Best TV Shows You Need To Binge On

June 7, 2016

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Having recently had a new Tv Aerial, I asked myself what are the best TV shows of all time? That is a good question. Based on peoples taste it can vary greatly. One person might feel that ‘Dexter’ was the best TV show ever created while another says ‘I Love Lucy’ and yet another says ‘Friends’. Even critics can’t agree with what is the best show of all time. It used to be that we could only tell our children about the shows of yesteryear but now with Netflix and other services like it we have the ability to binge watch. It also opens up a whole world of shows that our children normally would have never been able to watch. For instance my daughters were born in 1999 and 2000. They were 5 and 4 when ‘Friends’ last aired. They were too young to know anything about the show. Now that they are 17 and 15 they have binge watched something that normally would have been unavailable to them. Not only that, but they can also find these boxsets much easier on our LG smart TV, it has a built in web browser making searching for TV to watch a peace of cake.

Now I’m sure there are plenty that I’ve missed that are huge in TV land, like Married With Children, Cheers, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Desperate Housewives, Sex in the City etc etc.

We hope we do some justice to your favorites. These are in no particular order.

Breaking Bad / 2008 – 2013 / AMC / 5 seasons / 62 episodes

Breaking Bad is widely regarded as one of the greatest television series of all time. By the time the series finale aired, the series was among the most-watched cable shows on American television. The show received numerous award. In 2013, Breaking Bad entered the Guinness World Records as the most critically acclaimed show of all time.

Game of Thrones / 2011 – present / HBO / 5 seasons thus far / 57 episodes and counting

Game of Thrones has attracted record numbers of viewers on HBO (check out the hbo zone for more information about this network) and attained an exceptionally broad and active international fan base. It has received widespread acclaim by critics, particularly for its acting, complex characters, story, scope, and production values, although its frequent use of nudity, violence, and sexual violence has attracted criticism.

Friends / 1994 – 2004 / NBC / 10 seasons / 236 episodes

All ten seasons of Friends ranked within the top ten of the final television season ratings; ultimately reaching the No. 1 spot with its eighth season. The series finale on May 6, 2004, was watched by around 52.5 million American viewers, making it the fifth most watched series finale in television history, and the most watched television episode of the 2000s decade. Friends received acclaim throughout its run, becoming one of the most popular television shows of all time.

Firefly / 2002-2003 / Fox / 1 season / 14 episodes

Joss Whedon’s Buffy follow-up was a quirky space Western that got canceled its first season. But in that short time, the show built enough of a cult following for Fox to reassemble the cast for a feature adaptation, 2005’s Serenity. “The fact that Firefly was canceled and the fans continue to come — it truly moves me,” says star Nathan Fillion.

The X-files / 1993-2002 / 10 seasons / 208 episodes

The X-Files was a hit for the Fox network and received largely positive reviews, although its long-term story arc was criticized near the conclusion. Initially considered a cult series, it turned into a pop culture touchstone that tapped into public mistrust of governments and large institutions and embraced conspiracy theories and spirituality. Both the series itself and lead actors Duchovny and Anderson received multiple awards and nominations, and by the end it was the longest-running science fiction series in U.S. television history. It is so popular that their have been revival seasons.

24 / 2001 – 2014 / Fox / 9 seasons / 204 episodes + 24 Redemption episodes

24 garnered critical acclaim, winning numerous awards over its eight seasons, including Best Drama Series at the 2003 Golden Globe Awards and Outstanding Drama Series at the 2006 Primetime Emmy Awards. At the conclusion of its eighth season, 24 became the longest-running U.S. espionage/counterterrorism-themed television drama ever, surpassing both Mission: Impossible and The Avengers.

Seinfeld / 1989 – 1998 / NBC / 9 season / 180 episodes

A favorite among critics, the series led the Nielsen ratings in seasons six and nine, and finished among the top two (with NBC’s ER) every year from 1994 to 1998. In 2002, TV Guide named Seinfeld the greatest television program of all time. In 1997, the episodes “The Boyfriend” and “The Parking Garage” were respectively ranked numbers 4 and 33 on TV Guide’s 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time, and in 2009, “The Contest” was ranked #1 on the same magazine’s list of TV’s Top 100 Episodes of All Time. E! named it the “number 1 reason the ’90s ruled.” In 2013, the Writers Guild of America named Seinfeld the No. 2 Best Written TV Series of All Time (second to The Sopranos). That same year, Entertainment Weekly named it the No. 3 best TV series of all time and TV Guide ranked it at No. 2.

It became the first TV series since Monty Python’s Flying Circus to be widely described as postmodern. Several elements of Seinfeld fit in with a postmodern interpretation.

The Sopranos / 1999 – 2007 / HBO / 6 seasons / 86 episodes

The Sopranos is widely regarded as the greatest television series of all time. The series also won a multitude of awards, including Peabody Awards for its first two seasons, 21 Primetime Emmy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards. A staple of 2000s American popular culture, the series has been the subject of critical analysis, controversy, and parody. It has spawned books, a video game, high-charting soundtrack albums, and a large amount of assorted merchandise. Several members of the show’s cast and crew who were previously largely unknown to the public have had successful careers after The Sopranos. In 2013, the Writers Guild of America named The Sopranos the best-written TV series of all time, while TV Guide ranked it the best television series of all time.

