Earlier this month, the New York Times released a list of the 100 best TV shows of the 21st century. Based on a survey of 500 showrunners, stars, writers, executives and other notable television figures, the list is a great resource to discover some of the truly stellar series of the past quarter-century.
The top 10 are probably not surprising if you’re an aficionado of the small screen:
10. Atlanta
9. Curb Your Enthusiasm
8. 30 Rock
7. Veep
6. Game of Thrones
5. Fleabag
4. Succession
3. Mad Men
2. The Wire
1. Breaking Bad
But the Free Press arts department is filled with ardent TV fans who, if not begging to differ, wanted to see a few of their favourite shows added to the list.
What follows are some superior series the NYT’s appointed voters did not see fit to include in the top 100.
Paranoia Agent (2005)
Considering how many shows are lauded in their time for capturing “the moment,” the late Satoshi Kon’s surreal anime Paranoia Agent deserves its flowers for anticipating the future. Kon correctly predicted a world in which the rapidly expanding online realm would alienate us from one another and ourselves, eroding consensus reality and exposing human ugliness from myriad angles.
Young women attacked in the street read online posts accusing them of making it up for attention; a star student is ostracized based on a superficial resemblance to a wanted delinquent. All the while, a phantasmal bat-wielding boy concusses these and others across Tokyo as they find themselves under the gaze of the horrible digital eye of the new era.
Peppered throughout this main arc are queasy snapshots of the post-internet world, including a standalone episode following a chatroom community committed to group suicide which meets in person to carry out the act, only to learn one of their members is a child. Brutal and prescient, like much of Kon’s best.
Watch it on: Crunchyroll
Hon. mention: Channel Zero (2016-18)
This anthology series, shot in Manitoba, lit up TV screens with thrilling doses of high-quality horror spread across four seasons, each of which artfully presents a gut-wrenching premise.
Its first season, inspired by Kris Straub’s cornerstone creepypasta Candle Cove, is a nightmare glimpsed through the lens of half-remembered, garish childhood media. Infinite-room houses of torment, cannibal families and malicious childhood daydreams round out a one-of-a-kind horror series. If only we could have more.
Watch it on: Shudder, AMC+
— Darren Ridgley
Detroiters (2017-18)
Real-life besties Sam (Richardson) and Tim (Robinson) star as low-budget ad men in this buddy comedy that’s as much about celebrating male friendship as it is about hyping up the City of Detroit and the folks who still call Motown home.
Richardson and Robinson both cracked the top 100 critics list with other, more high-profile projects, but everything there is to love about their performances in Veep and I Think You Should Leave is also on full display in Detroiters: earnest, hearts-on-their-sleeves bromance; extreme expressions of male fragility; ads for absurd products so bad they go beyond good right back to bad again.
Recurring bits such as Mort Crim’s Chump of the Week or security guard Ned (played by funnyman Christopher Powell) pitching Sam and Tim his latest ad concept make for repeated laughs, while classic bits like the boys’ visit to the doctor’s office (“You’re counting beers, too?!”) still regularly make the rounds on social media. Guest appearances from other SNL alumni such as Jason Sudeikis, Tim Meadows, Michael Che and Cecily Strong, among others, are the icing on the cake for this truly underappreciated sitcom.
Watch it on: Paramount+
Hon. mention: The Lowdown (2025—)
Ethan Hawke stars as Lee Raybon, a self-described “truthstorian,” used-bookseller and deadbeat father hellbent on exposing Tulsa’s rich and powerful in the pages of a local alternative-weekly.
With overt nods to the gritty crime fiction of Jim Thompson, and secondary characters so richly written and realized they could take the lead at any time, the series, which is as funny as it is hard boiled, has so far flown under the radar for many viewers and critics, failing to crack either NYT poll, though Reservation Dogs, also from creator Sterlin Harjo, earned a well-deserved spot.
While the jury is out on whether the second season of this new Tulsa-noir, which just dropped Oct. 14, can build on or surpass the first, but either way, viewers are in for a rollicking ride with the addition of Tommy Lee Jones and Betty Glipin to the cast.
Watch it on: Disney+
— Sheldon Birnie
Kevin Can F*ck Himself (2021-2022)
What happens when the sitcom wife disappears into the kitchen?
In this highly original, biting black comedy from AMC, Annie Murphy (in a very different role from Alexis Rose on Schitt’s Creek) stars as the meek-but-trying Allison McRoberts, unhappily married in the blue-collar city of Worcester, Mass., to Kevin McRoberts (Eric Peterson), an obnoxious, narcissistic manchild.
Whenever Allison is with Kevin, the show is a brightly lit, multi-camera sitcom ostensibly about a goofball man — complete with a laugh track often deployed at Allison’s expense. But when Allison is alone, it becomes a harrowing, single-camera drama about an increasingly desperate woman.
