most popular tv shows of all time

The most popular TV shows of all time vary depending on the metric used—such as viewership, critical acclaim, or public opinion. Netflix's data shows that "Wednesday: Season 1" led in total views with 252.1 million, followed by "Adolescence: Limited Series" and " 4". IMDb's list of most-watched shows includes "," "Stranger Things," and "The Walking Dead" as top entries based on viewer numbers and ratings. According to a YouGov survey from Q3 2025, classic shows like "," "The Simpsons," and "" hold high popularity among American adults, with "Sesame Street" scoring the highest at 97% positive opinion. Reddit users often highlight "," "," and "Game of Thrones" as top-tier fictional storytelling, while others emphasize shows like "" and "" for their comedic excellence. The consensus list from Footballguys.com ranks "Breaking Bad" as the top show, followed by "Seinfeld," "," and "Game of Thrones" based on a synthesis of 50 expert lists.

Wednesday: Season 1: Netflix's most-watched show with 252.1 million views
Adolescence: Limited Series: Second most-watched on Netflix with 142.6 million views
Stranger Things 4: Third most-watched on Netflix with 140.7 million views
Game of Thrones: Top-rated show on IMDb with 9.2/10 and 2.5 million ratings
Breaking Bad: Highest-rated show on IMDb with 9.5/10 and 2.5 million ratings
The Simpsons: One of the most popular all-time shows in America with 97% positive opinion
Seinfeld: Ranked second in the Footballguys consensus list and praised for its comedic writing
The Sopranos: Ranked third in the Footballguys consensus list and highly acclaimed for storytelling
Stranger Things: Featured in multiple top lists for its cultural impact and viewership
The Wire: Frequently cited as one of the greatest TV dramas ever made, ranked highly in critical lists

Variety

variety.com › lists › greatest-tv-shows-of-all-time

The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time

December 21, 2023 - Variety breaks down the best TV shows of all time. From The Sopranos to Community, these are the best series ever aired.

IMDb

imdb.com › search › title

TV Series (Sorted by Number of ratings Descending)

December 6, 2025 - Aspiring film actress Penny moves into a Pasadena apartment across the hall from brilliant, but socially awkward, physicists Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter and shows them how little they know about life outside of the lab.

Discussions

A cool guide to the best TV shows of all time

Every time this comes up I think of how the last column should be removed cause of how much they skew things. More on reddit.com

r/coolguides

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April 22, 2025

A cool guide which ranks the greatest TV shows of all time.

Need to remove the last column. More on reddit.com

r/coolguides

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[UPDATED] Top 100 Best TV Shows according to IMDb, RottenTomatoes, Metacritic and TMDB. How many shows from this list have you watched and which do you recommend the most?

EDIT: THIS POST IS OUTDATED. BUT YOU CAN SEE THE UPDATED LIST HERE Full quality image here because Reddit compresses the image in the app. (edit: I just updated the image because The Last Kingdom's country was wrong on the original image. It is correct now.) I just added Ratingraph ratings as you suggested. So this is the updated ranking. I finished 43 shows from this list. I'd like to hear how many shows you've finished and which ones you recommend. This list only includes shows from 1997-2024 (edit: but the top 3 best old shows are Dekalog (1989) with 8.93 overall rating, Mr Bean (1990) with 8.90 and The Twilight Zone (1959) with 8.82). This list does not include ongoing shows (edit: the best ongoing show is Heartstopper with 8.86 overall rating. My Brilliant Friend with 8.71 is the best ongoing show that is already renewed to its final season). Honorable mentions: This Is Us, Legion and Dopesick tied with Penny Dreadful at 100th. Honorable mentions 2: Crash Landing on You has a 9.12 overall rating and it would be good enough to be 3rd on this list. Young Royals has a 8.94 overall rating, that would be good enough to get 9th place. Detectorists has a 8.86 overall rating and Utopia UK has a 8.84 overall rating (both good enough to be 11th on this list). But these shows do not have a page on Metacritic, so their score is based only on IMDb, Rottentomatoes, TMDB and Ratingraph ratings. There are many highly rated foreign shows that could be on this list, but unfortunately most of them do not have critic ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. That's why this list is mostly American-British. Edit: I missed This Is Going to Hurt. It is a British miniseries with 8.50 overall rating, so it should be in the Top 100. More on reddit.com

r/televisionsuggestions

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July 17, 2024

Top 50 TV Shows Of All Time Ranked by the most known sources of ratings like IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and so on.

Lots of recency bias here. More on reddit.com

r/moviecritic

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April 25, 2023

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