Best TV shows of the 2010s

Chernobyl▲ Rising

HBO's five-part miniseries turned a Soviet bureaucratic catastrophe into the most viscerally terrifying television of the decade, with the opening reactor explosion and the bridge of death scene searing themselves into the culture. It won by treating truth itself as the protagonist, arguing that the cost of lies compounds until it kills everyone — a message that landed like a gut punch in 2019.

Premiered: 2019Seasons: 1IMDb: 9.3/10

added by IJRin 7 rankings

Game of Thrones▲ Rising

For most of the decade this was the show, the last true monoculture event where the Red Wedding and the Battle of the Bastards made Sunday nights appointment viewing across the planet. The final season's rushed collapse remains the most debated ending in TV history, but nothing changed the ambition of the medium — or proved fantasy could dominate prestige TV — quite like it did.

Premiered: 2011Seasons: 8IMDb: 9.2/10

added by IJRin 12 rankings

Succession▲ Rising

Jesse Armstrong's Murdoch-adjacent media dynasty turned corporate boardrooms into Shakespearean bloodsport, with 'boar on the floor' and Kendall's rap at Logan's birthday becoming instant classics of cringe-tragedy. Its ruthless, quotable dialogue made 'f**k off' a Shiv Roy signature and cemented it as the defining prestige drama of the decade's back half.

Premiered: 2018Seasons: 4IMDb: 8.9/10

added by IJRin 8 rankings

Sherlock▲ Rising

Benedict Cumberbatch's motor-mouthed, deerstalker-clad detective turned BBC's modern-day update into a global fandom event, with 'The Reichenbach Fall' cliffhanger sparking years of internet obsession over how Sherlock faked his death. It proved a limited-episode format could still dominate conversation, even as its later seasons strained under the weight of its own cleverness.

Premiered: 2010Seasons: 4IMDb: 9/10

added by IJRin 6 rankings

Rick and Morty▲ Rising

Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon's interdimensional sci-fi cartoon weaponized nihilism into comedy, turning 'Pickle Rick' into a genuine cultural phenomenon and Szechuan sauce into a national news story. Its structural inventiveness — infinite universes as a storytelling engine for dark existential comedy — made it animation's most influential export since South Park.

Premiered: 2013Seasons: 8IMDb: 9.1/10

added by IJRin 6 rankings

Better Call Saul▲ Rising

A prequel spinoff had no business being this good, but Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould turned Jimmy McGill's slow corruption into a tragedy arguably richer than Breaking Bad itself, with 'Chicanery' and the Gene timeline black-and-white cold opens showcasing television's most patient, novelistic storytelling. Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn's chemistry made Kim Wexler's fate one of the decade's quietest gut-punches.

Premiered: 2015Seasons: 6IMDb: 9/10

added by IJRin 9 rankings

True Detective▲ Rising

Season one's Louisiana noir, anchored by Rust Cohle's nihilist monologues and that six-minute tracking shot in episode four, redefined what a single season of TV could achieve artistically and briefly made 'time is a flat circle' inescapable. Nothing that followed matched it, but its anthology format and McConaissance-fueled first run remain a genre high-water mark.

Premiered: 2014Seasons: 4IMDb: 8.9/10

added by IJRin 7 rankings

Attack on Titan▲ Rising

What began as a claustrophobic survival story about humanity behind walls evolved into one of the most morally complex war epics ever animated, with the Battle of Shiganshina and the eventual reveal of Eren's endgame recontextualizing everything before it. It proved anime could carry the narrative weight and political ambition of prestige drama, dragging a new generation of Western viewers into the medium.

Premiered: 2013Seasons: 4IMDb: 9.1/10

added by IJRin 4 rankings

BoJack Horseman▲ Rising

A cartoon about a washed-up horse actor turned into the decade's most devastating meditation on depression, addiction, and the impossibility of fixing yourself, with episodes like 'Fish Out of Water' and 'Free Churro' pushing animated comedy into unbearably raw territory. It proved a talking-animal sitcom could say more about trauma than most prestige dramas even attempted.

Premiered: 2014Seasons: 6IMDb: 8.8/10

added by IJRin 8 rankings

Fargo

Noah Hawley took the Coen Brothers' one movie and spun it into an anthology of pitch-black Midwestern crime sagas, with Billy Bob Thornton's Lorne Malvo and later Ewan McGregor's dual role proving the concept had legs beyond gimmick. Its willingness to swing wildly in tone and structure each season made it one of the decade's most purely inventive shows.