It’s a canny satire of the Kevin James-led sitcoms Kevin Can Wait — in which Donna (Erinn Hayes) the original wife on the show was unceremoniously killed off after one season — and, one could argue, latter seasons of King of Queens, in which Doug (James) and Carrie (Leah Remini) become much more cruel to each other. Kevin Can F*ck Himself adds dimension to the sitcom tropes of nag-scold wife and slovenly immature husband and shows that, under different lighting, behaviour laughed off as boys-will-be-boys can look and sound an awful lot like emotional abuse.
Watch it on: AMC+
Hon. mention: Jane the Virgin (2014-2019)
This Peabody-winning comedy also plays with TV tropes, to delightful results.
Jane Villanueva (Gina Rodriguez) is a devout young Latina woman with careful plans to avoid following in her footsteps of her mother, Xiomara (Andrea Navedo), who had Jane when she was a teenager, promising her abuela Alba (Ivonne Coll) she will remain a virgin until marriage.
But when Jane accidentally gets artificially inseminated at the gynecologist and has a baby, her life becomes something straight out of a telenovela (evil twins! Amnesia! Fake deaths!), a genre Jane the Virgin itself deftly satirizes.
Come for the magical realism and soapy storylines, stay for the heart and smarts.
Watch it on: Paramount+
— Jen Zoratti
Patriot (2017-18)
The NYT list seems not to include any post-2025 series, or Stephen Conrad’s Emmy-winning DTF St. Louis would likely have made the cut. But I’m here to stump for Conrad’s previous blacker-than-black comedy Patriot, which doesn’t get nearly enough love; almost nobody I know has seen it.
Is that because of the misleading title that sounds like a Tom Clancy adaptation? The lack of a widely recognizable male lead? The impossible-to-classify genre (espionage meets family drama meets workplace comedy)? Who can say? What I can say is that Patriot is the show I probably recommend to people the most, even though I can’t necessarily explain it.
Australian actor Michael Dorman plays John Tavner, a U.S. intelligence officer having an existential crisis (when we meet him, he is high, singing his own folk songs in Amsterdam, the real-world lyrics of which could constitute a threat to national security).
His new assignment finds him as a NOC (non-official cover) in a Milwaukee industrial piping firm (run by Kurtwood Smith in a career best performance) in order to prevent Iran from getting access to nuclear material. Weird, hilarious, melancholy, bleak hijinks ensue.
The plot is not really the point. As with DTF, Conrad is more interested in male friendship, loneliness, lack of communication and toxic bravado.
Watch it on: Prime Video
Hon. mention: The English (2022)
A beautifully shot, brutally violent revisionist western set in the Amercian West in 1890, Hugo Blick’s six-episode miniseries follows Lady Cornelia Locke (Emily Blunt), who has come from England to the U.S. to find the man she holds responsible for the death of her son.
When she meets Sgt. Eli Whipp (Chaske Spencer), a Pawnee scout who is hoping to claim the land in Nebraska owed him for military service, they join forces, dealing with villainy and peril aplenty on their journey.
The performances — from the two leads, but also a bouquet of character actors including Ciaran Hinds, Stephen Rea and a truly terrifying Rafe Spall as the man Locke is tracking — are fantastic; the shocking, sad resolution is one you’ll never forget.
Watch it on: Prime Video
— Jill Wilson
Malcolm in the Middle (2000-2006)
Nine days into the 21st century, one of the most influential single-camera, non laugh-track comedies kicked off, arguably changing the face of sitcoms for years to come.
While Malcolm in the Middle wasn’t the first single-camera sitcom to grace TV screens, there’s an argument to be made that the show’s innovative and wildly funny format paved the way for the success of less-overlooked classics such as Arrested Development, 30 Rock, Modern Family and The Office.
Created by Linwood Boomer for Fox, the show follows braniac pre-teen Malcolm (Frankie Muniz) through the trials and tribulations of life as a misunderstood, awkward nerd, with the chaos of his equally dysfunctional family (brothers Dewey, Francis and Reese as well as parents Hal and Lois — their last names aren’t given) making Malcolm’s life miserable in the process. Think of it as a real-life cousin to The Simpsons or King of the Hill, with more asides to the viewer.
Jane Kaczmarek landed three Golden Globe and seven Emmy nominations for her role as Malcolm’s mom Lois. Oh, and there was that guy who played Hal, Malcolm’s dad; Bryan Cranston cut his chops in this charming comedy before going on to star as bad dad/teacher turned drug kingpin Walter White in Breaking Bad.
