The Best TV Shows of the 21st Century

Hi everyone, it's Natalie. If you're not yet a time subscriber, we have some news for you. You can enjoy full access to the times without a paywall for 30 days. All you have to do is download the app to get your first month completely free. And if you're already a time subscriber, thank you. Okay, here's today's show. From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittroak. This is the daily on Sunday. On January 3rd, 2000, the weather channel debuted a new show called Your Weather Today. A Dallas you're looking at another record-breaking day without rainwater. It was a show about weather. We have the forecast for you, plus an update on conditions in your town, in this edition of The New York Times. It was, we think, the very first new television show of the 21st century. In the 26 years that followed, we got a lot more new shows. Some of them better than your weather today. Here in 2026, TV is now firmly a prestige art form with big stars, auto creators and huge production budgets, and it's become absolutely central to the cultural conversation. So to commemorate that evolution of TV over the last quarter century, my colleagues here at the Times undertook a little project. They contacted over 1,000 TV luminaries, showrunners, writers, actors, and asked them to pick their favorite TV shows of the last 26 years. And they heard back from a lot of them. People like Lena Weith. Bulljack Horseman is like this crazy experiment that should have gone awry. I'm Scott. The good wife is that legal procedural, but it cuts way deeper. And Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner. I loved Orange's The New Black The Minute I saw it. Then they took all that data and compiled a list of the 100 best TV shows of the 21st century. A list we've been slowly rolling out over the course of this week. But now the whole thing is officially out, which means that the fun part can start. Clicking that list apart. And that's what we're here today to do. I've invited two of my colleagues to the show, Gilbert Cruz, who's our candidate editor, and James Panawazik, our chief TV critic. Both of them are TV fanatics, but neither of them picked the shows for this list, which means that they are free to debate it as much as they want. It's Sunday, September 27th. Jim Gilbert, welcome to the Sunday Daily. It is wonderful to have you both here. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Okay. I've set everything up in the intro. What the list is. The fact that neither of you can be blamed for it. Yeah. High five, Jim. I think the thing that we should do is just dive right into the list itself. Give the people what they want. I want to focus on the top 10 shows and what they tell us about what's happened in television over the last 25 years or so. I think we should start with numbers 6 to 10, and we'll save the top five for later in the show. Gilbert, would you please give us the 10th to 6th Best TV shows of the 21st century, as voted on by our respondents? At number 10, we have Atlanta at number 9, Curb Your Enthusiasm. Number 8 is 30 rock, number 7 is Veep, and number 6 is Game of Thrones. The first thing that grabbed me about that rundown is just how many comedies are in there. There aren't actually a lot of comedies in the top five. And I don't mean to sound like Larry David here, but I do love complaining. It's one of my hobbies. And so I do want to start with a complaint, why are the comedies in the lower half of the top 10? Why aren't they in the top five? Oh my God. I have an opinion on this. I know Jim has a very strong opinion on this. And what I'm going to say is, yes, some of the titles that 10 through 6 are, quote, comedies. But I think something that this top 10 shows overall is that there's a way in which great shows always mix comedy and drama. I think if you knew you were going to say that. I'm going to say because it's right. If you look at Atlanta, for example, the number 10 show, it is a quote, comedy, but some of the creepiest, most dramatic episodes I remember watching through that period came on Atlanta. Congratulations, you're my sacrifice. Conversely, if you look at some of the episodes from the top five shows, they are full of laughs even though they are dramas. So I think sort of dividing it in that way, I think it's a little bit more complicated than that with all due respect. It actually surprised me that there was this much comedy in the top 10. Why? You think of a lot of the most talked about television shows as being dramas from this period. On top of what you have that sort of ingrained bias, you know, you look at the Oscars, you know, dramas win best picture comedies. It's an honor just to be dominated. It honestly was a bit of a surprising showing to me that this many comedies or dramas, or quasi comedies or part of its comedy made as good a showing there. And to me, part of that is, I think, because people develop an affection for these kinds of shows and maybe that gives them a little more staying power. I think one very big and interesting question within television of the past quarter century has been, you know, how funny does a comedy have to be? Right. Do you really define comedy as just, you know, the highest number of jokes per many? Yeah, no, but I mean, you can't deny that there is a particular joy to a show that is only trying to make you laugh. Gilbert, around this project, you talk to a bunch of people who cast ballots for the best