The 6 Best Shows Released Between 2000 and Now
Television has changed so much since 2000 that the best shows from this era barely seem to belong to one category. Cable dramas became richer and stranger, streaming changed how people discovered stories, and comedy learned to sit comfortably beside grief, shame, ambition, and failure. The result is a period where television started feeling bigger, riskier, and more personal.
Still, the reason people return to great shows has stayed the same. Give viewers characters they can argue about, worry over, forgive, and doubt, and they will keep coming back long after the final episode. That is especially true for the six shows released between 2000 and now on this list. Let’s find out how.
6 'Better Call Saul' (2015–2022)
In Better Call Saul, Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) practises law out of a nail salon’s cramped back room. Court-appointed work barely pays, and getting through the courthouse parking barrier becomes another argument he cannot afford. You want somebody to give this man a chance. Then he stages a billboard rescue to advertise himself, and trusting him becomes complicated. The maddening part is that Jimmy can do the work. He notices elderly clients being overcharged and digs through discarded paperwork to prove it. He just keeps reaching for a dishonest shortcut.
Chuck (Michael McKean), the brother he dutifully cares for, doubts he will ever change. Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) sees reasons to keep believing. Both have a point, which makes Jimmy’s hunger for his brother’s approval hurt even more. It is infuriating how much you can love someone this exhausting.
5 'Fleabag' (2016–2019)
Fleabag (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) is appallingly good company. She runs a struggling London café, makes disastrous sexual decisions, and keeps interrupting conversations to reveal what she actually thinks. She makes the glance before an insult almost as funny as the insult itself. You start waiting for her to look over.
That habit becomes uncomfortable when The Priest (Andrew Scott) notices it. She wants his company, and he keeps catching her withdrawing from it. Suddenly the private jokes expose how much grief she cannot discuss. The smirk arrives, disappears, and leaves an expression she would rather keep hidden. The romance is agonising because being understood is precisely what she wants and precisely what she keeps preventing. She is easy to love for trying anyway. Even when she makes it horribly awkward.
4 'Succession' (2018–2023)
Succession begins with Media billionaire Logan Roy’s (Brian Cox) children discussing his replacement while he’s in hospital. That tells you plenty about the family. Then the old bastard recovers, and the promotion they were imagining becomes something he can promise, withdraw, and offer to somebody else. Logan's mere presence alters everybody’s behaviour. Kendall (Jeremy Strong) rehearses the confidence of a future chief executive, Roman (Kieran Culkin) fidgets and makes filthy jokes, Shiv (Sarah Snook) wants to believe she understands her father better than her brothers do. Put them around a dinner table and watch how quickly an ordinary remark becomes a test of loyalty.
The horrible pleasure is recognising how much of this they understand. They know he manipulates them. They still want to be chosen. So they betray one another, return for reassurance, and spend fortunes arranging meetings where somebody’s dad can humiliate them again.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Netflix Character Would Be Your Best Friend? Dustin · Emily · Wednesday · Gi-hun
Some friends drag you out of the house. Some sit with you on the worst night of your life. Netflix has written both, plus the one who tells you the truth you have been avoiding all week. Answer eight quick questions about how you actually do friendship, and find out which of them was always going to end up in your corner.
🧢Dustin(Stranger Things)
🗼Emily(Emily in Paris)
🕷️Wednesday(Wednesday)
🟢Gi-hun(Squid Game)
01
How do you usually end up making a new friend? The origin story says a lot about the friendship that follows it.
02
What is a perfect Saturday with your best friend? Friendship is mostly built out of very ordinary hours.
03
You call them at two in the morning. What happens? This is the real test of a friendship, and everybody knows it.
04
What do you want from them when you are clearly wrong? The best friendships are the ones that survive being corrected.
05
What do your friends actually value about you? The friend you attract says something about the friend you are.
06
You have a falling out. How does it go? How a friendship repairs itself matters more than how it breaks.
07
What do you actually need a best friend for? Everybody is missing something. The right friend fills that gap.
08
Ten years from now, what keeps the two of you close? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides who you get.
The Group Chat Has Spoken Your Best Friend Is…
Four Netflix characters, four completely different ways of showing up for somebody. This is the one who fits how you actually do friendship, and what having them in your life would be like.
Dustin Henderson
You do not do friendship at half volume, and neither does he. What you want is somebody who says yes to the plan before you have finished describing the plan.
- Dustin is the friend the entire show runs on: loyal past the point of sense, enthusiastic about everything, and incapable of leaving anybody behind.
