Unlike film (arguably), TV has been at its apex in the 21st century. This is the era of peak TV – the period when small-screen pleasures went from formulaic sitcoms with studio sets and laugh tracks to big-budget, big-screen worthy extravaganzas. Hollywood stars crossed over; stories became grand, sprawling and expansive, stretching across countless ambitious seasons; and characters gained a level of complexity and depth that is never fully possible over the course of a two-and-a-half-hour cinematic run time.
In more recent years – and particularly with the conclusion of behemoths like Game of Thrones and – there’s been much mindless, mid TV, sure, but also shows which have come out of nowhere and taken over our collective cultural consciousness.
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To that end, we’ve amassed a compendium of the very best TV shows of the 21st century so far, from early pioneers and now-cult sleeper hits to the brand new offerings we can’t stop binge-watching. You won’t find on this list, alas (it began airing in 1999, and we’ve expressly stuck to series which premiered from 2000 onwards), but still, there’s plenty to get stuck into. So, draw the curtains, make yourself a hot drink, settle in on your sofa and let the marathon rewatching begin.
Where to start? The performance of a lifetime from Jean Smart as veteran stand-up Deborah Vance (she took home the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series Emmy Award for all five seasons of the show). The volatile, complex, hilarious and ultimately life-enhancing central relationship – love story – between Deborah and Ava (Hannah Einbinder), the right-on Gen Z writer drafted in to try and zhuzh up her tired schtick. The unhinged comedy genius of Meg Stalter, who delivers some of the most unforgettable lines in a show packed with them. Not forgetting co-showrunner Paul W Downs as Deborah’s talent manager Jimmy – the perfect straight man to off the wall Kayla and yet another standout in a brilliant ensemble cast. So many shows start off strong only to carry on for too long – limping to an inevitable close after finally running out of ideas (and viewers). With , you get the sense that all five seasons were approached with the same level of thought and care, and respect for its devoted audience. Watching the emotional finale earlier this year, it was clear the creators knew from the start where this story was going. They went out on a high, just as Deborah would have wanted. –
There’s no shortage of procedural crime dramas on TV, and the quality... varies. But back in 2021, quietly and with little fanfare, Brad Ingelsby delivered a Platonic ideal of the genre, served up in seven taut episodes that built to a deliciously satisfying, albeit devastating, denouement. A resolutely unvarnished Kate Winslet is pitch-perfect as Mare, a divorced police detective struggling to keep it together at work while privately battling profound grief. When a teenage girl is found murdered in a small, downtrodden Pennsylvania town, Mare’s investigation forces her to question people she’s known all her life – even those closest to her. And to confront her own pain. It’s totally gripping from start to finish, and as a bonus, features Jean Smart in characteristically scene-stealing form as Mare’s snarky, sozzled mother. –
When Richard Gadd’s came out in 2024, it felt like nothing we’d seen before. The overnight Netflix sensation – which follows struggling comedian, Donny (Gadd), who’s being severely stalked and harassed by a woman called Martha (Jessica Gunning) – is both bone-chilling and morbidly fascinating, whipsmart and nuanced in its depiction of harm and trauma (it’s described as a “dark comedy”, though it definitely leans almost fully towards the former). In one episode, for instance, Donny seems to encourage his stalker. In others, we see him behave in ways that he’s ashamed of, too. Just as in real life, nothing is straightforward and nothing is black and white. The drama – based on Gadd’s own life – wound up winning six Emmy Awards and two Golden Globes, and is still one of the strongest releases the streamer has produced in the past decade or so.
