I haven’t been watching much in terms of actual shows for a good while, then while listening to a podcast a host casually mentioned they had rewatched Chernobyl, how it still holds up, that there’s a reason it got as much acclaim as it did, etc. So I thought I’d give it a go and wow, loved it (still one episode left to watch).
Had me thinking, what else have I missed out on? What are some “absolute cinema” TV shows that still hold up and and are considered must watch?
Shogun and Andor
So many good answers so i will only add ones i didnt see in the responses.
-
Supernatural (seasons ~1-5 before the storyline was extended)
-
The Last Of Us
-
Dark Matter
-
Archer
-
Game of Thrones (except the last season unfortunately, but the others are still worth watching regardless)
And since someone has already said black mirror, i would add Love Death & Robots, which is both very similar (tone & thematically) but also all over the place (artistically and storytelling wise).
-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexx
It’s old-ish and maybe not the greatest work of art on screen, but I love that it had a very unique world and characters and humour and it keeps on developing and changing throughout.
It’s been too long. I really kind of want to watch it again.
It might not be “absolute cinema” and had maybe 5% of the budget of Chernobyl, but given that people have suggested Ted Lasso, I’ll go one step further into the realm of fuzzy feel-good TV and drop a mention for my favourite TV show of all time.
There isn’t a single moment in that programme where any of the characters are mean to each other (save for the when dealing with a rival club). It’s just 20 beautiful episodes of people looking for gold, living their lives, and doing their best to be supportive.
And it’s incredibly funny.
It feels a bit dated, but Veronica Mars is still an excellent and somehow still underrated show.
I also think Scrubs and Community are both peak television that stand up to countless rewatches.
Andor. Pluribus. 3 Body Problem. Queen’s Gambit. Babylon Berlin. Alice in Borderland. Shogun (the 2024 series). The Expanse. First two seasons of For All Mankind.
The Great (Hulu) is an all time favorite of mine and almost nobody talks about it.
Curb Your Enthusiasm. Pretty pretty good
TV Shows
Must Watch
- Breaking Bad
- Better Call Saul
- Chernobyl
- Peaky Blinders
- Dinosaurs
Highly Rated (With Caveats)
- The Wire: A timeless masterpiece, but the extremely slow pace requires pushing through the first season.
- Band of Brothers: Excellent, but historically did Captain Sobel dirty—he wasn’t like that.
- Primal: Extremely good, but the story ends at Season 2. Season 3 is an unnecessary overextension.
Good Shows (Minor Caveats)
- Narcos: Enjoyable until Escobar (the star) is captured, then it loses its appeal.
- Pablo Escobar, The Drug Lord (El Patrón del Mal): Less dramatic but more accurate and highly enjoyable than Narcos.
- Dune: Prophecy & House of the Dragon: Good overall, but heavily woke. They take too many liberties and squander their superior source materials.
Great for Uniqueness, Story, or Style (Major Caveats)
- Game of Thrones (Seasons 1-4): The absolute best TV ever made. It doesn’t top Breaking Bad only because the later seasons are absolute garbage.
- The Sopranos: Great episodic show, but slow. The overarching story wasn’t the main focus; six seasons could have been condensed into three.
Shows That Don’t Live Up to Their Name
- Dark: Starts great, but convoluted rules in Season 2 and Deus ex machina plot devices in Season 3 ruin it.
- Shōgun (2024): Unremarkable. Unfaithful to the source material due to wokeness, specifically erasing Blackthorne’s protagonism because he’s white.
- The Expanse: A convoluted, messy dumpster fire.
- Westworld: A convoluted, messy dumpster fire.
- Euphoria: Hot Gen Z garbage.
- A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: Pure hype with no justification to exist. Spends 6 episodes on Dunk, an absolute loser and terrible fighter, whereas the show was advertised as being about Aegon Targaryen, who barely gets screen time in the show
Anime
Must Watch
- Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (Sousou no Frieren): A beautiful, clean, family-safe show with no fan service. The appeal is the whole package.
Good Shows (Minor Caveats)
- Noragami: Beautiful, but not a masterpiece; sequels dip in quality.
- Psycho-Pass: Genuinely good Minority Report-style premise. Season 1 is amazing.
- Mob Psycho 100: Good comedy, but relies on repetitive tropes after Season 2.
- One Punch Man: Extremely funny great premise, but the quality drop after Season 1 shouldn’t have happened.
- Dragon Ball / Dragon Ball Z: Legendary but too long (Kai is the shorter alternative).
Great for Uniqueness, Story, or Style (Major Caveats)
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Very unique. The writer projected his mental issues onto a weird cast, the protagonist is a loser, and it has no proper ending.
- Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood: Good, but overhyped. Suffers from forced humor, quality drops near the end, and a predictable “happily ever after” ending.
- Fullmetal Alchemist (2003): Much darker, serious, and extremely good, but the animation is garbage.
- Tokyo Ghoul: Only good until Season 2 before major quality dips.
Shows That Don’t Live Up to Their Name
- Death Note: A bad show imo. The premise is amazing but the characters are so obnoxious that i dropped it
EDIT:
Forgot to mentione The Last of Us. Pretty good show with story close to the original. I rated it an 8/10 on IMDb.
Issues it has if you liked the game though:
- Bella Ramsey was severely miscast as Ella. Ellie in the games is a fierce, humorous and lovely girl, who’s matured too early. On the show she tries to be but isn’t funny, she’s aggressive and lacks self control. You’ll have to accept it for what it is, two different characters altogether.
- Season 2 has some noticeable defects
- It inherits the game’s plot, which is amateurish at best *Some parts are rushed
- Take the already ridiculously written character of Abby Anderson and miscast an actress for it to, and there you have it
- Kaitlyn Dever was supposed to be Ellie, and i think she’d work really well as her. They miscast that one and they used Kaytlin as Abby, who has a totally different personality
In the end i think it’s not a terrible show, but it could easily have been a much better one
My wife and I have been binging a show called The Last Ship. Supposedly came out a number of years ago. It’s a Michael Bay production and kind of a post apocalyptic scenario but well worth a watch.
And of course there’s Always Sunny.
Chernobyl is good show but one thing it got very wrong is the idea that the molten down reactor could somehow explode again for some gigantic fireball larger than the Tsar Bomba.
It increases fear of nuclear power unreasonably. Also much much less people died or suffered from nuclear power including Chernobyl compared to fossil fuels. Even solar power causes more deaths from roofing accidents. We now know at least some of the nuclear hysteria is / was funded by fossil fuel interests.
EDIT: I guess the point of this is to point out propaganda “side effects” of this, similar to how you should point out the copaganda in a cop show. Or in Homeland and other spy dramas the vilification of Iran. Representation in media is important, and bad representation can have deadly consequences.
Deadwood Invincible Mr. Robot
Lots of great suggestions, I’m surprised nobody’s said Shogun. Season 1 came out in 2024, they just started working on season 2.
For an older one I would go with “Jericho”
Over 600 comments, and among the many recurring mentions of the greatest shows in television history, I didn’t see The Venture Bros. mentioned at all. It is quite possibly the best-written show of all time.
