List of television series considered the best

While there is no general agreement upon the greatest television series, as it is a more subjective and/or consensus-based viewpoint, many publications and organizations have tried to objectively determine the series considered the best. The series mentioned in this article have all been mentioned in notable critics' or public surveys.

There are different categories within television such as drama, comedy and documentary and so it may not be appropriate to compare series from different categories.

The BFI TV 100 is a list compiled in 2000 by the British Film Institute (BFI), chosen by a poll of industry professionals, to determine what were the greatest British television programmes of any genre ever to have been screened. The top ten were:

In 2016, television critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz published TV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time, where they scored each series based on six criteria: Innovation, Influence, Consistency, Performance, Storytelling, and Peak. They tallied them up to create their list of the 100 greatest American shows of all time. The top five tied each other in their tally, so Sepinwall and Seitz debated and eventually decided on how to sort them in the final list:

The Best in TV: The Greatest TV Shows of Our Time readers' poll was conducted in 2012 as part of the 20/20 series. As such, its list consists entirely of programs based in the United States.

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