Top New TV Shows Of The 2020s: From Ted Lasso To The Last Of Us

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While many consider the classic era of television to be over, the 2020s have still given us fantastic shows like The Bear and The Last of Us. Building on the success of groundbreaking shows like The Sopranos and Mad Men, today’s high-quality television is starting to experiment and become more unconventional.

Recent shows like Severance explore unsettling ideas about work-life balance, while Yellowjackets offers a gripping story of survival led by female characters, reminiscent of Lord of the Flies. The Curse uniquely blends the awkward humor of Nathan Fielder with the tense, unsettling style of Benny Safdie. Although streaming services release fewer episodes at a time, they can afford to create visually stunning shows such as The Mandalorian and House of the Dragon.

Over the past ten years, hugely popular movie franchises, such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, have increasingly moved to television, hoping to build on their success. While some of these shows, like Secret Invasion and The Book of Boba Fett, have been disappointing, others – including Andor and X-Men ’97 – have been truly exceptional.

2020 – Ted Lasso

2020 was a difficult year for everyone, marked by a shared, traumatic experience. That’s why the arrival of the TV show Ted Lasso felt so welcome – it offered a much-needed boost to people’s spirits. Surprisingly, the show started as a series of commercials for NBC Sports’ Premier League coverage, and many thought it wouldn’t succeed.

Against expectations, Ted Lasso turned out to be the show many people were looking for. It arrived at a time when many TV comedies, like Veep and It’s Always Sunny, were becoming increasingly dark and cynical, offering a welcome dose of optimism and lightheartedness instead.

2021 – Reservation Dogs

2021 was a fantastic year for television, bringing us shows like Hacks and The White Lotus. While many excellent series debuted that year – including WandaVision, Girls5eva, and Resident Alien – Sterlin Harjo’s Reservation Dogs stood out as a uniquely compelling and beautifully crafted coming-of-age story.

Reservation Dogs tells the story of Indigenous teenagers pursuing their dreams, bringing much-needed visibility to a community often overlooked in media. The show is particularly notable for its realistic dialogue – it sounds like genuine conversations – and its deeply developed, relatable characters. It’s rare to find a series that balances humor and heartfelt drama as skillfully and impactfully as Reservation Dogs.

2022 – The Bear

Christopher Storer’s show, The Bear, brilliantly portrays the intense and often chaotic atmosphere of a professional kitchen. While the constant shouting and harsh language create a very unhealthy work environment, it also makes for compelling television. The Bear is a show that manages to be both a funny, fast-paced comedy about working life and a moving drama exploring themes of addiction and mental health.

Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach deliver compelling and realistic performances at the heart of the series. White portrays a talented chef battling a difficult past, while Edebiri plays someone new to a chaotic and unconventional family. Moss-Bachrach embodies a boisterous character who uses his loud behavior to hide his own vulnerabilities and pain.

While the most recent seasons of The Bear have received varying reviews, the first two seasons are considered some of the best television ever made. Season 1 deeply explores the life of a stressed-out chef, and Season 2 beautifully shows a team working together on a creative project, with each person discovering their unique strengths.

2023 – The Last Of Us

HBO / Courtesy Everett Collection

For years, movies and shows based on video games were known for being bad. But HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us changed that. The game already felt similar to an HBO drama – it was a realistic, violent, and emotional story told in episodes, dealing with complex and dark subjects. In fact, some scenes from the game were used almost exactly as they were in the show.

The TV show The Last of Us benefited greatly from the close involvement of Neil Druckmann, the creator of the original video game. By combining his deep understanding of the story and characters with Craig Mazin’s expertise in television production (Mazin created Chernobyl), they were able to create a compelling adaptation that felt both faithful to the source material and exciting for viewers, ultimately resulting in a hugely popular show.

Let me tell you, Druckmann and Mazin really understood what made this story work in a different format. They smartly traded some of the big action sequences for a deeper dive into characters we didn’t get to know as well in the game – Bill and Frank’s story, for example, absolutely broke my heart. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey were phenomenal as Joel and Ellie, truly capturing that complex, often strained, father-daughter dynamic. And visually? Stunning. The production design team created a post-apocalyptic world overtaken by fungus that felt terrifyingly real. It was a masterful adaptation.

2024 – Shōgun

James Clavell’s novel Shōgun, originally a popular miniseries in 1980, returned to screens in 2024 as a lavish, high-quality television event. While 2024 offered many excellent new shows like The Penguin and Baby Reindeer, Shōgun stood out as the year’s most remarkable TV success. It’s visually breathtaking, features moving performances, and feels like a grand-scale movie.

Shōgun is a captivating drama similar to Game of Thrones, but set in feudal Japan. It features compelling characters, exciting battles, and complex political maneuvering. The series is driven by outstanding performances from Hiroyuki Sanada, who plays a formidable lord, Cosmo Jarvis as an English sailor stranded in Japan, and Anna Sawai, who acts as a crucial translator and negotiator between the two cultures.

2025 – The Studio

After twenty years working inside the major Hollywood studios, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are sharing their experiences. Their new project, The Studio, is a sharp and funny satire of the current movie business – tackling issues like the debate around artificial intelligence, the pursuit of awards, overly cautious casting choices, and the tendency to revive any recognizable brand (they hilariously poke fun at this with a movie based on Kool-Aid).

It’s funny that a show which playfully criticizes how unoriginal many modern movies are is actually one of the most creative shows currently on television. It’s similar to Larry Sanders in that it blends heartwarming workplace humor with sharp, satirical commentary on the entertainment industry. The show has a charming, vintage look – almost like an old film – and is filmed largely in long, continuous takes with a jazzy feel, reminiscent of the movie Birdman. The Studio rightfully won a lot of Emmys this year.

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2025-11-29 07:10