Taut, campy and addictive in equal measure, there hasn’t been a crime drama quite like David E Kelley’s in the years since it aired – – nearly a decade ago. With a stellar cast of A-listers at the top of their game – Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep, Alexander Skarsgård, Adam Scott, Shailene Woodley and Zoë Kravitz among others – there’s something shiny and deliciously high-calibre about this tale of coastal Californian mums going at each other – and their involvement in the series’ central murder (which remains a mystery until the final episode of the first season). With eternal one-liners such as Renata Klein’s (Dern) “I will not be rich!” and a soundtrack by Michael Kiwanuka that still soothes my soul to this day, there’s so much to love about this HBO classic. Bring on season three! –
… good TV?! I know, it’s a bit like saying the sky is blue. But I watched it again recently just to remind myself of a time when the small screen had the big bucks, and it’s just as top-tier as it’s always been. Creator Vince Gilligan didn’t just go with a strong concept and run with it for five seasons (an underestimated chemistry teacher turns to cooking meth with an ex-student to fund his cancer treatment and gradually turns into a drug lord). is much more than that: each narrative arc unfurls with the tight precision of a world-class film; each character develops in ways that are both unexpected yet nuanced and justifiable; each frame feels unhurried and visually startling. Still one of the best to ever do it, honestly. –
Whether you’ve just stuck to the relatively polite British editions, dabbled in the raucous American version, or (like me) watched almost every international spin-off, the power and success of this reality TV format is undeniable: gather an eccentric bunch of contestants – regular people, celebrities or both – choose the “traitors”, and have them kill off (read: eliminate from the game) “faithfuls” in the night. Then, have them all go at each other at a tense roundtable, where madcap theories are born, friendships formed, enemies made and paranoia rampant. The second season of the UK edition is a cracker, as is the first British celebrity edition, the US’s fourth season, Australia’s first and second seasons, and the first Indian season. (Conveniently, these are all available to stream on iPlayer.) You’ll be left dissecting episodes for hours on end, rewatching clips with your jaw on the floor, and, in the case of some of these players, become fans for life. –
Proof that real prestige TV is still alive and kicking, this sumptuous period piece from Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks is truly breathtaking. Set in late 16th- and early 17th-century Japan, it chronicles the fallout of the death of the Taikō, the Japanese regent, which has left an adolescent heir and a dangerous power vacuum. As plots are hatched, four fascinating figures emerge: Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), a noble lord whose intellect and influence threatens his rivals; Lady Mariko (a captivating Anna Sawai), a woman with a dark past who is loyal to Toranaga; another ally, the scheming, swaggering Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano); and John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), an English sailor keen to establish trade with Japan. The exquisite costumes, the grand sets, the glorious landscapes (British Columbia stands in for feudal Japan), the precisely-plotted palace intrigue... it’s all masterful. No wonder, then, that the show took home four Golden Globes, four Critics’ Choice Awards, four SAG Awards and a whopping 18 Emmys, becoming the first ever non-English-language series to be named Best Drama. Now bring on season two. –
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A kind of meets Mare of Easttown, this gripping police procedural from Elizabeth Meriwether (, ) has an irresistible premise: Alice (Emmy Rossum), an FBI agent with a very complicated past of her own, gets drawn into a case involving a serial killer (’s Lola Petticrew) who, it turns out, is a survivor of teenage sex trafficking and is bumping off the men who exploited her. It’s a cat-and-mouse caper I inhaled within the space of a few hours, but unlike so many other bingeable thrillers of its kind, it’s twisty and messy and fascinating, too, allowing these women – and also Alice’s steely, alcoholic, wise-cracking boss (Quincy Tyler Bernstine) – to be fully and completely themselves. The performances are brilliant (including from the supporting cast, which includes Scoot McNairy, Jake Lacy, Rob Yang and Hope Davis), the breathy, heart-pumping score is haunting, and in the age of the Epstein files, its subject matter couldn’t feel more timely. –
At a time when TV was feeling a little tiresome and safe, gay hockey romance shot out of left-field like a puck across the ice. I must admit, it took me a while to warm up to the idea – as someone neither into hockey nor men, I wasn’t convinced it’d appeal to broader interests. Clearly, I was wrong. Beautifully written, meticulously paced and, crucially, full of hot people, entices the viewer slowly, so slowly you don’t even know it’s happening, much like a slow-burn situationship that transmutes into true love.
I think one of the things that made so interesting and notable was also the way it stirred up conversations about desire, and – despite being centred on two men – what women want, too. It left straight men baffled at the rabid reactions of their partners, and gay men baffled at being thrust into centre stage in this way, for better or for worse. Mostly though, with its neat six episodes and sexy soundtrack, it’s just an example of good TV done well; something all of us are desperate for.