show. I've been watching these interviews and so many of the respondents talk about being bold over by just how many jokes are in a single episode of 30 Rock, like particularly the comedy people that you spoke with. I remember Brett Goldstein from Ted Lasso and Joel Kim Booster and Jesse Armstrong, who created succession. They are all so clearly enamored with 30 Rock. The amount of genius jokes per second is invariably. I think the jokes permit on that show are probably the highest of most comedies, certainly higher than a lot of comedies that are airing right now. I almost find it painful to watch. It's so brilliant in its density of jokes. Okay, I was going down some very enjoyable YouTube rabbit holes in prepping for this conversation and I found I think what is the perfect example, which I'm going to play for you, Tracy Jordan, played by Tracy Morgan, is talking to his doctor, Dr. Spachemmon, aka Dr. Spaceman. Here we go. Tracy, you are going to die. What? No! When I tell you who I'm dating, squeaky from, she is difficult. Anywho, I have the results of your physical. What? No! You have no reflexes. Your blood tastes like root beer and some of your bones appear to have vanished. The reason I think this is the perfect example is that I think there are six jokes in 10 seconds. Every single thing that was said minus one word is a joke. I didn't understand the phrase "joke density," which a lot of people use in reference to the show, until I watched 30 Rock. The idea that every joke maybe has three punch lines within it? Lemon, you look terrible, but I once watched you eat oysters while you had a cold. We had him, Jack, and we lost him. So Kenneth and I had to spend the rest of the afternoon trying to think like Tracy. I ended up eating a swordfish dinner at a strip club and Kenneth grabbed a cop's gun and shot a blimp. Well, tomorrow's the day. There's something a little bit overwhelming about it. That's what I will say for the people that might not have this in their very top. It's like, you know, it's a lot. I mean, it's hilarious. It's also a lot. You know, I will say 30 Rock is one of these shows that I just, I mentally quote lines from and jokes from to myself over and over again, you know, Siri, kill Jenna. I also think that that is a difficult thing to pull off successfully and, you know, for me, that's a thing. I'm going to offend some of our listeners, but it turns me off about a show like Family Guy, for instance. I think that there's a line where, you know, if you are just the unending joke machine, you end up with Family Guy. But you know, 30 Rock, I think also had a take. I had things I wanted to say about the media and the culture at the moment. And it was funny, and it always had something to say, which I think is the difference between a show that you will laugh at and then immediately forget and a show that sticks with you. - I'm just interested with this one where you guys would have put 30 rock on your list. - I'd have put it in the top 100, at top 50. - Wow. - Well, I'm looking to look at that. We're talking 26 years here, right? That's an average of less than four shows per year. To say that something would be in the top 50 is to say that it would be one of the best one or two shows of like one year out of those 26. - Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jim, because I say now to all of our wonderful commenters. We're like, why was this show so low on our list? - Uh-huh. - Brothers and sisters, like being number 80 in a period when thousands and thousands of shows have come out across English language TV, that's quite impressive. And so, I probably would have put 30 rock in my top 10, but I am a simple man. Not as sophisticated as Mr. Pano-Wazak here. - Okay, I want to talk about a show that I personally would have put in my top five. - Yes. - Which I think is very different, comedy-wise, I think than 30 rock, which is curb, your enthusiasm. - Why do I have to thank you? - For dinner that my husband and I treated you to? - Oh, I thought he treated me to it. - It's like one joke that lasts a half an hour. Like the bit is basically the same bit every time Larry is having a bad time doing something, you know. - It's using our money to pay for it. So you could thank us. We're taking you at the dinner. - Well, you can call it our money, but just for the sake of discussion, he's the one who goes to work and earns the money. You don't, you don't work. It builds, you experience his particular point of view about the world. - It's money, is it, in your house? - Honey, it's our money. - Well, this is not, you know, rather. - I've heard the money. - Oh, so what do you do? You pay her a salary and you do what you buy things. - Talk to me about why that show ranked so high on everybody else's list. - Okay, so I think curb your enthusiasm gets at one of these questions of what is 21st century TV? What was great in 21st century TV? Because curb your enthusiasm comes, of course, from Larry David. He created SignFeld with Jerry SignFeld. A lot of the same themes, a lot of the same sort of, you know, attention to faux pas and gripes and personal minutia. But curb your enthusiasm, the sort of freedom and range of expression that he got from doing this show for HBO allowed him to create this pure, raw, uncut version of it that I think in many ways, maybe not by itself, you can also, you know, throw in shows like the British office here and so on. Kind of defined this genre of cringe comedy for lack