Join us as we celebrate the best music, film, and television of the decade. Today, we look back at the 100 Best TV Shows of the 2010s.
Let’s consider, for a moment, Jesse Pinkman. The 2010s saw a whole new era of television ushered in, a swell in programming so immense it’s difficult to comprehend. Want to feel old? FX’s John Landgraf coined the phrase “Peak TV” in 2015, when the total number of scripted shows on television was a whopping 422. Quaint, isn’t it? Now we’re not only up by dozens and dozens of series, but multiple new networks—two new streaming services in this month alone—and there’s no end in sight. And in there was Jesse Pinkman, the “yeah, bitch” guy. A walking GIF factory.
He was always more than that, of course. As played by Aaron Paul, Jesse sums up the best of what this decade of television has to offer, a messy, contradictory human being who was “Yeah, bitch! Magnets!” one moment and a guy playing peekabo with the criminally neglected child of two meth addicts the next. He got his ending, and a bonus besides, rounding out the decade with the Breaking Bad coda El Camino, arriving not on AMC but on Netflix. A genre-, emotion-, and network-jumping force. A great character in a great series, a meme and a marvel. Not every excellent character, nor show, in the 2010s found an audience, but viewers had more terrific options than they’d ever had before, and sometimes all it took was one big moment—one “yeah bitch,” one ATM to the face—to break through.
These 100 shows did, in spite of all the noise. They are daring and familiar, polished and wild. Some began before the decade did—our rule of thumb, for the curious, was that a series had to air at least half its episodes after January 1, 2010—while others are just getting started. But all caught our attention, not just for one GIF, but for hours of challenging viewing, enjoyable escape, or both. We’ve not yet seen Peak TV’s peak, and yeah, we’re overwhelmed and exhausted—but we’re grateful for all the incredible art, all the same. Dasvidaniya, 2010s—and thanks for the memories, Jesse.
–Allison Shoemaker
Senior Writer
Abbi Jacobson Action Adam Driver Adult Swim Adventure Time Alison Tolman AMC American Crime Story American Horror Story Amy Poehler Amy Sherman-Palladino Animation Anthony Bourdain Ash Vs. Evil Dead Atlanta Barry BBC Best of the 2010s Big Little Lies Bill Hader Billy Eichner Billy Porter Black Mirror Bob's Burgers Boyd Holbrook Brian Tyree Henry Broad City Brooklyn Nine-Nine Bruce Campbell Bryan Fuller Carly Mensch Cartoon Catherine O'Hara CBS All Access Charlie Brooker Cillian Murphy CNN Comedy Comedy Central Courtney B. Vance Danny McBride Darren Criss David Lynch David Tennant Demian Bichir Diane Kruger Documentary Donald Glover Doug Jones downton abbey Drama Eric Andre Eugene Levy Ewan McGregor Fargo Fox FX Game of Thrones Grammys 2020 Gregg Turkington HBO Horror Hugh Dancy Hulu Idris Elba Ilana Glazer Isabella Gomez Issa Rae It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia James Urbaniak Jared Harris Jessica Jones Jodie Comer Jody Hill Johan Renck Julia Louis-Dreyfus Julie Klausner June Diane Raphael Justina Machado Ken Marino Kirsten Dunst Lakeith Stanfield Last Week Tonight Laura Dern Lily Rabe Liz Flahive Loren Bouchard Mads Mikkelsen Mark Frost Melissa Barrera Michael Ian Black Michael K. Williams Michael Shannon Mishel Prada Narcos Natasha Leggero Natasha Lyonne NBC Netflix Nicole Kidman Olivia Colman On Cinema at the Cinema one day at a time Orange is the New Black Oscar Isaac Pamela Adlon Pedro Pascal Peter Morgan Queer Eye Rachel Brosnahan Ray McKinnon Reese Witherspoon Richard Price Rick and Morty RuPaul's Drag Race Ryan Murphy Sandra Oh Sarah Gadon Sarah Paulson Schitt's Creek Seth Meyers Shailene Woodley Showtime Sitcom Starz Stephen King Steve Buscemi Steve Zaillian Steven Soderbergh Stranger Things Ted Levine Terence Winter The Americans The CW The Duffer Brothers The Great British Bake Off The Walking Dead Tim Robinson Timothy Olyphant Twin Peaks Vida Wagner Moura Walton Goggins Zazie Beetz Zoë Kravitz
