I have never watched a show that is as consistently genuine and engaging as Breaking Bad. This is undoubtedly one of the greatest shows ever, and it consistently improves as it progresses.

The Journeys of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman are unforgettable. These are some of the best-written characters to ever come from a pen-hitting paper.

"Friday Night Lights" centers on the rural town of Dillon, Texas, where winning the state football championship is prized above all else. Coach Eric Taylor guides a high school football team through pressure-filled seasons while dealing with struggles relating to his own family. The interactions between the team members, current and former players, supporters, coaching staff and regular townsfolk address many of the issues facing small-town America.

One of the greatest shows of all time! - Brian, fan of FNL

The greatest Boomer nostalgia project of them all, before Boomer nostalgia threatened to overwhelm the entire world. A young Fred Savage played Kevin Arnold, a naive suburban kid running the gauntlet of adolescence at the same moment America was enduring the turbulence of the late Sixties and early Seventies. 

For decades, the record for the longest-running live-action sitcom of all time was held by The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, an aggressively wholesome sitcom that debuted in the early Fifties and starred a real-life family playing idealized versions of themselves. 

“Computers aren’t the thing; they’re the thing that gets you to the thing,” salesman Joe McMillan (Lee Pace) explains early in this period tech-world drama. In the case of this show, the mercurial and mysterious Joe and his aggrieved partner Gordon (Scoot McNairy) were the first kind of thing: male antiheroes of the type that had become commonplace to the point of cliché in the years leading up to their introduction. 

When Rolling Stone last asked our experts to rank the best shows ever, NBC’s Office remake finished behind the British original. Six years later, their positions have flipped. (The U.K. version landed just outside the top 50.) Perhaps it’s a testament to how much easier it is to feel affection for Steve Carell’s inept but lonely boss, Michael Scott, despite his countless failings as a manager and as a person, than it is for Ricky Gervais’ more hostile David Brent.

So many of the comedies on this list are built on pain and anxiety. Parks and Rec rests on a happier foundation, taking its cues from its heroine, Amy Poehler’s can-do civil servant Leslie Knope.