This Is The Greatest TV Show Of All Time – Prove Me Wrong

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Hi, I’m Graeme Guttmann, the Deputy News Editor at ScreenRant. I’ve spent years watching TV and immersing myself in pop culture – something I’ve turned into a career! I’m fascinated by how entertainment can both help us escape and offer insights into life. When choosing the greatest TV show ever, I picked one that does both – it’s pure entertainment, but also makes you think about big questions. And if you disagree with my pick, feel free to tell me why in the comments – or just argue with a wall!

I’ve always grown up with television. I have really happy childhood memories of watching shows like Desperate Housewives and LOST with my mom in Baltimore. I’m not quite sure why I was watching those shows at age nine, but I wouldn’t be writing this now if it weren’t for her.

I’ve become a dedicated TV watcher, exploring almost every genre imaginable. I follow the Real Housewives franchise with the same enthusiasm as a huge Marvel fan. Whenever I’m home, I always make time for those easy-to-enjoy shows, and I ensure my mother is up-to-date on the latest TV adaptations of popular books. Basically, if it’s on television, I’ll probably watch it.

That’s why I think shows as different as The Hunting Wives and Andor – both personal favorites of mine this year – can both be great. It’s not that they’re comparable in terms of quality or storytelling, but television has the capacity to be incredibly diverse. It can be exciting, informative, captivating, and even challenge us to confront difficult questions we usually avoid.

For me, The Leftovers isn’t just the greatest television show ever made—though it is—it’s a deeply personal experience. Over just three seasons and 28 episodes, the show became a place for me to work through difficult emotions at different points in my life, and its impact only grew as I got older.

The Leftovers Came At A Pivotal Time For Television

The TV series The Leftovers debuted during a fascinating period for television. It was the height of ‘Peak TV,’ and streaming services were rapidly gaining popularity. At the same time, HBO continued to produce highly acclaimed shows like Game of Thrones, Girls, Veep, True Detective, Westworld, Insecure, and Big Little Lies – all while The Leftovers was on the air.

I was completely hooked by The Leftovers from the very beginning. It starts with this incredibly unsettling event – suddenly, 2% of the world’s population just… vanishes. It’s not some dramatic, explosive thing, either. There’s no trace of them left, no explanation, it just happens, and it throws everyone’s lives into chaos. It’s based on the book by Tom Perrotta, and it’s a really powerful setup.

Called the Sudden Departure, this event sparks a worldwide crisis of meaning, forcing people to question life itself. Both Perotta’s book and the first season of the HBO series center on the town of Mapleton, New York, and how its residents grapple with these profound questions after the event.

Strange groups have emerged, many people are struggling with their mental health, and others seem strangely unaffected. The show The Leftovers immediately makes us ask ourselves: how would we cope with a loss that can’t be explained, a deep sadness with no clear answers?

So, what if everyone in the world was overwhelmed by grief after something terrible happened, something that felt impossible to avoid? If that makes the show The Leftovers seem hard to watch, you’re not alone. A lot of the criticism of the first season focused on how deeply it explored this kind of widespread emotional response.

I have to admit, while some struggled with the show’s complexity, I actually found it pretty engaging. But it was seasons two and three where things really clicked for me. Even with all the tough questions and dark themes the series was known for, a real sense of hope started to build. It led to a finale that was just… heartbreakingly beautiful, and honestly, it still gets me choked up every time I watch it.

Throughout its run, The Leftovers consistently breaks the rules of traditional storytelling, often creating entirely new approaches. It excels at building a believable world, depicting the aftermath of the Sudden Departure with a quiet realism that highlights the profound sense of loss. The show presents these changes as matter-of-fact, which makes the immense grief even more impactful.

The series, from the creator of LOST, Damon Lindelof, and Perotta, doesn’t offer simple explanations. It leaves the central mystery – the Sudden Departure – unexplained, avoiding neat scientific or religious justifications. The show simply presents the event as something that occurred, and doesn’t provide the easy answers that many modern shows offer viewers.

We’re left grappling with things we can’t explain, confronting the unsettling mysteries and terrors around us. From this, we can begin to build a new understanding of the world – a way of living that accepts that answers aren’t always easy to find, or may not come at all.

The Leftovers Features An All-Time Great Performance

Throughout the series, The Leftovers features some of the best acting seen on television during the 2010s, and one performance in particular is truly exceptional – arguably one of the greatest ever in any form of entertainment.