Premiered: 2014Seasons: 5IMDb: 8.9/10

added by IJRin 12 rankings

Fleabag

Phoebe Waller-Bridge's fourth-wall-breaking mess of a woman turned grief and guilt into the sharpest half-hour comedy of the decade, with the hot priest confession scene and that final wordless goodbye at the bus stop landing like emotional sucker punches. It reinvented what a comedy could do with silence, direct address, and devastating specificity.

Premiered: 2016Seasons: 2IMDb: 8.7/10

added by IJRin 6 rankings

Black Mirror

Charlie Brooker's anthology of tech-dystopia parables turned 'San Junipero' into a rare hopeful outlier and 'Nosedive' into an eerily prophetic satire of social-media validation, making the show shorthand for any real-world gadget gone wrong. Its interactive Bandersnatch experiment even tried to reinvent the format itself, for better or worse.

Premiered: 2011Seasons: 7IMDb: 8.7/10

added by IJRin 6 rankings

Stranger Things

The Duffer Brothers turned '80s nostalgia, Spielbergian adventure, and Stephen King horror into a genuine Netflix-defining phenomenon, with the Upside Down and Eleven's nosebleed powers becoming instant pop-culture shorthand. It proved streaming could manufacture a monocultural hit the old networks used to own.

Premiered: 2016Seasons: 5IMDb: 8.6/10

added by IJRin 10 rankings

Narcos

Wagner Moura's Pablo Escobar turned the rise and fall of the Medellín cartel into pulpy, docu-style crime television that made Spanish-language dialogue and Colombian history mainstream Netflix viewing worldwide. Its blend of archival footage and operatic violence set the template for the true-crime-adjacent prestige drama boom that followed.

Premiered: 2015Seasons: 3IMDb: 8.8/10

added by IJRin 5 rankings

Peaky Blinders▼ Falling

Cillian Murphy's Tommy Shelby, all razor-blade cap and thousand-yard stare, turned Birmingham gangster history into stylish, anachronistic-soundtrack myth-making that made Nick Cave needle drops and tailored three-piece suits feel dangerous again. It became a global streaming phenomenon on style and swagger alone, proving atmosphere could carry a show as much as plot.

Premiered: 2013Seasons: 6IMDb: 8.8/10

added by IJRin 6 rankings

Atlanta▼ Falling

Donald Glover's surreal, genre-hopping half-hour turned Atlanta's rap scene into a canvas for razor-sharp satire on race and fame, with the 'Teddy Perkins' episode alone rewriting what a comedy series was allowed to be. Its refusal to follow sitcom logic made it the most formally daring show on this list.

Premiered: 2016Seasons: 4IMDb: 8.6/10

added by IJRin 10 rankings

Downton Abbey▼ Falling

Julian Fellowes' upstairs-downstairs costume drama became an unlikely global sensation, turning Maggie Smith's Dowager Countess zingers into must-quote television and proving there was a massive appetite for gentle, class-conscious period soap opera. It kicked off the decade's prestige-costume-drama wave before flaming out in its own gentility.

Premiered: 2010Seasons: 6IMDb: 8.7/10

added by IJRin 3 rankings

The Crown▼ Falling

Claire Foy and later Olivia Colman's Queen Elizabeth II turned royal history into lavish, meticulously researched soap opera, with the Suez Crisis and Margaret's doomed romance proving the monarchy could sustain prestige-drama scrutiny season after season. Its lavish budget and recasting gimmick made it Netflix's flagship prestige bet of the decade.

Premiered: 2016Seasons: 6IMDb: 8.6/10

added by IJRin 7 rankings

The Mandalorian▼ Falling

Jon Favreau's Star Wars gamble turned a stoic bounty hunter and a green puppet nicknamed Baby Yoda into an overnight internet-breaking phenomenon, proving Disney+ could launch a flagship hit out of the gate. It brought blockbuster-scale spectacle to the small screen and single-handedly justified the streaming platform's existence.

Premiered: 2019Seasons: 3IMDb: 8.6/10

added by IJRin 6 rankings

The Boys▼ Falling

Amazon's ultraviolent deconstruction of the superhero genre turned Homelander's smiling sociopathy into a scathing satire of corporate-owned heroism and celebrity worship, with Karl Urban's Butcher fueling a nihilistic revenge plot against the invincible. It arrived right as superhero fatigue set in and made mocking the genre feel more vital than another entry in it.

Premiered: 2019Seasons: 4IMDb: 8.6/10

added by IJRin 5 rankings