The Carol Burnett Show / 1967-1978 / CBS / 11 seasons / 279 episodes

The show originally ran on CBS from September 11, 1967, to March 29, 1978, for 279 episodes, and again with nine episodes in the fall of 1991. The series originated in CBS Television City’s Studio 33 and won 25 prime-time Emmy Awards, was ranked No. 16 on TV Guide’s 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time in 2002, and in 2007 was listed as one of Time magazine’s “100 Best TV Shows of All Time”.

In 2013, TV Guide ranked The Carol Burnett Show No. 17 on their list of the 60 Greatest Shows of All Time.

Happy Days / 1974-1984 / ABC / 11 seasons / 255 episodes

Created by Garry Marshall, the series presents an idealized vision of life in the mid-1950s to mid-1960s United States.

The series was produced by Miller-Milkis Productions (Miller-Milkis-Boyett Productions in later years) and Henderson Productions in association with Paramount Television. Happy Days was one of the highest-rated shows of the 1970s.

Dexter / 2006-2013 / Showtime / 8 seasons / 96 episodes

The series has enjoyed mostly positive reviews throughout its run and popularity, including four consecutive Primetime Emmy nominations for Best Drama Series starting in season 2. Season 4 aired its season finale on December 13, 2009, to a record-breaking audience of 2.6 million viewers, making it the most-watched original series episode ever on Showtime at that time.

In April 2013, Showtime announced that Season 8 would be the final season of Dexter.The Season 8 premiere was the most watched Dexter episode with more than 3 million viewers total for all airings that night. The original broadcast of the series finale—shown at 9 p.m. on September 22, 2013—drew 2.8 million viewers, the largest overall audience in Showtime’s history

I Love Lucy / 1951-1957 / CBS / 6 seasons / 181 episodes

I Love Lucy was the most watched show in the United States in four of its six seasons, and was the first to end its run at the top of the Nielsen ratings (an accomplishment later matched only by The Andy Griffith Show in 1968 and Seinfeld in 1998). The show is still syndicated dozens of languages across the world and remains popular with an American audience of 40 million each year. A colorized version of its Christmas episode attracted more than 8 million viewers when CBS aired it in prime time in 2013 – 62 years after the show premiered. A second colorized special, featuring the “L.A. At Last!” and “Lucy and Superman” episodes, aired on May 17, 2015, attracting 6.4 million viewers.

I Love Lucy is often regarded as one of the greatest and most influential sitcoms in history. In 2012, it was voted the ‘Best TV Show of All Time’ in a survey conducted by ABC News and People Magazine.

Arrested Development / 2003-present / Fox – Netflix / 4 seasons / 68 episodes

Despite critical acclaim, Arrested Development received low ratings and viewership on Fox, which canceled the series in 2006. Rumors of an additional season and a feature film persisted until 2011, when Netflix agreed to license new episodes and distribute them exclusively on its video streaming service. These episodes were later released in 2013. Netflix has commissioned a fifth season of Arrested Development, expected to premiere in 2016, and a script for an Arrested Development film has also been in development, with the main cast reported to reprise their original roles in both.

Monty Pythons Flying Circus / 1969-1974 / BBC, PBS / 4 seasons / 45 episodes

Monty Python’s Flying Circus (known during the final series as just Monty Python) is a British sketch comedy series created by the comedy group Monty Python and broadcast by the BBC from 1969 to 1974. The shows were composed of surreality, risqué or innuendo-laden humor, sight gags and observational sketches without punchlines. It also featured animations by Terry Gilliam, often sequenced or merged with live action. The first episode was recorded on 7 September and broadcast on 5 October 1969 on BBC One, with 45 episodes airing over four series from 1969 to 1974, plus two episodes for German TV.

Lost / 2004-2010 / ABC / 6 seasons / 121 episodes + epilogue

A critically acclaimed and popular success, Lost has been consistently ranked by critics on their lists of the top ten television series of all time.The first season garnered an estimated average of 16 million viewers per episode on ABC.During its sixth and final season, the show averaged over 11 million U.S. viewers per episode. Lost was the recipient of hundred of industry award nominations throughout its run and won numerous of these awards, including the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series in 2005, Best American Import at the British Academy Television Awards in 2005, the Golden Globe Award for Best Drama in 2006, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Drama Series. Lost was declared the highest-rated show for the first ten years of IMDb.com Pro (2002–2012).

The Twilight Zone / 1959-1964 / CBS / 5 seasons / 156 episodes

In 1997, the episodes “To Serve Man” and “It’s A Good Life” were respectively ranked at 11 and 31 on TV Guide’s 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time; Serling himself stated that his favorite episodes of the series were “The Invaders” and “Time Enough at Last”. In 2002, The Twilight Zone was ranked No. 26 on TV Guide’s 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.

In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked it as the third best-written TV series ever and TV Guide ranked it as the fifth greatest show of all time.