of a better word that you see coming up in show after show after show on the larger list here. - I'm Julia Louis-Dreyfus and guess what? I'm in the New York Times best TV shows of the 21st century. Imagine that. The idea of nothing to a certain extent is taken to the 10th power or 100th power on curb. These small conflicts that are usually nothing are exaggerated and put under a microscope and made large that idea existed on Seinfeld, of course. They're completely related. It's like same genus, same species. I don't know how it's to say it, you know. - When I think about curb, I feel like it's this, there's a degree of cringe comedy mix with I think wish fulfillment in it because you're watching someone have reactions that you might have to something like, for example, the stop and chat. - Why didn't you say I love him, you know? - I know, he wanted to do a stop and chat. I didn't want to do a stop and chat. - Stop and chat. - When you're walking on the street and you pass in a acquaintance, you should not have to respect the social more of stopping and talking to that person. - Is that why you never talk to me at our local trade station? - I'm being exposed. - Well, we see each other in the morning. - I don't think, I agree, okay, the stop and chat. We shouldn't have to do that, right? - No, I agree with you. You're absolutely right. And Larry's right. It's Larry. - For a stop and chat. - No, I don't want it. I see you do take care of that. - No, it's more than that. I don't, I don't, for him, all I need to do is just sail. - Yeah, that was kind of rude. - That was not rude. - You know, when humor comes from pain, right? Humor comes from discomfort and this is humor about discomfort and it is a thing that he is just a poet. - Okay, so he was gone over here. - Yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you. - He's doing a chat and cut. - Chat and cut. - I'm really sorry. - He's explaining familiarity with someone you vaguely knows for this whole purpose of cutting in line. - Pause. - She'll be picking up a plate any second, watch. - You're like, "Be me, fight." - There she goes, yeah. - Okay, there's one more comedy here, Veepe. Veepe, who wants to say a word about Veepe? - Veepe is just master of the insults and master of the curse word. And there's just, just that alone, not even talking about the cast, which is incredible is just makes this so rewatchable. The cynicism that it has about politics, possibly like appropriate for the era. It was just perfect. - It's a bad look. - That's how he looks, that's his face. Why did she just take the good one of me Photoshop it in? - I can't airbrush history, ma'am. I'm not Joseph Stalin. - No, no, that's true, you're not. You don't have a tenth of his charm. It's a show set in politics, but it comes from this beautifully cynical notion of human nature that people are just grasping and inept in. We'll say what they need to say and do what they need to do to get ahead and especially in a setting where there's such a history of just hypocrisy and platitudes and just the way that it's able to kind of puncture that is beautiful. - It doesn't feel accidental to me how many times in the last several years, people have pointed out that some scene in Washington seems like it's straight out of Veep. I think that just keeps coming up because the show hits it so hard. - And on such a human level. - I'm Padma Lakshmi and I voted on the New York Times best shows of the 21st century. I do think Veep tapped into a kind of cluelessness that many people in various fields, including being a chef or any other high profile leadership position, they slip into an ignorant bliss because there's so many people clearing their path and they got there because they're smart, but then they're sort of infantilized by the people who are supposed to smooth their path or make their lives easier. But it's set in the cesspool of Washington politics and backbiting and everybody really just trying to protect their own job. And that is not just particular to Washington. I can tell you, that's very particular to Hollywood. - All right, we're gonna take a quick break. And when we come back, we will talk about the top five TV shows of the 21st century. I'm so excited. We'll be right back. Okay, let's get into it. We are here. Top five very best TV of the 21st century, according, again, not to you too, but to industry insiders. Gilbert, what is number five? At number five, we have the show Fleabag. - Fleabag. I love Fleabag. I am so happy to get to talk about Fleabag. I did a fart the other day that was exactly like Mom's. A door opening or suspicious dark. Door opening. - Means you're getting Mom's bum. - God, I'd be lucky. I bought them dropped ages ago. My fart seems to be like (laughs) Now they're just sort of fighting their way out. - I haven't farted in about three years. A thing that came up a lot in the interviews about this show is that people really connected to this particular portrayal of a very particular woman. - I'm Alexis Bladell and I voted for the New York Times best TV shows of the 21st century. In Fleabag, it was just remarkable how deeply funny and unashamed the whole piece was, you know? It's so unapologetically self-expressive. She's incredibly vulnerable while being completely irreverent. And I don't know how she does that because that's, I don't think I've ever seen that done so precisely, or pitched perfect before. And all the world, she's just graciously sweet. self-possessed