The 200 “best” U.S. scripted prime time TV shows of all time: A weighted Borda count aggregation

As compared with movies, there is not nearly as much or as reliable information regarding the best TV shows of all time. There are not nearly as many rankings from individual critics and are no reliable sources that aggregate rankings across many critics. Similarly, there are no reliable sources that aggregate rankings across many individuals. Also, there is no longer a single comparable index like box office receipts for movies to indicate the popularity of TV shows. Historically, the Nielsen ratings were a reliable source on TV show popularity, but that changed a little when cable channels started producing big-budget scripted prime time shows in the 1990s and changed even more when streaming services started producing those shows in the 2010s. Nevertheless, the Nielsen ratings remain the major source on TV show popularity.

Therefore, there are only three reliable categories of information sources regarding the best TV shows:

• 1.         Lists from individual critics or small groups of critics
• 2.         Lists of TV shows with the highest audience ratings
• 3.         Lists of TV shows winning the most Emmys or other awards

We provide here a list that aggregates information from these three categories. We limited our consideration to U.S. scripted prime time shows. By U.S., we mean that the show was broadcast on a major U.S. network or streaming service, not necessarily that it was produced in the United States. In addition to excluding nonscripted shows, such as variety, reality, and talk shows, we excluded anthology series from our rankings.

As with movies, we use a weighted Borda count aggregation that generally ranks the top 200 shows within each category, assigning 200 points for the highest ranked show and 1 point for the 200th ranked show. For weights, we decided to give 40% of the weight to critic rankings, 40% to audience ratings, and 20% to awards. We gave twice as much weight to awards here as we did in our rankings of the best movies and Broadway musicals, because there was less reliable information available in the other categories.

We found relatively few critic rankings of the best TV shows of all time. We limited our consideration to rankings since 2020 by reputable industry sources. Ultimately, we selected rankings from four sources – Looper, Rolling Stone, Screen Rant, and Variety – and gave 10% of the total weight to each ranking. We note that aggregated rankings on sources like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes aren’t very useful for our purposes, because they are heavily biased toward recent shows.

As noted above, the Nielsen ratings are still the most reliable source of audience ratings. Their ratings of the most popular shows each year include two variables: rating, which is the percentage of households with a TV who watched a particular show; and share, which is the percentage of households who were watching TV at the time who watched a particular show. The rating data were clearly preferable for our purposes, so we did not consider the share data. We did, however, consider two additional variables derived from the Nielsen rating data. First, we considered the ranking of shows each year based on their ratings. Second, we considered the total number of households who watched each show, which is easily calculated by multiplying the rating by the total number of households with TVs during that TV season.

For example, for 1950-51, which was the first year of the Nielsen ratings, the highest rated scripted show was The Lone Ranger, which ranked seventh among all prime time shows with a rating of 41.2. There were about 10.2 million U.S. households with TVs that season, so about 4.2 million (10.2 million multiplied by 41.2%) American households watched the show on average. Lists of the 30 highest rated shows each year are publicly available. So, for 1950-51, we gave the Lone Ranger 24 points in our ranking variable for ranking seventh, we gave it 41.2 points in our rating variable, and we gave it 4.2 points in our households variable.

Our ratings variable certainly favors older shows. Considering the variety of entertainment options available today, it would be impossible for current shows to have 40 percent or more of households with televisions watching the show, as the highest rated shows routinely did in the 1950s, when there were only four channels of entertainment from which to choose. Conversely, our households variable favors more recent shows. There are now about 125 million U.S. households with TVs, which is more than twelve times as many as there were in 1950-51. So, a current show with a rating of 5 has more households watching than a show with a rating of 60 did in 1950-51. Our rank variable is generally neutral. Although there are far more TV channels now, the top 30 still typically only includes shows on the major networks. All the top 30 shows were on ABC, CBS, or NBC in both 1950-51, the first year of rankings, and 2024-25, the most recent year.

We aggregated the points for each show on each variable across all applicable years and then ranked the top 200 shows for each variable: the 200 shows with the most ranking points, the 200 shows with the most rating points, and the 200 shows with the most aggregate households. Of course, this approach omits data for shows in seasons when they ranked outside the top 30, but that should not be a significant issue – shows that consistently ranked outside the top 30 would probably not be in the top 200 in any of the aggregate rankings anyway.