An alumnus of ’90s hit , R Scott Gemmill’s searing update on the reliable medical drama formula is about as good as TV gets today. Each season is set over a single shift – a frantic 14-hour working day – at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center’s supremely chaotic ER, presided over by the grizzled Noah Wyle’s dreamboat attending physician Dr Michael “Robby” Robinavitch. Patients file in and out, some giving us only a brief glimpse into their fascinating, complicated lives, and others staying longer, their fears, joys and hopes unspooling for all to see. Equally vulnerable are Dr Robby’s colleagues, played masterfully by the likes of Supriya Ganesh, Tracy Ifeachor, Fiona Dourif, Patrick Ball, Taylor Dearden, Isa Briones, Gerran Howell and Katherine LaNasa – medical professionals who put on a brave face as their sector (and often their own lives, too) crumble around them.
This is not a show which requires gimmicks – showy single takes, celebrity cameos, illogical twists. Instead, it focuses on and nails the fundamentals: gripping storytelling, painstakingly realistic depictions of medical procedures, compelling, lived-in performances, and a deeply moving commitment to reflecting the world as it is today (rife with gun violence, vaccine scepticism, threats to further limit abortion access, racial inequities and the increasing prominence of generative AI). It’s already scooped five Emmys, three Critics’ Choice Awards, two Golden Globes and two Actor Awards, and its haul will surely grow larger with each coming season.
On the surface, is a food and travel show. In reality, it’s so much more than that. Over 12 seasons, the late Anthony Bourdain (a former line cook whose brilliant memoir turned him into an overnight sensation back in 2000) delivers unique insights into some of the most far flung – and frequently misunderstood – places on earth, as well as Europe’s most revered culinary destinations and a diverse mix of towns and cities on his own doorstep in the US. Yes, there’s food – tiger fish limboke on the Congo River, slow-cooked lamb in Iran, pork scratchings and a pint in London – but the viewer inevitably comes away having learned something new and unexpected about wherever it is Bourdain finds himself. Local dishes and traditions tend to serve as a jumping off point to reveal something about the historic, cultural, socioeconomic or geopolitical factors that inform a place. (The Libya and Beirut episodes, and the award-winning Israel and Palestine instalment are great examples.)
It’s a frequently moving watch – more so, of course, following Bourdain’s suicide in 2018. His blend of curiosity and humour, empathy and easy charm was central to the success of this unique show, and why he continues to inspire such devotion years after his death. But so too, perhaps, was the darkness he was open about struggling with. “Travel isn’t always pretty,” he said once. “Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you – it should change you.”
There’s two things I like in my telly: period dramas and shows about rich people. which ran for six, hefty seasons (and three movies thereafter), ticks both boxes in fantastic fashion. From the brain of Julian Fellowes, the story begins in 1912 when the affluent Crawley family – inhabitants of the sprawling Abbey – hear news of the RMS Titanic’s sinking. Turns out, the heir to their fortune has died onboard and the family is thrown into disaster. Marriage for the three daughters – Mary, Sybil and Edith – has become more important than ever, and the new heir, lawyer and distant cousin, Matthew, starts off as more foe than friend. Downstairs, meanwhile, their serving staff have trials and joys and secrets of their own to contend with. Marriage, death and a healthy dose of wartime scandal? Yes please!