- You have the same instinct. Your friendships are loud, specific and slightly ridiculous, and they last for decades because of it.
- He is also the one person who would take your strangest interest completely seriously, which is far rarer than it sounds.
- You would have a group chat. It would never once be quiet.
Emily Cooper
You are the friend who makes things happen, and so is she. Together you would be mildly exhausting to everyone around you and completely delighted with yourselves.
- Emily treats an ordinary Tuesday as something that could be turned into an occasion, which is either the best or the worst quality in a friend depending on your energy levels.
- You share her refusal to sit still. Neither of you has ever accepted a night in when something was happening somewhere else.
- She is far more loyal than people give her credit for. She defends her friends loudly, publicly, and occasionally before checking the facts.
- She would post the photo without asking. You would forgive her, because it is a very good photo.
Wednesday Addams
You have no patience for pleasant lies, and she has no ability to tell them. What looks like coldness from the outside is the most reliable friendship on this list.
- Wednesday never says a kind thing she does not mean, which makes the rare ones count for an enormous amount.
- You would rather be told the truth than be made comfortable. She is constitutionally incapable of offering you anything else.
- Underneath all of it she is ferociously protective. She simply refuses to make a performance out of caring.
- Do not expect a birthday message. Do expect her to ruin anyone who wrongs you.
Seong Gi-hun
You look after whoever is having the worst day. So does he. It is the least strategic way to move through the world and the best possible quality in a friend.
- Gi-hun is not the strongest player in Squid Game, or the cleverest. He is the one who keeps choosing to protect somebody else, over and over, at genuine cost to himself.
- You have the same instinct. You notice who is struggling and you stay with them, long after anybody would blame you for leaving.
- He is a flawed friend, and that is part of why it lands. He lets people down, then comes back and tries again, which is more than most manage.
- He would give you his last chance and never once mention that he had done it.
3 'Mad Men' (2007–2015)
Mad Men is a masterclass in selling a perfect American illusion. The plot kicks off with Don Draper (Jon Hamm) calmly explaining exactly what people want. He makes advertising executives believe a cigarette brand or a slide projector has something to do with their deepest private feelings. Then he goes home to Betty (January Jones) and the children, and ordinary honesty seems beyond him. Don has a prestigious job in 1960s Manhattan, a beautiful suburban house, and an identity he cannot afford to have examined. The whisky poured during office hours feels less glamorous once you notice how often he needs it.
And Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) begins as Don’s secretary, only to realise she can do the creative work the men congratulate themselves for. God, you want her to get that first assignment. Then you want her to be paid properly for it.
2 'The Wire' (2002–2008)
The Wire follows Baltimore detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), who wants to investigate a drug organisation properly. His superiors would prefer that he stop making their lives difficult. He hardly makes himself easy to support.
The resulting investigation occupies a police basement, where names must be matched to faces and pager messages deciphered before intercepted calls can become usable evidence. Every breakthrough takes work. Recognising a voice doesn’t mean you can prove who it belongs to, and the bosses are already asking when you’ll be finished. Meanwhile, Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) demands discipline from the people selling his drugs, and Omar Little (Michael K. Williams) keeps disrupting business by robbing them. The show understands everybody’s immediate problem so thoroughly that even a brief conversation can make you anxious. What gets me angry is how often good police work becomes an inconvenience to the people supposedly responsible for demanding it.
1 'Breaking Bad' (2008–2013)
Walter White (Bryan Cranston) gets lung cancer and decides to cook meth so his family will have money when he’s gone. Former student Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) knows the business. Walt knows chemistry and immediately starts issuing instructions in their RV.
Within two episodes, a dealer is locked to a basement post and acid and human remains have fallen through Jesse’s bathroom floor. Walt specifically told Jesse to use a plastic container. That detail is horrible and absurdly funny. The teacher was right, and being right has become completely inadequate. Meanwhile, Walt has to answer his wife’s questions without alerting his DEA brother-in-law, Hank (Dean Norris). The show makes the next ordinary conversation feel almost as dangerous as the drug deal. You keep wanting Walt to admit he cannot handle this. Then Cranston gives him that first unmistakable pleasure in asserting himself, and you realise how badly he wants to continue.
Breaking Bad
- Release Date
- 2008 - 2013-00-00
- Network
- AMC
- Showrunner
- Vince Gilligan
- Directors
- Vince Gilligan, Michelle Maclaren
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