Streaming might’ve ended the Golden Age of Television a few years ago, but there have still been plenty of television masterpieces in the past decade. We even got a Breaking Bad spinoff that lived up to the original. From Andor to Arcane to Atlanta, these are the greatest TV shows to come along in the last 10 years.
10
Better Things
Pamela Adlon’s Ode To Single Motherhood
Television as a medium has traditionally pushed mothers into the background and shied away from showing the harsh realities of motherhood. In 2016, Pamela Adlon came in to rectify that. Drawing on Adlon’s own experiences as a single mother, Better Things is a raw, honest portrayal of the rollercoaster of raising three daughters.
Better Things tossed all the conventions of television out the window, and in doing so, reflected the beauty (and, occasionally, the ugliness) of real life much more authentically than most other shows on TV. It flits between laugh-out-loud hilarious and tears-in-your-eyes heartbreaking. Better Things won a much-deserved Peabody Award for shining a spotlight on an underrepresented but universally relatable experience.
9
Severance
The Dystopia Of Work-Life Balance
It’s getting harder and harder to maintain a healthy work-life balance, and Dan Erickson came up with the perfect dystopian extreme through which to satirize that struggle. Severance takes place in a world where corporate employees can have their consciousness split between their work lives and their home lives, so they essentially become two separate people.
A great premise is one thing, but the execution has to do it justice. Thanks to Erickson’s keen sense of storytelling and Ben Stiller’s sharp cinematic vision, the execution of Severance goes above and beyond its premise. Every mindless corporate initiative has a ridiculous parallel in the twisted world of Severance; it’s as darkly funny as it is deeply depressing.
8
The Bear
The Anxiety-Inducing Chaos Of A Professional Kitchen
There’s been a lot of debate about The Bear’s categorization at the Emmys, because the case could be made that it’s both a comedy and a drama. The Bear has some hilarious moments, but it often flirts with tragedy. Christopher Storer has deftly captured the stress and chaos of a professional kitchen (and, with it, the stress and chaos of life in general).
The first two seasons of The Bear are two of the greatest seasons of television ever produced — there isn’t a single bad episode in either of them. The subsequent seasons have fallen short of that standard of perfection, with a slower pace and occasionally aimless storytelling, but it’s still a cut above most other shows on the air.
7
Atlanta
Donald Glover’s Surreal Satire
The music industry is so bizarre and otherworldly that it often feels like a completely different dimension. Donald Glover took that notion and ran with it in his delightfully surreal, sadly underrated satire Atlanta. Atlanta started off with a typical TV premise about a down-on-his-luck college dropout trying to do right by his daughter while managing his cousin’s hip-hop career.
But as the series went on, it increasingly moved away from that conventional premise and ventured further and further outside the box. Atlanta became renowned for its use of standalone bottle episodes that didn’t feature anyone from the main cast and dabbled in other genres — it even had a horror episode, the notorious “Teddy Perkins.”
6
Succession
The One Percent Have Problems, Too
Jesse Armstrong did the impossible with his satirical HBO drama Succession. He introduced a bunch of one-percenters who are obscenely rich, deeply flawed, and actively destroying the world through capitalism, and he managed to make audiences fall in love with them. You’ll laugh at how evil the Roys are, but you’ll be surprised by how much you relate to them.
The series takes a lot of sharp digs at its wealthy characters, but what keeps you coming back is that it also empathizes with them. It looks into how they became the way they are, and shows that they’re all using various methods to mask a deep well of pain and sadness.
5
Arcane
The Best Video Game Show Ever Made
Over the past decade, the video game adaptation curse has been broken. Some of the best shows of the last 10 years, from The Last of Us to Fallout, have been based on video game franchises. But they all pale in comparison to Arcane, a beautifully crafted animated series set in the world of League of Legends.
Arcane has something for everyone; it rewards long-time fans of the League of Legends franchise, but it works just as well for audiences who have never even heard of it. The storytelling and characterization are rich, the voice acting (particularly by Hailee Steinfeld and Ella Purnell) is really powerful, and the animation is visually stunning.
4
Chernobyl
The Horrors Of A Nuclear Disaster
Craig Mazin was mostly known for writing Hangover and Scary Movie sequels before doing a complete 180 with his incredible HBO miniseries Chernobyl. This haunting five-episode series chronicles the fallout of the titular nuclear disaster. It opens with the explosion, and only gets more shocking and horrifying from there. It’s scarier than any full-blown horror show.
Chernobyl isn’t the easiest show to watch — you have to see people die of radiation poisoning and you have to see soldiers gun down irradiated dogs — but it’s a powerful study of a real-life disaster. Above all, it’s about the quest for truth as intrepid scientists defy the ruthless Soviet government in a futile bid to prevent a cover-up.
3
Fleabag
Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Darkly Hilarious Masterpiece
Phoebe Waller-Bridge created the character of Fleabag for her acclaimed live show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. But she developed the character even further and turned her into a global icon with her TV adaptation. Fleabag is about a fourth-wall-breaking twentysomething woman trying to navigate a litany of personal and professional struggles in the modern world.
It’s a hilariously frank, well-observed portrait of a modern woman, played spectacularly by Waller-Bridge. Fleabag is a classic antihero: she’s angry and cynical, but she’s also deeply vulnerable and endearing. There’s no other show quite like Fleabag, because it could’ve only come from the mind of this specific creator. This is auteur-driven television at its very best.
2
Andor
Star Wars For Adults
Since Disney acquired Lucasfilm, its Star Wars output has been very hit-and-miss. But all the misses were worth it for the bona fide masterpiece that is Andor. It feels reductive to call Andor the best Star Wars show ever made, because it’s one of the greatest TV shows ever made, period.
It helps that creator Tony Gilroy had very little interest in Star Wars to begin with. He simply set out to tell a powerful story about a revolutionary rising through the ranks in the righteous fight against an evil dictatorship. He simply used George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away as a backdrop upon which to tell this tale of revolution.
1
Better Call Saul
Breaking Bad Got Outdone By Its Spinoff
When a Breaking Bad spinoff centered on Walter White’s lawyer was first announced, it seemed like a terrible idea. Saul Goodman was just a comic-relief character, and the benchmark his spinoff would be held to was arguably the greatest TV show of all time. But, against all odds, Better Call Saul managed to live up to (and maybe even surpass) its predecessor.
By digging into the backstory that led once-wayward young attorney Jimmy McGill to don the mask of a clown, Better Call Saul made him every bit the devilishly complex, three-dimensional antihero that Walt was. Better Call Saul is a rare example of a series where each season is better than the last — it never hit a wrong note.