The Best TV Shows of the 21st Century

The Daily

The episode explores a New York Times survey of industry insiders to identify the 100 best television shows of the 21st century. Hosts Natal

Key takeaways

• The top 10 list features a surprising density of comedies, including Atlanta, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and 30 Rock.
• 30 Rock is noted for its extreme 'joke density,' which some industry professionals found both brilliant and overwhelming.

Main topics

• NYT Best TV Shows Survey
• Evolution of Prestige Television

Notable quotes

The amount of genius jokes per second is infuriating.

Conclusion

A thoughtful retrospective on how television has transitioned into a p

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:00) Hey, it's Anna Martin from The New York Times. What if I told you you'll never have to hear this line again? Speaker 7 (0:06) Wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 5 (0:08) Yeah, no, I actually can't tell you that. But you know what I can tell you? A place I think you might want to go. It's the Shows tab in The New York Times app. The place to listen to and now watch full episodes of New York Times shows. The Shows tab. Find it in The New York Times app. Explore The Shows tab and follow a show today. Speaker 3 (0:29) 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 Ketrolaff. This is The Daily on Sunday. Speaker 5 (1:04) Your Weather Today, the best way to plan your day. On January Speaker 3 (1:09) 3rd, 2000, the Weather Channel debuted a new show called Your Weather Today. Speaker 5 (1:16) Dallas, you're looking at another record-breaking day without rain. It was Speaker 3 (1:20) a show about weather. We have the forecast for you, plus an update on conditions in your town. 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. Speaker 6 (1:39) Oh, Speaker 5 (1:40) hello, Speaker 3 (1:40) you. I'm filming television's Moira Rose. Some of them better than your weather today. Speaker 6 (1:47) Gentlemen, start your engines and may the best woman win. Put my stapler inside the jelly again. Clear eyes, full hearts. Let's go. So put that in your pipe and smoke it. Speaker 3 (1:59) Here in 2026, TV is now firmly a prestige art form with big stars, auteur 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 a thousand 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 Waithe. BoJack Horseman is like this crazy experiment that should have gone awry. Adam Scott. Speaker 6 (2:42) The Good Wife is that legal procedural, but it cuts way deeper. Speaker 3 (2:48) And Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner. I loved Orange Speaker 7 (2:52) is the New Black the minute I saw it. Speaker 3 (2:54) 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, picking 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 canon editor, and James Ponowozik, 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. Speaker 3 (3:40) Jim, Gilbert, welcome to the Sunday Daily. It is wonderful to have you both here. Speaker 4 (3:44) Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Speaker 3 (3:46) Okay, I've set everything up in the intro, what the list is, the fact that neither of you can be blamed for it. Speaker 4 (3:52) Yeah, high five, Jim. Thank you. Speaker 3 (3:54) 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 six 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? Speaker 4 (4:27) At number 10, we have Atlanta. At number nine, Curb Your Enthusiasm. Number eight is 30 Rock. Number seven is Veep. And number six is Game of Thrones. Speaker 3 (4:41) 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? Speaker 4 (5:07) 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... I knew Speaker 3 (5:32) you were going to say that. Speaker 4 (5:33) I'm going to say it 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. Speaker 6 (5:49) For Speaker 8 (5:52) what? I choose you. You're my sacrifice. And Speaker 4 (6:02) 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 Speaker 2 (6:11) a Speaker 4 (6:11) little bit more complicated than that, with all due respect. Speaker 2 (6:14) Jim? It actually surprised me that there was this much comedy in the top ten. 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 nominated. It honestly was a bit of a surprising showing to me that this many comedies or dramedies 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? Speaker 3 (7:15) Right. You Speaker 2 (7:16) know, do you really define comedy as just, you know, the highest number of jokes per minute? Speaker 3 (7:22) 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 bowled 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. Speaker 8 (8:02) The amount of genius jokes per second is infuriating. I think the jokes Speaker 7 (8:10) permitted 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. Speaker 3 (8:23) 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. Spachemin, a.k.a. Dr. Spaceman. Here we go. Speaker 6 (8:42) Tracy, you are going to die. Speaker 3 (8:44) What? Speaker 6 (8:45) No! When I tell you who I'm dating. Squeaky Fromm. She is difficult. Anywho. I have the results of your physical. Tracy, you are going to die. Speaker 3 (8:57) What? No! You Speaker 6 (8:59) have no reflexes, your blood tastes like root beer, and some of your bones appear to have vanished. Speaker 3 (9:04) The reason I think this is the perfect example is that I think there's six jokes in ten seconds. Like, every single thing that was said minus one word is a joke. Speaker 4 (9:15) I didn't understand the phrase joke density, which a lot of people used in reference to this show. until I watched 30 Rock. The idea that every joke maybe has three punchlines within it. Lemon, you look terrible. But I once watched you eat oysters while you had a cold. Speaker 5 (9:32) 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. Speaker 3 (9:43) Well, tomorrow's another 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 Speaker 2 (9:54) know, I will say 30 Rock is one of the shows that I just mentally quote lines from and jokes from to myself over and over again. You know, Siri, kill Jenna. Speaker 2 (10:09) 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. You know, I think that there is 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. It had things it wanted to say about the media and the culture at the moment. And it was funny, and it always had something to say, which, you know, I think is... The difference between a show that you will laugh at and then immediately forget and a show that sticks with you. Speaker 3 (10:44) I'm just interested with this one where you guys would have put 30 Rock on your list. Speaker 2 (10:49) I'd have put it in the top 100, top 50. Wow. Speaker 2 (10:54) We're talking 26 years here, right? That's an average of less than four shows per year. To say that, you know, something would be in the top 50 is to say that, you know, it would be one of the best one or two shows of like one year out of those 26. Thank you. Speaker 4 (11:09) Thank you. Thank you, Jim. Because I say now to all of our wonderful commenters, you're like, why was this show so low on our list? Brothers and sisters, like being number 80 on a... 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. Ponowozik here. Speaker 3 (11:38) Okay, I want to talk about a show that I personally would have put in my top five, which I think is very different comedy-wise, I think, than 30 Rock, which is Curb, Your Enthusiasm. Speaker 6 (11:51) Why do I have to thank you? For Speaker 3 (11:55) dinner Speaker 5 (11:55) that Speaker 3 (11:56) my husband and I treated you to. Speaker 6 (11:59) Oh, I thought he treated me to it. Speaker 3 (12:01) 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. He's Speaker 5 (12:11) using our money to pay for it. So you can thank us. We're taking you out to dinner. Speaker 6 (12:16) Well, you can call it our money, but just for the sake of discussion, he's the one who... Who goes to work and earns the money. You don't work. Speaker 3 (12:23) It builds. You experience his particular point of view about the world. Speaker 5 (12:31) Honey, it's our money. No, it's not. No, brother. Speaker 3 (12:34) I've earned the money. Oh, Speaker 5 (12:35) so what do you do? You pay her salary? Speaker 3 (12:37) Talk to me about why that show ranked so high on everybody else's list. Okay, Speaker 2 (12:44) 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 from... of course, from Larry David. He created Seinfeld with Jerry Seinfeld. Yep. A lot of the same themes, a lot of the same sort of, you know, attention to faux pas and gripes and personal minutiae. 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