Virtuosic is the only word I can use to describe this miniseries, which stars its creator, writer and co-director, Michaela Coel – 12 ingenious, hilarious, heartbreaking and utterly delicious episodes, some of which almost function as standalones, before coming together to form a fascinating picture of contemporary life, love, friendship, creativity and trauma. At the centre of this wondrous whirlwind is Arabella, a novelist racing to meet a deadline who takes a break with a wild night out – and, the next morning, can’t quite remember what happened. As she pieces it all together, with the help of her best friends (Weruche Opia and Paapa Essiedu), you’re in for a breathless ride. This is the show which sparked an urgent, nationwide conversation about stealthing, was part of a wave of releases which made on-set intimacy coordinators de rigueur, and one which snagged an Emmy and five TV BAFTAs, with its snub at the Golden Globes raising questions about the judgement of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and eventually precipitating that organisation’s demise. All in all, a triumph. –
To me, Armando Iannucci’s wonderfully low-fi, absurd, exquisitely scripted and side-splittingly profane political satire is probably the best TV show of all time, really. Peter Capaldi is faultless as the sweary, raging force of nature, Malcolm Tucker, the government’s unhinged director of communications, who spends his days fighting (and also often starting) fires and taking political scalps. Across four seasons and a handful of specials, we’re treated to gaffes galore, explosive showdowns and countless unforgettable supporting turns, from Rebecca Front as a bumbling cabinet minister and James Smith as an eternally frustrated special adviser, to Chris Addison as an ambitious upstart and Joanna Scanlan as a humourless bureaucrat. It’s just brilliant stuff, and laid the foundation for so much that’s followed suit, from to (the latter’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, famously cut his teeth in the writers’ room for The Thick of It). –
When was first unveiled, it seemed an unlikely proposition: a -meets- drama set inside a cut-throat London investment bank, with a pilot episode directed by Lena Dunham. What a delight, then, to see it bloom over four seasons into one of the brilliantly written, funniest and most stylish shows on television. Much like and before it, has also served as a showcase and launchpad for a new generation of acting talent, from Myha’la as the fiercely intelligent (and possibly fraudulent) Harper, to Harry Lawtey as the cheeky but bumbling working-class outsider Robert, to Marisa Abela as the troubled heiress Yasmin. With showrunners Mickey Downs and Konrad Kay both having spent time working in finance, there’s a piercing ring of truth to how they depict this cold-blooded world of predators and prey. But thanks to the show’s exceptional performances – along with its wild plot twists and positively Shakespearean reversals of fortune – it’s already become a contemporary classic. –
You don’t usually recall where you were when a certain show aired. But who can forget one’s whereabouts – in an emotional sense – when emerged in the peak of the pandemic, when we had all been told to stay home for… who knew how long? What better atmosphere to lose yourself in the heady, erotic antics of novelist Sally Rooney’s college-age characters, translated to the screen by the charismatic duo of Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal. Indeed, it was the chemistry of this pair that sustained the show, along with Rooney’s particular slant on sex, class and coming of age in the 21st century. There are certain works that feel like they help give shape to the understanding of a generation, and with its acute sense of stalled promise, inequalities inherited at birth, and the difficulty of sustaining love across those chasms, , both the book and the show, feels like one of them. –
When it aired in 2016, felt like a bolt from the blue. Sure, there had been shows that broke the fourth wall, but none did so with quite the same conspiratorial panache as Phoebe Waller-Bridge, delivering her straight-to-camera confessions with winking glee and singular wit. The show, which reified a kind of hapless, single-girl London life, while foregrounding larger themes of grief and family, was funny, dark and unique to Waller-Bridge’s vision of the world. It was so distinctive, in fact, that its creator had the good sense to call it quits after a stunning second season. (We have that season to thank for introducing the entire concept of the “hot priest” into our collective cultural consciousness, as well as introducing the vast majority of us to Andrew Scott.) It was a bittersweet goodbye, but its two perfect seasons will be forever undiluted. –
It took a while for to emerge out of the shadow of , but eventually this six-season drama, about a small-time Albuquerque lawyer named Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) becoming the drug-cartel attorney Saul Goodman turned into the best thing on television, and for its devotees, an even greater achievement than . Season by season, upped the tension and the emotional stakes until the relationship between Jimmy and girlfriend, lawyer Kim Wexler, played magnificently by Rhea Seehorn, became profoundly moving and ultimately tragic. The final episodes in the sixth season, shot in magisterial black and white, are masterpieces. –
I sporadically lived in Belfast while Game of Thrones was filming around Northern Ireland. I would regularly see Sophie Turner in my favourite Italian restaurant (she having just wrapped maybe, or before a night shoot). I’d see Kit Harington and co in the dive bars, and people I went to school with onscreen as Winterfell villagers and the Army of the Dead. Through the years, embedded itself in the north of Ireland, whose rugged coastline became the Iron Islands, and its castles the ancestral Stark homes. Location tours, themed escape rooms, and babies called Arya continue to this day.
