he tries to balance the conflicting requirements of his home life and the criminal organization he heads. Those difficulties are often highlighted through his ongoing professional relationship with psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi. The show features Tony's family members and Mafia associates in prominent roles and story arcs, most notably his wife Carmela and his cousin and protégé Christopher Moltisanti.
Mad Men
Matthew Weiner · 2007
Dans le New York des années 60, Don Draper est l'un des grands noms de la pub. Maître manipulateur, il compte dans son entourage des ennemis qui attendent sa chute.