Malcolm in the Middle’s jokes, particularly the sight gags, still land — see Lois careening through the living room in slow motion, Godzilla-like, as she trips through and destroys a massive Lego city, or Hal showing off his sassy roller skating dance moves to Malcolm.
Watch it on: Disney+
Hon. mention: What We Do in the Shadows (2019-24)
This single-camera comedy mockumentary follows a trio of ancient vampires living in Staten Island with plans of world domination but whose evil, primarily nocturnal lifestyle sees them bumbling through relatively innocuous everyday problems, with frighteningly funny results.
Based on the 2014 film of the same name, the show’s hilarious bloodsucking trio of Nandor, Laszlo and Nadja feature alongside very boring “energy vampire” Colin Robinson, as well as Guillermo, Nandor’s subservient (human) assistant (dubbed his “familiar”) and a host of other regulars.
It’s mildly dark (although visually it’s much more so, what with the vampires being nocturnal), and no amount of garlic, nor the sharpest of wooden stakes, can keep the rapid-fire laughs at bay.
Watch it on: Disney+
— Ben Sigurdson
Togetherness (2015-16)
Reaching Hollywood via the mumblecore movement — a sometimes derided name for a low-budget, pre-social media, kitchen sink approach to middle American indie filmmaking — the Duplass brothers, Jay and Mark, along with their frequent on-screen avatar Steve Zissis, were given HBO money for the first time in 2013.
So the trio decided to pack the Los Angeles bungalow of Michelle (Melanie Lynskey of the likewise snubbed Yellowjackets) and Brett Pierson (Mark Duplass, who is in everything) with one of the century’s most overlooked “prestige” half-hour dramedies.
Joining the cast is Zissis as Brett’s struggling actor friend Alex, and Amanda Peet as Michelle’s sister Tina.
They’re all fragile, but the best metaphor for their fleeting hopes for modest, post-recession success is in Tina’s choice of business: she rents out the use of a singular, overused bouncy castle to better-off folks in their gentrifying neighbourhood.
Everybody in Togetherness just wants to feel afloat.
Watch it on: Crave
Hon. mention: Brockmire (2017-2020)
Hank Azaria is known for his voice, and so is his character Jim Brockmire, a former Major League Baseball colour man whose downward spiral leads him to the broadcast booth of the minor-league Morristown Frackers.
It’s a role that Azaria — who voices dozens of characters on The Simpsons — relishes like diced white onions on a steamy, all-American frankfurter, soliloquizing on the olden days as fading fashions sink away before his diamond eyes.
Fans of Amanda Peet will be pleased to find out that she plays Jules, the Frackers’ new owner and the town’s favourite, no-nonsense bartender; Peet and Azaria are fantastic battery mates for this high-charged comedy, which delves into the darker side of Brockmire’s appetite for bourbon and the ballpark.
Throughout the series, Brockmire’s universe shifts to expose the underbelly of Trump’s America, the realities of living in “flyover country,” and the evils of professional sports, all the while maintaining a love of this ridiculous, beautiful game.
If the Milwaukee Brewers taking on the Tampa Bay Rays hasn’t aroused the baseball fan in you, let Azaria step up to the plate for a resilient, four-season at-bat.
Watch it on: Apple TV
— Ben Waldman
Mindhunter (2017-19)
Crime procedurals have few tropes more reliably goofy than the serial killer interview: see The Silence of Lambs and its imitators where an FBI agent goes wit-for-wit with a cultured psychopath. The formula flatters our middlebrow suspicions than anyone who loves classical music or freely quotes Nietzsche and Dante, especially in a foreign accent, is probably a dangerous pervert.
The reality is likely closer to the one Mindhunter depicts, where serial killers are more likely dim impotents, the type to slink around truck stops and porno bookstores rather than libraries.
The FBI-killer interviews in Mindhunter are no less dramatic for this, thanks to the power of subtext, mesmerizing performances and David Fincher’s masterful sense of atmosphere. Part of what ratchets up the intrigue is that Mindhunter, set in the late 1970s, portrays a moment when the FBI were still writing the book on how to profile, interview and interrogate serial killers.
Operating from a dingy basement, the show’s protagonists — played by Holt McCallany and Jonathan Groff and based on early pioneers in the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit — aren’t just outflanked by killers but also the bureau’s jocular, conservative top brass, suspicious of eggheads who want to chat with Mansons and Kempers.
Some of the plotlines are as slow as the bureaucracy in question. But Mindhunter’s foreground is lively with its odd couple of investigators who travel America’s backroads and rustbelts, plying their newfound knowledge of criminology to solve — and, in some cases, bungle — revolving mysteries. Eminently rewatchable, Mindhunter captivates as both episodic whodunnit and cerebral prestige TV.
Watch it on: Netflix
— Conrad Sweatman