As we discussed above, the Nielsen ratings have become less reliable and influential as cable and streaming scripted prime time shows have increasingly competed with network shows. Certainly, cable shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones were more profitable than many competing network shows with higher ratings. However, no reliable data are available on the profitability of TV shows, so we were unable to adjust for that issue. As a result, cable shows are likely ranked lower than they should be in our final rankings, because it was effectively impossible for them to receive any audience rating points, which constituted 40% of our final rankings; no cable show has ever ranked in Nielsen’s top 30.

Although we did not adjust for cable shows, we thought it was important to adjust for streaming shows. Streaming has become more popular than either broadcast or cable TV. Last year, Nielsen started including streaming in its ratings and 18 of the top 30 were streaming shows. This is a recent phenomenon, though, so we didn’t want to overadjust for it. Streaming represented about 45% of total TV viewing in 2025, but it was only about 26% in 2021. So, streaming shows from the 2020s are the only shows that may rival the most popular network shows in popularity.

Unfortunately, no reliable data on the popularity of streaming shows are publicly available prior to 2025. Bloomberg analyzed industry data and compiled a list of the ten most viewed original streaming shows from 2020 to 2025, which is helpful, although a more complete list would be welcome. The only other relevant source we could find was YouGov’s 2025 survey of the most popular TV shows of all time. YouGov’s list would not be helpful for considering all TV series, because it is biased toward recent shows. But it seems useful in ranking the most popular streaming shows, which have all been released in the last 15 years. We decided to include only the 10 highest ranked streaming shows in the YouGov list, to be comparable with the Bloomberg list.

We supplemented our aggregate Nielsen ratings list described above to incorporate streaming shows by allowing streaming shows to earn a maximum of half the maximum audience ranking points that network shows could earn. We awarded 200 points for the highest ranked show on each of the Bloomberg and YouGov lists, 180 points for the second highest ranked show on each list, and so on. However, in calculating the total, we weighted those categories so the most points a streaming show could earn in the audience ranking category was 20 percent of the total, as compared to 40 percent for the shows in our Nielsen rating categories.

For awards, similar to our approach for movies and Broadway musicals, we considered only the most important award, which for television is the Emmy Award. Similar to the Oscars, the “Big Five” Emmys are considered to be Outstanding Series, Outstanding Lead Actor, Outstanding Lead Actress, Outstanding Directing, and Outstanding Writing, with separate awards for comedy series and drama series in each category. Like the Oscars, there are many other Emmy categories. However, we did not consider most of those categories to be as relevant to audience enjoyment of a TV show as they are to audience enjoyment of a movie – overall production, acting, directing, and writing seem like the most important aspects of a TV show from an audience’s perspective by far. The only other category that we thought it was important to consider was Outstanding Supporting Actor or Actress, because there often isn’t a clear distinction between lead actors and supporting actors on TV shows, especially in ensemble cast shows. We decided to award 5 points for Outstanding Series, 3 points for Outstanding Lead Actor, Lead Actress, Directing, or Writing, and 2 points for Outstanding Supporting Actor or Supporting Actress.

Although animated series are eligible for the major Emmy Awards, they have never won those awards. Instead, the most important Emmy Awards for animated series have been Outstanding Animated Program and Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance. Both those categories have had different names over the years. There is far less competition for these awards than there is for the major Emmy Awards; in some years, The Simpsons was mainly competing against itself. So, we awarded fewer points for these categories – 2 points for Outstanding Animated Program and 1 point for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance. We then ranked the 200 shows with the most Emmy Award points.

Following is our list of the 200 best U.S. scripted prime time TV shows of all time. A total of 447 shows were represented on our list, ranking in the top 200 shows on at least one of the sources described above. However, the top 200 seemed a good place to make the cut, as there was a noticeable difference in the composition of the rankings above and below that ranking. Only 8 of the top 200 shows received all their points from just the Emmys category, while 15 of the shows ranked 201 to 250 did.

The seven highest ranked shows on our list are all situation comedies and are all ranked in the top 100 in every category. The highest ranked drama series all have a lower ranking in at least one category. Overall, though, our list is divided fairly evenly between comedies and dramas. The oldest shows on our list are Mama and The Life of Riley, which first aired in 1949. The newest show on our list is The Studio, which premiered in 2025. By decade, based on when the shows first aired, our list includes 2 shows from the 1940s, 18 from the 1950s, 25 from the 1960s, 32 from the 1970s, 32 from the 1980s, 26 from the 1990s, 32 from the 2000s, 27 from the 2010s, and 6 from the 2020s. So, after the 1950s, there is fairly even representation of shows by decade.