Vulture's TV critics compiled an ambitious overview of television in the past ten years, focusing on the shows more than the technology, the format, or the platform. It's a 257-show guide to Prestige, Peak, and every other kind of TV from the past decade
Clockwise from top: The sack of Kings Landing from Game of Thrones, Earn and his baby daughter from Atlanta, Agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks: The Return, Sherlock Holmes, the Empire chessboard, whiskey and cigars from Mad Men, The Newsroom, George Michael’s banana costume from Arrested Development, and Leslie Knope’s waffle obsession from Parks and Recreation.
There is no such thing as objective criticism, and this list certainly isn’t pretending to be anything of the sort. We included and excluded shows, praised or panned them, and chose particular lenses through which to view them, based on our own interests and value systems. Each section only mentions the series that we felt best represented that tier of quality.
Photo: HBO Enlightened Looking back, Enlightened’s focus on latent female and anti-Establishment rage, the insidiousness of social media, and the wellness obsession seems prescient. Sublimely written by Mike White and heightened by Laura Dern’s performance as Amy Jellicoe — one of the best of her career, which obviously is a bold statement — Enlightened was seminal television that feels even more seminal in retrospect.
Better Things Pamela Adlon’s series about a divorced actress raising three daughters in Los Angeles was one of many examples of the half-hour, auteur-driven format of comedy in theory — and along with its FX colleague Atlanta, it was one of the very best.
Fleabag What does a perfect television show look like? I’m pretty sure it strongly resembles Fleabag, a two-season study of a broken woman trying to rebuild her life and repair her shattered heart. Star and creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge emerged as one of the decade’s brightest new talents largely on the strength of this British import, which combined fourth-wall-shattering humor with intimate depictions of family and romantic relationships in a tone that can only be described as Waller-Bridgean.
Key & Peele The definitive sketch comedy series of this decade. Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key had free rein in their Comedy Central show to become whatever eccentric personalities popped into their heads, from a substitute teacher who pronounces every white kid’s name wrong to a pair of valets who fanboy about Liam Neeson until they explode.
Photo: HBO Veep Somehow, this brilliant HBO political comedy managed to stay five steps ahead of the actual madness in Washington, introducing what seemed like wild story lines and jokes only to frequently see them pop up on cable news days, weeks, or months later. “Our show started out as a political satire,” Julia Louis-Dreyfus said while accepting her fifth Emmy for playing Selina Meyer, “but it now feels more like a sobering documentary.” She was right.
Barry Two seasons in, the story of a hit man desperate to ditch his murderous career path and take up acting is already a show damn near close to perfect. Co-creator Bill Hader, who has won back-to-back Emmys as Outstanding Lead Actor, continues to find greater depth and nuance to his portrayal of Barry Berkman. The supporting characters, from Sarah Goldberg’s Sally to Stephen Root’s Fuches, keep revealing new shades to their personalities, thanks to the sharp writing and committed performances.
Girls The inevitable observation about Girls is that it defined a voice of a generation in this decade. But the truth is that it defined an entire kind of TV show: the New York post-comedy shaped by millennials coming of age . The long cultural reach of Girls is notable in and of itself, but the show is also better constructed, more thoughtful, and funnier than the version of it that got flattened into easy think-piece fodder.
Lodge 49 A wildly underappreciated show that deserved a much bigger audience, Lodge 49 was an aimless and existentialist meandering through the ruins of post-capitalism set against a beach noir backdrop dotted with swimming pools. If you didn’t watch it, you’re far from alone, but you missed out on something special. —KVA
Transparent It became outdated in the world it helped create, but Transparent still marks an important crest in the decade’s wave of amazing, artful, serious TV comedies. —KVA Prestige TV That Was Actually Good The small-screen equivalent of good Oscar bait, these shows backed up their big ideas, big names, and big money with real substance. The Act A heartbreaking true-crime drama about the Munchausen-by-proxy case involving Dee Dee Blanchard and her daughter, Gypsy, elevated by extraordinary performances by Patricia Arquette and Joey King. —JC
The Crown If it’s possible for a show to be both stolidly built and exquisitely refined, that’s what The Crown is. Its bones are big obvious prestige mainstays — power! Masculinity! Sadness! — and its performances are delicate and profound. —KVA Photo: HBO Euphoria A go-for-broke, explicit, and emotionally turbocharged teen melodrama from writer-producer-director Sam Levinson, Euphoria played like the result of a thought experiment: What would happen if you crossed Boogie Nights with My So-Called Life, then cast Zendaya in the leading role? Favoring dreamlike or hypertheatrical visuals over plain vanilla “realism,” this was a rare series that bent images, sounds, and music to reflect characters’ inner states.