Well beyond Belfast, its eight seasons captivated fantasy heads and sceptics alike with expansive world-building, and intricate stories of sex, magic and faith, fucked up families and power grabs, dragons and disembowelling. Has there ever been a show so massive and communal, that would have people rapt at the watercooler and on Reddit threads discussing red weddings, epic (and expensive) battle scenes, and winter, , coming? The finale had the impossible task of putting the monstrous show to an unquiet grave, and while some storylines seemed rushed and others completely ignored, even everyone’s least favourite season of is heart palpitating. Plus, to watch to the end is to see Arya’s final and most satisfying kill. –
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What was and what did it become? It started as a quirky black comedy-thriller about a hitman who wants to be an actor in Hollywood, a vehicle for the deadpan wit of its star and co-creator Bill Hader. But by its third and fourth seasons it had become profoundly strange and wonderful: a show that was part art project, part emotional rollercoaster, part bravura display of filmmaking chops. There was jolting violence and savage satire and melancholy that clung to you. The performances were off the charts, especially Sarah Goldberg as Sally, playing a careerist actor who is both vulnerable and casually cruel, and Anthony Carrigan as NoHo Hank, a live-wire gay Chechen criminal who steals each scene he’s in. Hader directed every episode of the incredible final season and made the show entirely his own. –
is undoubtedly one of the defining shows of the last quarter century. And yet, the reaction to its debut in 2018 was weirdly hostile: did we need a show about wealthy people acting ruthlessly toward each other? It turns out we very much did. And by ’s second season its following had grown and it was steadily becoming a phenomenon that reflected, better than anything you can find on TV, the corrupting influence of wealth and power. It also had the most magnificently realised characters – Kendall, Roman, Shiv, Logan, Tom – all of whom you surely know by name. Four seasons, each one of them a masterpiece of drama, comedy, satire, and packed with scorched-earth emotional power. Nothing compares to it. –
A short list of ’ greatest contributions: Adam Driver, Allison Williams’ squirm-inducing rendition of Kanye West’s “Stronger”, and destigmatising HPV (after all, “all adventurous women do”). But perhaps the greatest gift of this six-season series, courtesy of its creator Lena Dunham, was the way it captured a shambolic season of life with humour and unflinching honesty. Dunham was subject to much negative attention during and after the show’s run, which has led to a characterisation of and its four central twentysomething white women navigating post-recession New York – as out of touch. But for anyone still holding out, I’d like to insist that acknowledges the ugliness of being a young person with grace and perspective. Plus, no matter how bad of a day I’m having, I can always turn on an episode and be reminded that Hannah, Marnie, Shoshanna or Jessa will be having a worse one. –
Full disclosure: I’ve always been obsessed with lost eras and yesteryear’s subcultures – the more recent the better. Not for me the period drama that limns Versailles under Louis XIV: I’d much rather an archaeological evocation of a time still so fresh in (American) history that one can almost smell the cigarettes and the aftershave. loomed large on the horizon as soon as I learned it had been green-lighted, and its actual appearance back in 2007 was, for me, a cause of celebration: here was the golden age of midcentury Manhattan; the ad campaigns that sold Americans virtually everything they suddenly began dreaming of; here were the gin-soaked corner-office shenanigans, Man In The Gray Flannel Suit-style conformity, pre-MeToo sexual politics; and, looming in the distance but approaching faster than Don and Peggy and Joan and Roger and Pete and everyone else realised, here were the swinging Sixties to blow the whole foundation to pieces. Come for the spot-on wardrobe, interiors and period dialogue; stay for the epic clash of civilisations. –
