SomeTV showssimply can’t seem to miss, maintaining a shockingly consistent level of quality across many seasons. Even the most beloved TV series tend to have bad seasons here and there, either dipping in certain places like inRick & Mortyor slowly declining over time likethe pitiful ending ofGame of Thrones.Conversely, other all-time-great TV shows somehow kept up their best efforts across many years, refusing to drop the ball on even a single season.
These rare TV shows that never had a bad season tend to have a few things in common. Usually, they’re poignant drama series focusing on heavy subjects like crime, envisioned with a clear beginning, middle, and end from the start. That being said, there are some shocking exceptions from other genres, with everything fromsituational comediesto kid-friendly animated epics having the chance to endure in quality over a long time.
10Breaking Bad
5 seasons
Considered to be one of the greatest TV shows ever made by many, Vince Gilligan’sBreaking Badis a true masterpiece of TV. Starring the previously typecast Brian Cranston and then-unknown Aaron Paul, the show follows the exploits of a chemistry teacher who teams up with an old flunkie student to cook meth to make money for his family after receiving a deadly cancer diagnosis. The whole series is one giant character study that slowly sees a mild-mannered, down-on-his-luck Dad transform into an egotistical criminal mastermind.
Part of the enduring appeal ofBreaking Badis its remarkably consistent quality. There isn’t an ounce of fat on the tight writing that ensures each subsequent season neatly flows into the next. Though it realistically could have gone on much longer,Breaking Badneatly ends at the perfect moment in the season 5 finale, forever leaving its mark on network television.
9Better Call Saul
6 seasons
Breaking Badleft some massive shoes to fill upon its ending, and following up the critically-acclaimed series may have seemed like a daunting task for Vince Gilligan. However,Better Call Saulnot only meets the lofty expectations of storytelling set by its progenitor series, but it arguably surpasses them. The spin-off prequel balances two timelines, telling the story of how Jimmy McGill became the sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman and how he evaded the authorities following the collapse of Walter White’s drug empire.
Though it might start slower, every single season ofBetter Call Saulis packed full of tense cons, heists, and schemes as Jimmy cheats his way to victory over and over again, heedless of the consequences. The new characters introduced in the show, like Howard Hamlin and Lalo Salamanca, are all phenomenal additions to theBreaking Baduniverse, and at a certain season,Better Call Saulbecomes better thanBreaking Bad, proving that Gilligan learned many lessons on how to improve from the first series.
8Malcolm in the Middle
7 seasons
Speaking of Brian Cranston, his touch of quality expands far beyond the bounds of Vince Gilligan’s true crime universe, proving his mettle far earlier withMalcolm in the Middle.Running from 2000 to 2006,Malcolm in the Middlewas a sitcom that centered on the working-class Wilkerson family, consisting of an eccentric married couple and their four sons. The middle child, the titular Malcolm, is gifted with an incredible natural intelligence that provides him with opportunities just as much as it gets him into trouble.
Malcolm in the Middleeschewed many sitcom traditions such as laugh tracks and live studio audiences in favor of shooting on film with clever camera work and Malcolm’s frequent fourth-wall-breaks in which he talks to the audience. This fresh style kept the show highly entertaining throughout its 7 season run, even as the story developed with the Wilkersons gaining a new son and the evolution of eldest child Francis' adult escapades. Above all else, the show is a perfect encapsulation of what growing up in the early 2000s was like.
7The Twilight Zone
Despite being released back before TVs were even consistently in color,The Twilight Zonehas somehow endured as an immovable pop culture touchstone since its inception in 1959. An anthology series,The Twilight Zonebegins and ends each episode with narration from the glorious voice of host Rod Serling before launching into some disturbing tale, often laden with supernatural or science fiction elements. The brooding theme music, eerie tone, and shockingly good special effects for the time still hold up relatively unscathed today.
One of thegreatest horror TV shows ever made, let alone among the anthology horror genre the show popularized,The Twilight Zoneis a classic for a reason. Most anthology series tend to have dramatic dips in quality just by the nature of the format, but none ofThe Twilight Zone’s five seasons ever had so many duds that they dragged down the whole series. It’s no wonder thatThe Twilight Zonewas revived multiple times, including one instance as recently as 2019.
BetweenBreaking Bad, The Walking Dead,andMad Men, AMC was unstoppable as a TV channel in the mid-2000s. The latter series in particular could be praised for never having a single season that stood out as especially bad, keeping up the intrigue and poignant drama over 7 long seasons. Set in the 1960s,Mad Mentells the story of an ad agency’s attempts to stay on top of the market in such a turbulent time period, navigating office politics and relationships in the same breath.