The Get Down Widely maligned and neglected by an entertainment press that seemed mainly interested in the project’s cost, this exuberant, exhausting, wildly overscaled period piece from director Baz Luhrmann and Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis felt like an answer to, and continuation of, Mad Men. The story depicted New York’s transformation in the era of hip-hop, disco, urban decay, and proto-gentrification.
Manhattan It was an experiment on WGN, a network that never really worked, but that wasn’t the show’s fault. All the thematic ideas that prestige TV came around to later in the decade , Manhattan already knew. —KVA Olive Kitteridge Directed by Lisa Cholodenko and adapted by playwright Jane Anderson from Elizabeth Strout’s novel, this small-town miniseries about a retired schoolteacher was a rare example of a lavishly produced drama with no genre elements, set entirely in a world of mundane people and events. The multigenerational story was so finely observed that the result tore viewers’ hearts out. —MZS
Photo: HBO Sharp Objects Jean-Marc Vallée directed this adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel, under the auspices of showrunner Marti Noxon, and gave it a language that mixed southern Gothic with stream-of-consciousness and a healthy dose of Led Zeppelin. The cast — Amy Adams, Patricia Clarkson, Chris Messina, Elizabeth Perkins, and future Little Woman Eliza Scanlen — was superb.
Billions Nobody had more fun making TV this decade than the people onscreen and behind the scenes of Billions, and it translates into a TV show that’s just a gloriously satisfying good time. Plus wealth porn. —KVA Documentary Now! This IFC comedy from Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen, and Rhys Thomas represents a new definition of niche programming: a weekly send-up of documentary cinema so specific that it elicits knowing laughter from fans who’ve watched the films being parodied so many times that they can catch a sly reference to a particular line or shot.
The Good Place A cheery disposition always belied this sitcom’s weighty ethical concerns and the dire circumstances of its cast of characters. In its four seasons, The Good Place left no stone unturned in its exploration of the afterlife, the possibility of soul mates, and the importance of community.
The Magicians Watching The Magicians feels like the TV equivalent of eating Pop Rocks: fizzy, surprising, campy, and ultimately very sweet. —KVAWith glamorous costume design, thrilling mysteries solved by a female character who laughs in the face of convention, and a charming will-they-won’t-they romance, it is too easy to fall in love with Miss Fisher. —AJB
Playing House A show about best friends who move in together after one of them gets pregnant and divorces her husband, Playing House is both one of the most moving portraits of female friendship this decade and one of the silliest shows around. —KVA You’re the Worst This is a love story about two people doing everything they can to resist a committed, loving relationship. It’s also a comedy about four dum-dums living in Los Angeles and constantly getting themselves into asinine situations. Sometimes, at its best, it’s both at once.
Selfie Easily the decade’s best network sitcom inspired by a George Bernard Shaw play and/or Lerner and Loewe musical. —CH Trophy Wife Malin Akerman, who played the titular wife to Bradley Whitford’s middle-aged, twice-divorced lawyer guy, is on record as being initially put off by the meant-to-be ironic title of this blended-family comedy from Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins. But she got over it, and so did we, thanks to Trophy Wife’s distinct comedic chemistry among its top-notch cast, including a decidedly above-average roster of kid actors.
Forever The sadly canceled Amazon series starring Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen appeared, at first, to be a story about a married couple. Then it wasn’t. Then it really wasn’t. But by the end, in a way, it kind of was again? If this sounds vague, it’s because I’m trying to avoid spoilers. One of the most remarkable things about Forever was the way it reinvented itself from one episode to the next so that the audience was never sure what it might get.
The Haunting of Hill House Scary enough to make you watch it with one eye closed, not so scary that you stop yourself from devouring each and every episode. A classic case of “I need to finish to know what happens!” —KVA Search Party A clever cross between the millennials-in-Brooklyn vibe of Girls and a murder mystery, this TBS show is just as binge-worthy as anything Netflix has ever produced, particularly in its first season. On one hand it was a twisty whodunit; on the other it was a very funny, clever commentary on how grief can easily turn into something selfish and performative. —JC
Younger Episodes of this TV Land comedy have a potato-chip feel, in the sense that you cannot stop snacking on them until you’ve finished every last one. But Younger is far from disposable. It’s a smart show about publishing and ambition, packaged in glossy, goofy, romantic bite-size pieces. —KVA Bunheads A show about teen ballerinas and wacky small-town shenanigans starring Sutton Foster as a former chorus dancer is even more bizarre than it sounds.
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