Top 50 best TV series of all time: what to watch and how to build a route Xrust

Television has long ceased to be “background”: the best series are the cultural axes around which conversations in kitchens and in chat rooms revolve. This top 50 is not just another “sheet of recommendations”, but a route by which eras can be measured. “The Sopranos” taught us to look into the shadows, “The Wire” taught us to listen to the city, “Breaking Bad” taught us to consider the consequences. “Game of Thrones” made fantasy the language of pop culture, “Chernobyl” reminded that truth is worse than monsters, “Friends” legalized everyday tenderness, and “Bear” translated gastrochaos into the language of nervous poetry. Each line of the list is “how we lived then” and “what we want to be tomorrow.”
At Xrust.ru we call such collections an “encyclopedia of emotions”: here some find dream professions (“Doctor House”, “Mr. Robot”, “Separation”), others find words for pain (“When They See Us”, “Mair of Easttown”), and others find a springboard for talking about themselves (“Fleabag”, “Sex Education”). And if you need to rebuild your faith in the series as art, turn on Twin Peaks, Fargo or True Detective from the first season and prepare for silence after the credits.

How to “unpack” the top 50 without burning out

• Go by genre.Crime and anthology dramas: The Sopranos, The Shield, True Detective, Boardwalk Empire.
• Make a “fantasy weekend.” Dark, Black Mirror, Stranger Things, Lost, Battlestar Galactica.
• History and fate. “Band of Brothers”, “Chernobyl”, “Killers of the Flower Moon” in the cinema — and next to “The Americans” on TV.
• Detox sitcom. “Seinfeld”, “The Office”, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, “Peep Show”, “Friends”.
• New heroes.“Descendants”, “Bear”, “Mair of Easttown”, “Separation”, “The Last of Us”.
• For “even tougher”. “The Wire”, “Deadwood”, “Vikings”, “Peaky Blinders”, “Justice”.

The list is controversial — and that's fine. The classics (“The Twilight Zone,” “The Sopranos”) are here not for show, but as a scale: understanding them makes it easier to read “The Boys” or “The Mandalorian.” Object, rearrange, throw out and add — the top lives while they argue about it. The main thing is to regain the habit of watching not “on rewind”, but with a pause for discussion. Because great TV series always end the same way: in silence, in which you want to text your friend “watch it urgently.” The rest is in our Films section on Xrust.ru.

— “Breaking Bad” (2008); — “Game of Thrones” (2011); — “Chernobyl” (2019); — “The Sopranos” (1999); — “Brothers in Arms” (2001); — “The Wire” (2002); — “Better Call Saul” (2015); — “Stranger Things” (2016); — “Sherlock” (2010); — “Peaky Blinders” (2013); — “The Twilight Zone” (1959); — “Fleabag” (2016); — “Fargo” (2014); — “Doctor House” (2004); — “Friends” (1994); — “Darkness” (2017); — “The Office” (2005); — “The Descendants” (2018); — “Battlestar Galactica” (2004); — “Hooligans and Nerds” (1999); — “Mad Men” (2007); — “Narcos” (2015); — “Mindhunter” (2017); — “Mr. Robot” (2015); — “Black Mirror” (2011); — “Sex Education” (2019); — “Separation” (2022); — “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” (2005); — “Boys” (2019); — “Seinfeld” (1989); — “Peep Show” (2003); — “The Last of Us” (2023); — “When They See Us” (2019); — “The Mandalorian” (2019); — “Lost” (2004); — “Line of Duty” (2012); — “Deadwood” (2004); — “Mair of Easttown” (2021); — “Hannibal” (2013); — “Bear” (2022); — “Underground Empire” (2010); — “Atlanta” (2016); — “Vikings” (2013); — “Twin Peaks” (1990); — “The Shield” (2002); — “Happy Valley” (2014); — “True Detective” (2014); — “The Haunting of Hill House” (2018); — “The Americans” (2013); — “Justice” (2010).

Xrust Top 50 best TV series of all time: what to watch and how to build a route Xrust