and, you know, presenting something modern and fresh everybody to kind of shake us up. A flea bag is a dark comedy, comic drama, another one of these hybrids about a woman who is sort of on a dev journey of forgiveness, has done some terrible things in her life and is trying to move on and find some sense of completeness. Yup. People make mistakes. That's why they put robbers on the ends of pencils. Stop ching. I don't know. I mean, I think that that flea bag, which I was delighted to see and delightedly surprised to see when this high on the list, kind of wraps up a lot of things that are great about television of this era. Number one, playing around with the idea of like what is a protagonist that people will identify with, right? Like, flea bag is somebody, if you pitch this, you know, to CBS in 1992 or whatever, you know, you were not surviving that pitch meeting well. She is not, you know, what, in classic TV terms, you would identify as likable or, you know, having the attributes that you would usually associate with a TV protagonist. You're almost late. It's the flat-peer and prep. Oh, Christ, did you wash your hands? Of course not. Oh my God. But she's real. She's well drawn. And Phoebe Wallerbridge, who created the show, it is just chock full of voice, which, you know, I think is really one thing that marks a lot of the, the, the best shows of the last quarter century, the best shows on this list. I met someone. What? Really? Yeah. Oh my God. That's amazing. What does he do? He's a priest. This was a story that she wanted to tell that she had an inner mind and, you know, it turns out that you could tell a story like this on television that was that specific and personal to your vision. And people would find the universal in it. I'm a big reader with no friends. Are you a cool person? I'm a pretty normal person. A normal person. It makes you a normal person. I don't believe in God. I love it when he does that. I think it's also interesting to think of the economics of TV that led us to the point where someone like Phoebe Wallerbridge could have this show, right? And in 2015, the phrase peak TV was coined by the, the head of FX, the sky, John Landgraph. And then this debuts a year later. And what he was describing was this era in which network TV, cable TV, and then the, the rapidly growing streaming TV services, like Netflix and Amazon, where Fleabag debuted in the United States, were all in a race to just get good stuff out there. So at a certain point, there was more TV on air at any given time than it ever been on TV before. And those were part of the circumstances that allowed someone like Phoebe Wallerbridge with her incredibly idiosyncratic voice to have sort of this platform to have her show on. You mean she's both a product of and a reflection of the era that so defined the last 10 or 20 years? Absolutely. Yeah. Are you lesbian? Not strictly. Do you like our films? Some. And what's your favorite period film? Carry. Okay, moving to number four, we have? Succession. Did you ever think I could do it? Do what? The top job? Oh, I don't know, maybe. You can say. Well, you know, you're smart, you're good, but I just don't know. What? Come on. You're not a killer. You have to be a killer. Okay, this is one that I think you might have been thinking of as a drama that is also a comedy. And I would agree that I have left harder watching this show than I have watching many, many comedies. It is funny. It is really funny, but the thing that came out most from those interviews and that stuck with me as well is that basically this is a show about horrible people, just really, really bad people, the worst people, they kill, they cover up vast conspiracies, they run the entire world for their own benefit. And yet somehow, and this is the thing that a lot of people try to wrestle with, you kind of end up rooting for them. I'm Andy Cohen and I voted for the New York Times best TV shows of the 21st century. I've known people like the Royes and I thought that the depiction in Succession was pitch perfect. The lifestyle and the world, it was exactly as some rarefied people live. I thought it was interesting because there's absolutely no one to root for on that show. You kind of root for Shiv, for in and out for a few seasons and then you kind of realize she's as bad as the rest of them. I mean, they're all truly horrible people. So, which is fascinating that a show with no one to root for could resonate and be so thrilling to watch, but it was. And I thought it was a great statement on media and culture and politics today. Boy did they nail it. It is amazing to have this show, which is about this media titan Logan Roy and his kids who are all trying to take over his company. And they're, as you say, they're all terrible, right? And yet, you don't necessarily need to have likable people to be invested in their stories, to be invested in their lives. Yeah, I love Succession. I'm not sure that I would say that I liked any of the Roy's, but I was fascinated by them. They're these people who live in almost a different universe than the rest of us do. And the rest of us are just ants to them. Yet, they also have these desires and aches and motivations that you can recognize, you know, not being loved by your father, wanting, you know, feeling like a failure, wanting, you know, the feelings of competitiveness and needing validation. The beauty of it, I think, is that it was able to make all this very real without excusing any