The star of the show is easily Jon Hamm’s Don Draper, a role that he has since become famous for, and for good reason. Don’s evolution as a character is particularly captivating, from his personal struggles to his reaction to the ever-changing world around him. Some seasons ofMad Manmay have been stronger than others, but calling any of them downright bad would be an egregious mistake.
5Avatar: The Last Airbender
3 seasons
Sometimes, a piece of media ostensibly created for children can break the boundaries of what is expected of the animation genre through sheer force of quality. That’s exactly what happened with Nickelodeon’sAvatar: The Last Airbender, a short fantasy series that remains one of the greatest TV shows ever made in general. The story takes place in an Asian-inspired fantasy world in which the four major nations each have people who can control the four elements of nature. When the Fire Nation attacks, it’s up to the Avatar Aang, master of all four elements, to save the day.
Each ofAvatar: The Last Airbender’s three seasons, or “books”, have their own recognizable story to tell, following Aang and his group in specific emotional and physical places along their harrowing journey to defeat the Fire Lord. The worldbuilding of the series is second-to-none, and it knows how to balance moments of levity and kid-friendly comedy with more serious subjects and themes. Indeed, the average viewer has to strain quite hard to find any fault inAvatar: The Last Airbenderwhatsoever.
4The Good Place
4 seasons
A comedy series unlike any other,The Good Placestarts off as a quirky, offbeat joke-fest that soon proves it has more tricks up its sleeve than might be initially expected. The show follows the afterlife of Eleanor, a scummy woman who dies after leading a fairly self-centered and unremarkable life. In some grand cosmic fluke, she’s granted a spot in “The Good Place”, essentially heaven, and has to fake her way through the cosmic realm of abundance and bliss to prove she belongs there with the help of ethics professor Chidi.
Every season ofThe Good Placehas its own distinct story, with the shocking mid-season twist of the first series setting into motion a totally unexpected new direction for the plot. Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, and Jason are all brilliant characters with their own flaws keeping them from eternal salvation, intertwining jokes with poignant moments of growth and loss. Despite how dramatically different the stakes and story of each season is,The Good Placecertainly feels like a heavenly bit of TV the whole way through.
3The Sopranos
While plenty of crime shows have entered the annals of TV greatness, no mafia-centric series does it quite likeThe Sopranos.One ofHBO’s most successful original shows,The Sopranosfollows the titular New Jersey-based crime family, particularly the patriarch Tony, as he goes about his illegal misdeeds. To add an interesting layer to the drama, Tony is examining his mental health in a manner unheard of for the typically machismo crime lord, regularly seeing a psychiatrist.
The Sopranoscan be quite the complex and thought-provoking show. Its cast of criminal characters are undoubtedly bad people, but it’s hard not to sympathize with them to some degree, a testament of the series' absurdly good character development. Some episodes work as bottle stories that need little context, while others advance the serialized narrative in stunning ways. In either case, none ofThe Sopranos' six seasons can truly be thought of as a weak link.
2Peaky Blinders
FromThe SopranostoBreaking BadtoPeaky Blinders, criminals just seem to make excellent subjects for consistently good TV. Rather than taking place in New Jersey or New Mexico,Peaky Blinderstrades familiar Americana for 1910s England, specifically, Birmingham. Here, a clan of Irish criminals, the Shelby family, plot to maintain their vice grip on the city’s criminal underworld.
Cilian Murphy’s Thomas Shelby is one of the greatest performances of his career, navigating delicate and tense situations with astonishing reliability. Each successive season ofPeaky Blindersbuilds on the last in a way that gradually ratchets up the tension to a mad boiling point, expertly weaving together multiple storylines with unbelievable deftness. It’s hard to believe a show likePeaky Blindersis as good as it is, let alone that it maintains that quality across 5 long seasons.
1Hannibal
As great as organized crime is for TV, sometimes a single serial killer is all a TV show truly needs to make for a lasting and worthwhile narrative. The likes ofDextermay have outshone it in popular culture, but as far as quality is concerned,Hannibalis unmatched when it comes to bloody captivating drama. Essentially working as a prequel toSilence of the Lambs,Hannibalfollows the cannibalistic psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter still early on in his career as a serial killer, hoping to evade capture while giving in to his sick desires.
As great as Anthony Hopkins is as Hannibal Lecter, the character truly feels like the role Mads Mikkelsen was born to play, bringing the vile doctor to life with slimy smoothness. The series perches on a unique take on the classic police procedural, providing some insight as to how a mind could get as depraved as Hannibal’s while showing the full gory fallout of his gruesome crimes. For those that can stomach it,Hannibalpresents some of the bestTVaround with its consistency-to-quality ratio.
