There are plenty of incredible TV shows out there, but very few feel like they accomplished exactly what they set out to do. Some have extraordinary characters, others tell enormous stories, and a select handful completely change what television can look like. Calling a TV show "perfect" is obviously subjective, but there are certain series that make the argument surprisingly easy.
These eight TV shows aren't just a collection of the greatest series ever made; instead, they all have different strengths, and some are much more unconventional than others. What they share is the ability to offer something that's difficult to find elsewhere, whether that's impeccable world-building, ambitious storytelling, or a huge willingness to trust its audience. Even if they don't become personal favorites, these TV shows are so good, everyone needs to watch them at least once.
Set during the Cold War, The Americans follows Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, two KGB spies living undercover as an ordinary married couple in suburban Washington, D.C. Their two children have no idea who they really are, while FBI agent Stan Beeman just happens to live across the street. The Americans' premise is immediately compelling, but what makes the FX series so perfect is that it takes its spy thriller set-up and turns it into a deeply uncomfortable exploration of marriage, identity, and loyalty.
Elizabeth and Philip are constantly asked to decide where their personal feelings end and their ideological commitments begin, and The Americans never makes those choices look easy. Their relationship becomes more complicated as they spend years pretending to be other people, and their children gradually become more aware of the world around them. The Americans is tense when it needs to be, but its best asset is that it finds a ton of meaning in quiet conversations and difficult decisions. Since it proves how a TV show can take a familiar genre premise and become something much, much richer, everyone needs to experience The Americans at least once.
From the minute Oceanic Flight 815 crashes into a desert island in Lost, nothing is quite as it seems. As Jack, Sawyer, Kate, Locke, Hurley, and other passengers try to find a way home, the island reveals strange properties and secrets that show there is much more happening around them than they initially understand. There are numerous genre-shifting plot devices in Lost's six seasons, including flashbacks and flash-forwards that reveal more about the characters' lives, as well as the show's increasingly ambitious mythology.
Hurley's mysterious numbers, the Others, and strange supernatural phenomena constantly expand what appears to be a straightforward survival story. Given what Lost accomplished at its best, it's must-watch TV, even if it became controversial for some of its later storytelling choices. Few series can include such a huge ensemble cast while still making each character feel vital to the story, and its never-ending mysteries consistently encouraged audiences to theorize between episodes.
Watching Lost at least once means you'll get to experience one of the medium's defining cultural phenomena, even if it's better to watch it several times through to properly understand its themes. Lost's influence on later projects is impossible to grasp without seeing what made audiences so obsessed with it in the first place.
Mad Men is a glamorous drama about ad execs who work on Madison Avenue in the 1960s, with Jon Hamm's Don Draper at the center of its story. Don is brilliant at his job, but his carefully constructed identity hides an enormous amount of insecurity. Meanwhile, Peggy, Olson, and other Mad Men characters all experience their own complicated relationships with ambition, gender, and changing social expectations. It gets off to a slow start, but the show is excellent because of how much it trusts its characters to change over time; there aren't any easy transformations, and never does Mad Men announce when someone is at a major turning point.
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