of the horribleness. You know, you just had to, you had to live with both of them and with them sit side by side. You took away the last six months I could have had with my dad. No. Yes. No. Yes. You sucked up to him and you cut me out. It's not my fault that you didn't get as approval. And like VEEP, amazing one-liners that you will never forget. I mean, Logan Roycing, to his children, I love you, but you are not serious people. That will stick with me forever. I mean, do you use that in your life? You know, I don't, but I think about it a lot. You are not serious figures. I love you, but you are not serious people. It's like a mythological kind of cruelty. I think I think I think a lot of this show is sort of operates on kind of a mythological level where these people are so powerful that they're almost transhuman for all their human frailties. Well, his news, we are going after it. Of what's more, I will win. Okay. Number three. Madman. Every woman wants choices, but in the end, none wants to be one of a hundred in a box. She's unique. She makes the choices and she's chosen him. She wants to tell the world he's mine. He belongs to me, not you. She marks her man with her lips. This was a show I liked, but I did not love as much as other people loved it. So tell me what people love so much about this show because I understand that it is one of the best shows of all time. I loved it like other people loved it. I loved it maybe more than other people loved it. I may have loved it more than other shows that ended up higher than this show on the list. But you know, this show, which was an impeccably cast, beautifully crafted, brilliantly imagined picture of the advertising industry in the 1960s and very early 70s in New York, it worked on a lot of levels. The great TV works on, you know, John Hamm gives an amazing performances, Don Draper, the dashing protagonist with a secret past. Get out of here and move forward. This never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened. It's also a story about stories because, you know, as it reminds you over and over, people in the advertising industry are basically people whose job is to tell America its stories and its myths to itself. Advertising is based on one thing, happiness. Maybe I'm a sucker for that because I was an English major and so, you know, I just, I sort of eat up that kind of rich text. It's a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance that whatever you're doing, it's okay. You are okay. I've watched this show probably more times than anything on the top of this list. How many times? At least four or five times in fall. Wow. You know, I've had family members who have rewatched and so I've rewatched with them, besides going back and rewatching individual. There are great TV shows that, you know, I've seen and I don't necessarily need to see them more than once. You know, I feel like I'm seeing new layers of craft and construction and artistry every time I watch this show. Gilbert? I've watched Madman all the way through several times as well. Okay. And it is just wonderful to look at, everyone looks so cool and stylish and there's something about the 60s and people smoking and drinking and there's a little fantasy fulfillment there. But there is also a way in which the show is just as psychologically perceptive as any other show I've seen on TV. And I think it does have to do with the underlying conceit that Jim talked about. It is about advertising. It is about, in a way, lying to people in order to sell a product. It's also about people lying to themselves and each other about who they are, who we are. It's very deep, amazingly performed, very funny, very funny show and I just love it so much. Hi, I'm Coleman Domingo and I voted for the New York Times best TV shows of the 24th century. Well, Madman, I should have been the golden age of television, it really did. It was groundbreaking for AMC and it really gave us characters like central characters that you can, you sort of believed in, but then you were conflicted by, you were looking at our culture, you were looking at how women are treated in our culture and how the things that they had to do, the character Peggy is one of my favorite characters to watch her start from when she was starting and the watch her evolve and find her voice and also down draper to see like, you know, all his pitfalls and look at, it's deconstructing the myth and the American dream of the 1950s. Okay, getting closer to the top of the list here, Gilbert, what's number two? The Wire. This feels like the ultimate we don't really have time to dig into this show kind of show, but let's do what we can. I should start off saying that I was actually really stunned to see that the Wire did not end up as number one. It's not just because I think it's one of the most amazing achievements that's been accomplished on TV or, you know, maybe any popular art form in terms of just telling this all encompassing story of the dysfunction of cities and of systems and it was so broad and sprawling and yet never felt like it was wasting your time or losing focus. I'm DB Weiss and I voted for the New York Times. I'm David Benioff and I voted for the New York Times as best TV shows at the 21st century. I think the fourth season of the Wire is the greatest season of television that obviously I just think it's kind of like a novel from beginning to end. The Wire asks for a lot of you, it demands a lot of you and it deserves that