I still remember popping in DVDs of , discovering this Baltimore crime drama sometime after it had first aired on HBO and thinking that nothing else I’d ever seen on TV could compare. Yes, there’d been and and other Golden Age prestige dramas but not one of them had ’s blend of authenticity, streetwise intelligence and civic sophistication. We now think of its creator David Simon as an uncompromising television-creator hero and he is, but the strength of the cast is equally staggering to recall: Dominic West, Idris Elba, the late, great Michael K Williams – not to mention the cream of the crop crime writers that joined Simon as the series went on: George Pelecanos, Richard Price and Denis Lehane. If for some ludicrous reason you have never seen this show, you’re in for a ride. –
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched 30 Rock start to finish, but whenever I do, I manage to unearth a joke that I’ve missed, usually delivered at machine-gun pace (I defy anyone to find a higher joke-per-minute ratio). The smart, layered writing, committedly goofy performances, and absurdist tone enshrined 30 Rock in the comedy canon and laid the foundation for great sitcoms to come (I see as its most obvious successor). The cast all deserve their flowers: Fey as overstretched showrunner Liz Lemon, Alec Baldwin as the alpha male capitalist Jack Donaghy, Jane Krakowski as the narcissistic, fame-hungry Jenna Maroney, Tracy Morgan as the mercurial, childlike star Tracy Jordan and Jack McBrayer as the provincial, happy-go-lucky NBC page Kenneth Parcell. Just as wonderful is the high-octane roster of guest stars: Chris Parnell as Dr Leo Spaceman, Elaine Stritch as Jack’s disapproving mother Colleen, Dean Winters as Liz’s deadbeat ex Dennis Duffy – not to mention delightful one-offs like Carrie Fisher, Al Gore and Isabella Rossellini, whose delivery of “Oh dammit Johnny, you know I love my Big Beef ’N Cheddar!” deserves every accolade. –
I’d argue that there is no greater cultural byproduct of George W Bush’s presidency than Arrested Development. Following the Bluths – a dysfunctional Orange County real-estate family forced to live together in one of their company’s model homes when their patriarch, George Sr (Jeffrey Tambor) is arrested on charges of “light treason” – explores complicated family dynamics against the backdrop of the War on Terror. Make no mistake: while the disastrous early Bush years inform the series’s tone, the whole thing is nevertheless a lighthearted delight filled with wordplay and bizarro extended bits (The Literal Doctor, “loose seal”/Lucille, and Gene Parmesan all spring to mind). Each Bluth delivers a screamingly funny performance of their own, including Will Arnett as the family’s eldest son Gob, an unserious magician (and spiritual predecessor to ’s Connor Roy), Portia di Rossi’s spoiled, self-absorbed Lindsay, and David Cross as her clueless husband Tobias Fünke, who pivots toward an unsuccessful acting career after losing his medical license. ’s crown jewel is the late Jessica Walters as the cold, judgmental Lucille, who – with as little as a wink – stole every scene she was in. If you haven’t seen yet, I don’t know what to tell you, besides: what are you waiting for? Also… whatever you do… just pretend it ends at season three. –
A standard-bearer for high-concept prestige television – and a chronicle of the Fishers, a Los Angeles family running a well-trafficked funeral home after the death of their paterfamilias – was crammed with lights-out performances. (I’d single out Peter Krause as the searching, tragic Nate; Michael C Hall as his brother, David; Lauren Ambrose as their sister, Claire; Frances Conroy as their neurotic mother, Ruth; and Rachel Griffiths as Nate’s depressive, shiatsu-practitioner girlfriend, Brenda, at the expense of so many others.) But so, too, did it balance enough light gore, dark humour, sexual drama and existential inquiry to make every kind of viewer happy. While I can’t say that I rank its series finale, prominently featuring the song “Breathe Me“ by Sia, as highly as most, I find all five sprawling, ambitious seasons to be total killers. –
If we’re ranking Jewish contributions to popular culture, is probably up there with matzo ball soup and Jesus Christ. Starring Larry David as a fictionalised version of himself, was a quarter-decade-long experiment in situational comedy – a head-on collision of social mores and Murphy’s Law in which David’s minor transgressions spiralled into full-blown disasters. Joining David were Cheryl Hines as his long-suffering wife, Jeff Garlin as his manager and co-conspirator, Susie Essman as Jeff’s hotheaded wife, and JB Smoove as his roommate, Leon. Though the show wrapped in 2024, David continues to delight with behaviour that feels like it belongs in a lost episode: recently he was publicly chastised for throttling Elmo on . David is also responsible for introducing Hines to her now-husband – the brain-wormed, animal carcass aficionado and Trump ally Robert F Kennedy Jr – something that would almost certainly be deemed too far-fetched even for the show. –
