Think ‘The Sopranos’ Is the Best? These 10 TV Dramas Might Change Your Mind

Television dramas have been an important part of the average American’s media diet for the last few decades, with people gathering around the television to catch the latest episode of their favorite shows every week. Television dramas exploded in the late-1990s when prestige television networks like HBO started producing high-quality programming to compete with feature films.

The crowning jewel of HBO’s initial line-up, which included excellent series like Oz and Sex and the City, was undoubtedly The Sopranos, which is still considered the greatest television drama of all time. The few series that come close to the quality of The Sopranos are the ones that push the boundaries of serialized television, and brought audiences nuanced and complicated stories.

The West Wing Made Drama Out of Modern Politics

1999-2006

The roller coaster of modern political infighting has elevated cable news channels to some of the most watched media in America, and comedy series like Veep and Saturday Night Live have made great use of the craziness of Washington D.C. for comedy. But no series has better fantasized about the good that a government which cared about the people could do than The West Wing.

The series, created by excellent screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, follows the exploits of the newly inaugurated President Josiah Bartlet and his staff, as they attempt to navigate the opposition party and media landscape that constantly impedes their ability to pass progressive legislation. Though the series shows its age with some slightly problematic episodes, its characters and themes more than make up for it.

Friday Night Lights Is One of the Best Movie Spin-Offs

2006-2011

There is a lasting history of television shows being created as spin-offs of successful feature films, like the Nickelodeon animated series The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius and the classic war drama-comedy M*A*S*H. But arguably one of the best glow-ups from theatrically released film to the small-screen drama was Peter Berg’s Friday Night Lights.

Friday Night Lights stars Kyle Chandler as Eric Taylor, the coach of a high-school football team who struggles to balance his personal life and the well-being of his players. The series is best remembered for its excellent extended cast, which included great character actors and leading stars of today like Connie Britton, Michael B. Jordan, Jesse Plemons, Jurnee Smollett and Taylor Kitsch.

Better Call Saul Spun Off a Fan-Favorite Character

2015-2022

On paper, the notion of taking a mostly comic relief character from one of the most critically acclaimed television dramas of all time and giving him his own prequel series seemed doomed to constant comparisons to its parent series. However, Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould knew what they were doing when they created Better Call Saul, a show focusing on the criminal lawyer who helped many of the characters in Breaking Bad get away with their crimes.

The series primarily follows Jimmy McGill, a struggling lawyer who tries to set out on his own as a legitimate practitioner of the legal system but is constantly drawn further and further into the world of criminals. The show carefully balances the more fan-service-heavy backstories of Breaking Bad characters like Mike Ermantrout and Gus Fring with brilliant character drama of its own.

The Shield Showed the Darkest Side of Law Enforcement

2002-2008

Police procedurals have defined every facet of the history of television, from early series like Dragnet and Kojak to the more modern and thematically complicated iterations like NYPD Blue, Homicide: Life on the Street, and Criminal Minds. The best police procedurals, however, are the ones that are willing to dive a little deeper, and explore the politically and ethically complicated issues that come with policing.

The Shield is widely considered one of the best police-focused television series of all time, following a division of the Los Angeles Police Department that uses unconventional and often unethical means to stop crime and keep themselves at the top of the food chain. The series was one of the first major shows to put FX on people’s radar, leading to some of the best shows of the last two decades.

Succession Merges Genres to Great Effect

2018-2023

The streaming and premium cable boom of the late 2010s led to many great series, but also made great success out of blurring the lines between what was considered a drama and what was considered a comedy. Series like The Bear and Barry are constant sources of debate among television fans, who are at odds over what genre the series technically falls under.

Succession straddles comedy and drama but lands more thoroughly on the drama side, focusing on the complicated family politics of three siblings who are vying for the attention of their billionaire father, who is looking to groom one of them to take over his media empire. The series is one of the most awarded in recent years, earning 75 Primetime Emmy Award nominations and 19 wins.

Twin Peaks Pushed Network TV to Its Limits

1990-1991, 2017

Before streaming services and premium cable television split audiences’ attention across many different platforms, network television channels dominated the media landscape, with all of the biggest premieres in the history of television coming from the network TV era. The most fascinating experiment in network television also happened to be one of the biggest sensations on 1990s TV, which has lingered for many decades.

Twin Peaks, created by Mark Frost and the late great David Lynch, stars Kyle MacLachlan as Special Agent Dale Cooper, an FBI investigator who is sent to the small town of Twin Peaks to try and solve a mysterious murder. Though the show petered out in its second season, the series was renewed by Showtime in 2017, creating one of the most experimental seasons in the history of television.

Deadwood Brought a Grimier Western to the Small Screen

2004-2006

Western television series are mapped directly to the history of the medium, with shows like Gunsmoke and The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin dominating 1950s TV. But it wasn’t until David Milch’s Deadwood that the Western merged with the rhythms of modern HBO premium dramas like The Sopranos and The Wire that the TV Western was taken to the next level.

The series takes place in a fictionalized version of the real town of Deadwood, South Dakota, and is set during the period when the town is not yet incorporated into the United States and is essentially under the unofficial control of a saloon owner named Al Swearengen, played by Ian McShane. The show was unceremoniously canceled in 2006, but its influence and cult fandom was strong enough to garner a concluding film that aired on HBO in 2019.

Mad Men Put AMC on the Map

2007-2015

The television channel AMC, which stands for American Movie Classics, originally started as a network for airing screenings of classic films like The Phantom of the Opera and Marx Brothers comedies. Like many channels in the mid-2000s, AMC attempted to pivot into high-quality original programming and saw success with two of the biggest and most critically successful dramas of all time.

Mad Men, AMC’s first attempt at diving into the original programming ecosystem, was also one of the best dramas of all time, following the advertising executive Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm. Matthew Weiner’s series deconstructed the picturesque nuclear family of the 1960s, revealing the darkness behind men who had no healthy outlet for their feelings.

Breaking Bad Took a Boring Loser and Turned Him Into a Brutal Kingpin

2008-2013

Series creator Vince Gilligan pitched AMC on Breaking Bad with the idea that he wanted to have a character like Mr. Chips, a character from a classic British film called Goodbye, Mr. Chips who is a mild-mannered school teacher, turn into a drug kingpin like in Scarface. His plane worked, creating one of the most venerated television series of all time that features one of the greatest character arcs in fiction.

Breaking Bad stars Bryan Cranston as Walter White, a genius chemist forced to become a high-school teacher due to his own ego, as he starts to cook crystal meth in order to provide for his family in the wake of a terminal cancer diagnosis. Though the show had a difficult start in the ratings in its first few seasons, it found a major audience on Netflix and other streaming services.

The Wire Is The Closest Drama to the Quality of The Sopranos

2002-2008

Journalist David Simon pioneered police procedural television with Homicide: Life on the Street, a series based on a book he wrote about his time reporting on the Baltimore Police Department homicide unit in the 1980s. From there, Simon refined his thoughts about policing, bureaucracy, criminal empires, print journalism and the public school system into the sprawling world of The Wire.

One of the greatest drama television series of all time, The Wire primarily follows a task force of the Baltimore Police Department, which has been set up to catch the drug kingpins that control the distribution of heroin in the city. As the series progresses, more aspects of the city are added to the series, creating a pessimistic tapestry about how easily people trying to do the right thing can have their hands tied.