season for me, it's just kind of shows what television is capable of, what a season of television is capable of at its highest powers. Reading War and Peace isn't easy and takes a lot of your time and a lot of attention and ultimately when you finish reading War and Peace, you're damn glad you finished reading War and Peace and I kind of felt the same way about the Wire which on the upside I think takes less time than reading War and Peace. First of all, it's just got tremendously rich, flawed characters very rarely for TV on one side of the law as much as on the other. The criminals in this show are not just perps, they are people with ideas and motivations and back stories. I win if you catch the other dudes king and trap it then you win, alright but if I make it to the end, I'm top dog, now you ain't like that, look, ponds man in the game, they could cap quick, they'd be out the game early unless they're some smart ass ponds. The way that the show digs into the systems of America at all levels is what makes it so unique and so special. People have used the word novelistic to refer to the show and I think some people use it because books are fancier than TV and so to call something novelistic means that you're giving it a level of appreciation that TV doesn't usually get but I think it is appropriate in the way in which unlike almost any other TV show, it sort of moves between all these different levels. I'm Brett Goldstein and I voted for the best TV shows of the 21st century for the New York Times. I'm not joking when I say this, the wire is how I understand the world, I truly think it taught me how the world works and what I mean by that is how people work, not just the show shows you how the police work, how the government works, how the press works, how the drug dealers work, how the DVDs work, shows you all of that, it shows you all the elements that make up a city. But the way that it expresses how hard it is to achieve anything good is so clear. It really did change how I saw the world and how people work and how 90% of people are just trying to protect themselves and that's why it makes it impossible to achieve anything. And any small incremental change for good is a miracle. I feel like this show more than any other show I've seen shines a very entertaining but very serious and very perceptive light unlike a dark corner of the American experiment. The job will not save you Jimmy. It won't make you whole, it won't fill your ass up. Okay, I feel a little bit like we're saying that's enough about Hamlet, let's move on. We do have to talk about number one on this list, which is Gilbert. What makes this the best show? And I'm asking you to embody the best case, I understand, you may not agree, but make the case. So Breaking Bad, show created by Vince Gilligan, is essentially the story of Walter White, who when we start the series is a chemistry teacher, he finds out that he is cancer, doesn't have that much longer to live, and he decides to get into the meth business because he knows chemistry so well, he's going to produce the finest meth that has ever been produced, get a bunch of money, leave it for his family, and along the way he turns into essentially a kingpin in Albuquerque. "That's right, now, say my name, Eisenberg, you're goddamn right." It is a crime show, people love crime shows. It has an amazing cast, you know, starring with Brian Cranston. It has amazing villains, including Giancarlo Esposito as Gus Fring, it is tense, it is violent, it arrived at a perfect moment for the binge age. This show is made to be bingeed. It has incredible cliffhangers, it has incredible energy and forward motion. Okay, can I just say I had watched what I thought was almost all of Breaking Bad and then stopped watching it because it was too intense and so in preparation for this I fired it back up because it was like I have to see the end, turns out I was not as close to the end as I thought, so then I had to binge basically all of the last season of Breaking Bad and can I just say it's not an enjoyable experience, I hear you that there's cliffhangers so you just want to keep eating it up but it does something to you, it messes with your head. I think a lot of people like that just to be clear. Yeah, I also think that that kind of points up something that was really interesting in the experience of TV and how we watched TV in the 21st century, which is okay, a lot of people watched Breaking Bad slowly, the old-fashioned TV week. They watched one episode a week and then another one the next week and then they waited a year or whatever and they watched the next season, right? And some people did what you did and enjoyed it better than you did maybe, but really plowed through this. Now what's the difference between those? Well, as Gilbert was saying, what Breaking Bad is really rooted in is a moral question. And I think the interesting question that Gilligan raises in the show is, did Walter White's experience turn him from a good person to a bad person or was there this potentially bad person all the time in him that it had the opportunity to get out because of his circumstances? And I honestly think that the way you see that might well depend on how you watched the show. If you watch it slowly over time, it can be more like it's a good person turning into a bad person. If you binge it, you may be more likely to see that, no, this is actually the story of somebody who, you know, Heisenberg was in him all along. Yeah. And