In the opening scene of Julia Davis’s blacker-than-black comedy masterpiece we see husband and wife Jill and Terry sitting in the doctor’s office, the bleach-blonde, heavily made-up Jill wailing “Why me?!” after the doctor delivers a cancer diagnosis. “Come on Jill, let’s put things into perspective,” Terry says, feebly. “It’s me that’s got the cancer.” It’s a swift introduction to one of comedy’s most virtuosically vile characters: the sociopathic, malignant narcissist beauty therapist Jill Tyrell – in her words, “a very attractive woman in her mid-20s with a lust for life and a flexible spine” – who goes on to fake her husband’s death by locking him up in a palliative care home while she ruthlessly pursues her new neighbour, Don. (The only hitch? Don is an alcoholic and his wife, Cath, uses a wheelchair due to multiple sclerosis, not that any of this will stop Jill from honing in on her prey.) The show’s wildest moments have made it a camp classic: you’ll never forget Jill attending Terry’s (fake) funeral in Victorian mourning garb and riding a black steed down the aisle, before launching into a eulogy that reads more like a character assassination (“I will not hear a bad word against Terry,” she says, “but he was a very bad husband and quite an evil man”). But it also cleverly skewers a very British strain of crippling politeness – and then there are the more gonzo moments, such as murder by poisoned strawberry mousse, or the head-spinning orgy of bad taste that is season two’s “artificial insemination” sequence. Through Jill, Davis gleefully steamrolls every social norm in existence – and what a joy it is to watch her do it. –
While the American version of may be one of the most beloved shows in TV history, in my eyes, nothing can beat the British original – whether for sheer cringe-per-minute, or the desperately drab banality of the commuter belt town of Slough. (Personally, I can never forget the first-season episode depicting the kind of “training day” every office employee dreads, which descends into chaos and concludes with Ricky Gervais’s David Brent delivering an acoustic performance of his toe-curlingly awful songs.) ’s more tasteless moments remain hysterically funny thanks to the show’s empathy: this was a series that punched up, not down. The show concludes with – spoiler alert! – office lovebirds Tim and Dawn finally ending up together, and David telling his odious misogynist of a “best friend” Chris Finch where to stick it. may have been packed with excruciatingly awkward humour, but it had plenty of heart, too. –
The United States government inspires no shortage of film and television, but is the gold standard. (And perhaps art and life were almost intertwined in this case: that the first Trump Administration felt like an extended plotline was not lost on anyone.) It followed Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer, the foul-mouthed, ruthless Vice President of the United States as she attempted to claw her way to power. Supporting her were her backstabbing chiefs of staff (Anna Chlumsky as Amy and Reid Scott as Dan), bumbling press secretary (Matt Walsh as Mike), steadfast bag man (Tony Hale as Gary), and unctuous West Wing liaison (Timothy Simons as Jonah). With its mile-a-minute pace, commitment to political incorrectness, and acerbic, expletive-laden dialogue, is a far cry from the sunnier comedies on this list, skewering every facet of the political process with a take-no-prisoners attitude. You’ll never hear “Okie dokie Annie Oakley” the same way again. –
I initially worried that my deeply subpar high-school French would be a barrier to enjoying this dramedy set within the drama-filled world of a Parisian talent agency, but as it turns out, is riotously funny, shrewdly observed and occasionally genuinely moving even if you don’t speak a word of any Romance language. The series kicks off with a young woman named Camille taking an assistant job at the fictional Agence Samuel Kerr agency where her estranged father works, just as the big boss dies (from swallowing a wasp on vacation, as one does), plunging the office into disarray. ’s unforgettable cameos – from Isabelle Huppert to Juliette Binoche to Charlotte Gainsbourg – work perfectly, anchored as they are within the world of the show. Camille Cottin is a standout as prickly, voluble talent agent Andréa Martel, but the whole cast intermingles with enough chemistry and charm to make this one of the best workplace comedies of the last decade. –
