There’s a lot of good TV out there, but some shows, like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, are so brilliant that they should be required viewing for everyone. There are so many great shows out there, but there’s only so much time in the day to watch them. There are some shows you can skip. The Walking Dead’s first few seasons are incredible, but it takes a sharp downhill turn somewhere in the middle.
There’s a small handful of shows that are so perfect, so compelling, and so well-written and well-acted that everyone should watch them at least once. Seinfeld is a classic sitcom tackling the universally relatable minutiae of everyday life. The Twilight Zone is a gripping anthology series allegorizing poignant social and political issues.
20 Lost
The mysteries of Lost kept audiences hooked for six long seasons. It’s a perfect show for binge-watching, because each new episode reveals a tantalizing new piece of the puzzle that has you eager to roll onto the next one. The finale has divided audiences, but it’s a suitably emotional conclusion to the story — and it’s a heck of a ride to get there.
19 Atlanta
Donald Glover channeled his idiosyncratic voice, both as a comedian and as a musician, into a wholly unique TV masterpiece. Atlanta takes place in the lively hip-hop scene of its titular city, and it imagines the bizarre music industry as an alternate dimension. Atlanta deals with the very real issues of race, class, and the American Dream, but it does so in a delightfully surreal way.
18 Game Of Thrones
Although the ending suffered from running out of source material to adapt, Game of Thrones is one of the biggest TV hits of the century. The series touches on poignant real-world themes — power, betrayal, political corruption — in a medieval fantasy setting. It has dragons and magic and zombies, but it also has complex, multifaceted storytelling and rich, three-dimensional characterization.
17 Fawlty Towers
After Monty Python made him one of the most legendary names in sketch comedy, John Cleese proved he was just as adept at writing situational comedy with his iconic two-season show Fawlty Towers. Each episode of Fawlty Towers is a masterfully crafted farce that establishes a juicy comedic scenario, continually escalates the stakes, and builds to the perfect punchline. It’s everything a good sitcom should be.
16 Band Of Brothers
After working on Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks reunited to executive-produce another World War II project: Band of Brothers, a miniseries based on true events. Band of Brothers plays like a 10-hour movie. It’s every bit the visceral, hard-hitting portrayal of warfare that Saving Private Ryan is, but its extended runtime allows it to dig even deeper into the human beings on the battlefield.
15 Avatar: The Last Airbender
Avatar: The Last Airbender is no ordinary kids’ cartoon. It’s gorgeously animated, beautifully acted, culturally rich, and it deals with heavy themes rarely seen in children’s entertainment. It touches on imperialism, totalitarianism, the class divide, gender politics, genocide, and freedom of choice — and manages to include plenty of humor along the way.
14 Six Feet Under
For a show that was all about death, Six Feet Under managed to capture what makes life worth living. Alan Ball’s morbid tragicomedy revolves around a family inheriting a funeral home from their late father and struggling to keep the business afloat. Six Feet Under deftly balances pitch-black humor with life-affirming wisdom, and it culminates in one of the most perfect series finales ever produced.
13 Freaks And Geeks
Although it was canceled after just one season, Freaks and Geeks might be the best high school show ever made. It doesn’t need manufactured drama to keep the audience’s interest; it touches on real, relatable issues that all teenagers deal with. The stellar ensemble cast features some up-and-coming young actors who would go on to become huge stars, from Linda Cardellini to Jason Segel to Busy Philipps to Seth Rogen.
12 Mad Men
At a time when most prestige TV dramas relied on violence and shock value, Mad Men captivated audiences with nothing more than solid, character-focused storytelling. Matthew Weiner turned the office politics of a bunch of hard-drinking ad executives in the 1960s into truly compelling television. The show expertly weaves historical context into the deeply complex lives of its characters.
11 Frasier
Cheers is a classic sitcom that established many of the tropes that the genre still exploits to this day, but its spinoff is even better. Frasier gives a spotlight to Kelsey Grammer’s pompous psychiatrist character as he reluctantly lets his gruff, blue-collar dad move into his fancy high-rise apartment. Frasier is a hilarious sitcom with masterful writing and pitch-perfect acting, but it’s also a touching father-son story at heart.