it was just waiting to bust out. Heisenberg being his nom de gare, his nom de meth. Exactly. As part of this project, our TV editor, Jeremy Agner, got to interview Finn Skilligan and a couple of castmates of Breaking Bad. And the subject of the anti-hero came up. And Vince Gilligan, who wrote one of this era's great anti-heroes was raising the question of, have we done it enough, has in a way reality and fiction started to come together and maybe we don't actually need to sort of, uh, laud people who are doing bad things. The whole anti-hero thing in general, it was still a pretty new thing. I'm kind of thinking now, seeing the world, the way it is. If I had my brothers, they'd be considered cautionary tales, not aspirational. I don't know, maybe we've had enough anti-heroes for a while, seeing the country the way the shape that it's in. I think that Vince Gilligan gets to do that because he did this thing better than a lot of people did it. Part of the trick, I think, that he used at several moments during that show was putting Walt up against someone who was more people, right? Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, is probably a trick that a lot of these anti-hero dramas that we see represented on this list do from time to time. And it's a way of keeping you invested, of wanting you to see the thing that Walt is trying to accomplish, you know, get accomplished, and pulling you along to the point where at some point you have to stand back and you think, "Oh my God, like, what am I doing?" Right. Why am I behind this guy, you know, is, you know, what point does he go too far? It's really a difficult trick to pull off without either rationalizing evil or turning off your audience. I'm Matthew Weiner and I voted for the New York Times. I'm Devery Jacobs and I voted for the New York Times. I'm Richard Gads and I voted in the New York Times top 100 best TV shows of the century. Nobody, I don't care what anybody says, nobody but Brian knew that he had that in him. I don't know if my loyalty shifted, watching Breaking Bad, as much as it was interesting to gauge where culture was at. It was a real parody on sort of the health system in America and the kind of ludicrous lens some people have to go to to get help and look after people when they're gone. And he's a model for casting against type or for the philosophical reality that everybody has that kind of violence in them and if they're pushed to it. But I think it's some of the best examples of television writing, golden age, really getting to dive into anti-heroes and questionable morals. It's right in the heart of it was intense, brilliant social political commentary alongside the best acting, the best storytelling you'll ever see. It's an unbelievable show. All right, we're going to take another quick break and we come back. We're going to talk about what's not on this list. We'll be right back. So we're getting near the end here and I feel like we need to take a second to talk about what this list in all its great wisdom may have gotten wrong. So I want each of us to talk about a show that should be on the list or should be higher on the list but isn't. I'm going to start with my favorite show in TV history, The Sopranos. They said it was a panic attack. Of course all the blood work and the neurological work came back negative. And they sent me here. You don't agree that you had a panic attack. How are you feeling now? Good. Fine. Back of work. What line of work are you in? Waste management consultant. Gilbert, I get the sense you've been hearing from readers about the fact that The Sopranos is not on this list. Would you care to quickly just set the record straight about that? I would like to set the record straight. The Sopranos, which is a great show, one of the best TV shows of all time, came out in 1999, 1999, was before a cutoff. One could say, "Why did you have that cutoff?" I would say because we need rules in this world and this is the rule that we came up with. Jim, how do you feel about that cutoff issue? I actually argued for it. I think a list of 21st century shows means shows that you could not have watched in the 20th century. But I think we also pulled off a little magic trick here. The Sopranos is not on the list, but also it is everywhere on the list. Okay, so why explain that? What this list really ends up being because of the peculiar nature of when the 21st century happened to begin is a portrait of TV after the Sopranos changed much of what TV could be. Right? Sopranos debuts in 1999. It's one of the first big sort of cultural phenomenon shows on HBO. It ends up bringing in an era when cable starts to surpass network TV as a creative force, which we see all over this list. It introduces the idea of the antihero and challenges the idea of what kind of show people will watch do people only want to root for the good guy. It's pretty easy to draw a line from Tony Sopranos to Walter White. You can see some of that in succession. You can see it in lesser ways in a show like House. A show about a doctor diagnosing illnesses. That's a classic TV genre, but it's a doctor who's kind of a jerk. It introduces an idea of that cereal telling an ongoing story that doesn't just wrap up at the end of the episode, but continues out over episodes and seasons, that that is something that people have the patience for and we'll get into it. Gaged in, the sopranos in 1999 demonstrates that you can do these new things in television. And this class