Hearing that twinkly intro of , I’m back in my teenage bedroom, my nose millimetres from my small TV, the sound down low so my mum didn’t know a) I was up after 10pm on a school night and b) I was watching those ketty English teenagers fuck and fuck with each other. But it was only ever going to be about the Bristol lot, right? I’d like to ignore the international spin-offs, and focus, if I may, only on the British TV series’ first and second generations of angsty, ravey, pilled-up teenagers. But every season’s soundtrack was stellar: “Living on a Prayer” building with the hit of ecstasy, indie by way of TV on the Radio and Hadouken!’s relentless electro rave, heartache to the sound of “Heavy Water (I’d Rather Be Sleeping)” by Grouper. The show is a bit of a time capsule now – maybe even a period drama – but ’s issues remain potent: characters lost their virginities, dealt with parents’ divorces and affairs, battled eating disorders and substance abuse, shoplifted, fought, raved, and found dysfunctional, die-hard friendships. It balanced escapism and reality with originality, wit and charm. also nurtured the burgeoning careers of young Nicholas Hoult, Dev Patel, Kaya Scodelario and Daniel Kaluuya – but to me, they’ll always be Toni, Anwar, Effie and Posh Kenneth. Somehow, in this drug-addled, neon-slashed snapshot of the mid-00s southwest England, of teenagers living little, raw, authentic lives, people from all over saw themselves. –
Really the whole Mike White oeuvre should be on this list, but for the sake of fairness (lol) we will overlook the brilliant, ahead-of-its-time satire of wellness culture that is and direct our attention to the superb (which, incidentally, contains a not insignificant strand of cultural critique itself). The concept is simple: a cast of rag-tag and also extremely well off characters washes up at a luxury resort; hijinks ensue. But this isn’t an Agatha Christie murder mystery, though there is, in each season, an untimely death. The show is a character study, a time capsule, a depiction of the clash of cultures when those who live and work to serve meet the roving one percent who believe that being tended to is their birthright – and all of this is set against some of the most stunning landscapes on earth. The show has been responsible for launching or re-launching a number of careers (all hail Jennifer Coolidge), and with such an intelligent show as the vehicle, it’s not hard to understand why. –
When premiered back in 2005, it was something of a curio. Co-created by Michael Patrick King and (in a stroke of self-aware genius) Lisa Kudrow, it followed the attempted comeback of faded sitcom star Valerie Cherish (played with eye-watering desperation by Kudrow herself) via found footage from a canned mockumentary. That meant we were given a warts-and-all window into her endless humiliations, on camera and off, as Valerie attempted to claw her way back into the limelight. (If that sounds a little bleak, rest assured the show was also uproariously funny.) Just a few months after that first season concluded, the franchise was launched, followed by two years later, only confirming ’s remarkable prescience. And in an additional stroke of genius, the show was revived nine years later, with Cherish attempting to reboot her career all over again with an HBO show, scripted around her experience of making the show documented in ’s first season. (Yes, it’s all very meta.) While the second season offered an updated – but just as stinging – satire of the fickleness of the fame game, it also took a surprising left turn towards the tough decisions Valerie had to face between her career and the people who are closest to her. You’ll laugh, you’ll cringe, and in the show’s final episode, you might even cry. Then start on season three. –
Pamela Adlon’s slightly askew self-portrait chronicles the life of a working actor who is the sole supporter of three daughters and her mother. The whole, slightly dysfunctional matriarchy (which includes a pre-Oscar Mikey Madison, playing one of her daughters) lives adjacent to one another in a hive of hormones, emotions, obligations and struggle. The show is full of love, grounded in Adlon’s charismatic performance, and at the same time rangy and weird – as true a reflection of the varied, messy endeavour of being a daughter and a mother as anything I’ve seen. The show can at times feel like a tone poem, at others a family drama. But across it all, it is a portrait of all the tangled threads of caregiving. Your life may look nothing like the world, but if you have ever been in that position, you will undoubtedly feel very seen by it. –