of shows that begins in 2000 shows the after effects of this. Okay, well thank you for indulging my sopranos love, even though it had no business being on a list that was just in the 21st century. Give me your shows. What should have been on here? Gilbert? This is a sick and perverse show and I just love it, love it, love it so much. It is a show called Hannibal. It must be terribly proud that you could bring this off. What will be the first cuts of me you will serve? The first course, of course, will be your hands and feet, sizzling on a Promethean barbecue. It was on NBC. Wow. Yeah. Okay. It was a TV version of the story that we saw on the big screen in the movies, "Man Hunter and the Silence of the Lams" about the character Hannibal Lecter. And it is one of the grossest things I've ever seen in my entire life. I don't know how it made it onto network TV, but it also is one of the most, I would argue, one of the most beautiful shows that has ever been put on TV. Well, there have been a recent run of cannibalistic shows that have done well on TV, so you know. I'm not endorsing cannibalism, that's not what I'm here to do. I just think it's beautiful. The acting was awesome and bananas, and it's just, it did not belong on TV, and yet there it was. And I just felt like it was a show that was done just for me. Did you just smell me? Difficult to avoid. I really must introduce you to a fine and aftershave that smells like something with a ship on the bottle. I keep getting it for Christmas. Jim, how do you feel about Hannibal? It's left me a little cold, honestly, but I think it was really well executed, and, you know, I was a little surprised I wasn't on the list. I live in the cold, it, it, it, it, it warm me up, Jim. Gilbert wanted darker on this list. Jim, what about you? Ah, Natalie, where do I start? There are so many shows that, that I would have put on this list if, if I were God, adventure time. I would have loved to see transparent on this list. I was very surprised that Orange is the new black is not on. But it's just been one day and I can't, I can't. My God, these are good ones. Wait, Jess, there's not more reality TV? I think you can make a strong case for putting jackass on this is like a great work of American art. Wow. Incredible, jackass. But that's not the reality TV show I expected you to say. We should have been on this list. But I love it more. Say, but say why jackass, so just make the case real quick, because I got to hear it. I mean, Jackass is just like it, it is what it is, you know, which, which is this amazing anarchic prank show that like a lot of the best television is just reveling in the idea of, can we have fun filming this and putting it on the air? I'm Johnny Knoxville. And this is the bear trap. That's, that's, you know, the heart of like a lot of, you know, the great, like David Letterman pranks and it is this beautiful, like, hilarious, distilled chaos. Who knows? But a show that I, I not only would have put on this list that is not on it, but I probably would have put in my top 10, is a show that you may have forgotten or never heard of called rectify. When you are alone with yourself all the time, but no one but yourself, you begin to go deeper and deeper into yourself until you lose yourself, it's a perverse country. That was about a man who had been released from prison and returned home and was trying to get his life together and possibly clear his name. Okay. And I'm not sure anyone unless they have gone through it can, can, can truly understand how profound that loss is. It was, it's like, it's like beautifully acted, sensitive, nuanced, almost like religious exploration of redemption and grace and forgiveness that maybe for those reasons never generated that much of an audience, but I, you know, I just think was a, a gorgeous character portrait that didn't get enough attention then and now, but if you can seek it out on streaming, I highly recommend you add to your list. I honestly can't say that I did, in fact, kill her because I just don't remember for the life of me and that's your truth. Okay, well that really makes me want to watch rectify Hannibal, I'm going to have to think about maybe I'll cue it up. One of the best things about this list, I understand is that it is very interactive right. Readers can kind of participate in it. Absolutely. So, you know, we got hundreds of people in the industry to ask them what they think, but we also want New York Times readers and listeners to have their say and so they can go and pick their own top 10 shows and they could share that. They can also vote and we will count all them up and let people know what the readers of the New York Times think are the top 100 shows of the 21st century and I expect they're going to be several different titles on that list. All right, we'll see if the sopranos can make it in somehow on that list. That's not how the calendar works, but sure. Okay, well I'm going to hold out hope, Jim Gilbert, thank you both so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you, Natalie. To view the full list of the 100 best TV shows of the century, you can visit nytimes.com/besttv. This episode was produced by Alex Barron. It was edited by Wendy Dore, fact checking by Lena Richards, Tina Antillini, and Alyssa Dudley. It was engineered by Rowan Nemisto and contains music from Dan Powell, production assistance from Dahlia Hadad. That's it for the Sunday Daily, I'm Natalie Ketrowett, see you tomorrow. [Music]