Carrie Coon’s portrayal of Nora Durst is the most heartbreaking part of the show. Before The Leftovers, Coon had already impressed audiences in films like Gone Girl and TV shows such as The Playboy Club and Law & Order: SVU. However, The Leftovers truly launched her career, and many believe she deserved an Emmy Award for her incredible performance – though even without one, her talent shines through.

Nora Durst is a central character in The Leftovers who experienced a devastating loss – her entire family, including her husband and two children, disappeared on the day of the Sudden Departure. Throughout the first season, Nora largely isolates herself, and her path briefly crosses with that of Kevin Garvey, the town’s police chief, as he struggles with his own difficulties following the mass disappearance.

Coon expertly mixes funny and heartbreaking moments. For example, she bluntly tells Kevin, “Fuck your daughter,” while casually suggesting a last-minute trip to Florida, showcasing a remarkable ability to blend humor with deep emotional pain.

The first season of The Leftovers dedicates its sixth episode entirely to Nora’s story. It opens with a shocking scene: Nora pays someone to shoot her, while wearing a bulletproof vest. The episode culminates in a powerfully sad embrace from a man who claims he can alleviate her suffering simply by touching her.

Coon delivers a remarkable performance, capable of conveying incredibly complex emotions. She seamlessly shifts between confusion, trust, anger, sadness, and hope, all within a single moment. Whether or not her character genuinely believes in Holy Wayne – a man who promises to heal pain with a hug – becomes almost irrelevant because of the power of her acting.

The important thing is that she allows herself to heal and move past the pain caused by her family’s disappearance. Ultimately, that’s what The Leftovers explores – not necessarily what’s factually true, but what we choose to believe. This could be a story from someone we haven’t seen in years, or a myth created after a strange event, shared by a man who lives in a tower in a quirky Texas town.

There Are Many Other Reasons To Love The Leftovers

The acting in The Leftovers is consistently strong, not just from Coon, but also from Ann Dowd as a chilling cult leader, Justin Theroux as a deeply troubled father, and Christopher Eccleston as a man whose faith leads to unpredictable behavior.

As a critic, I have to say Max Richter’s music is a real standout in this series. It’s all these incredibly sad strings and gentle piano melodies that perfectly capture both the heartbreak and the glimmers of hope within the story, blending them together beautifully. And the direction? Seriously impressive. We’re talking about some truly top-tier television directors – names like Mimi Leder, Craig Zobel, Michelle MacClaren, and Lesli Linka Glatter – all delivering some of the best episodes I’ve ever seen.

Beyond adapting the original novel, The Leftovers evolves into a truly remarkable series. The first season closely follows Tom Perrotta’s book, with a few adjustments to characters and plot details. However, seasons two and three move past the book’s storyline and the setting of Mapleton, following Kevin and Nora as their journey takes them to Texas and ultimately, Australia.

This sweeping story takes you across the world and beyond, blending every kind of genre and feeling imaginable. Yet, it surprisingly lands on a profoundly moving message: even with life’s biggest questions and hardest losses, there’s still hope and a reason to keep going.

The Leftovers Is A Personal Journey, Different For Everyone

Like many people, I’ve experienced loss. When I was young, my mother’s father, mother, and brother all passed away in a short period of time. My parents were older when they had me, so I didn’t get to know much of their extended family while they were alive. Instead, I mostly saw them at funerals and wakes, both for my mother’s close relatives and those further removed.

Although I understood the reasons for the deaths in my family – my grandparents passed away from old age and my uncle from Parkinson’s – grief still felt overwhelming as a child. When I encountered The Leftovers, both the book and the TV show, it finally gave me a way to process not only the losses I’d become accustomed to, but also my mother’s reaction to them. It was as if someone had finally articulated what I’d been struggling to understand.

Six years after the TV show The Leftovers finished airing, I lost my best friend, who I’d known for fifteen years. We used to watch the show together, discussing its puzzles, sharing our ideas about what it all meant, and admiring the incredible work of the show’s creator, Damon Lindelof.

I hadn’t really experienced the specific type of profound sadness shown in The Leftovers until recently. When I needed to process it, I rewatched the show, starting with the episodes I loved most and then going back to season one.

The show didn’t give me the solutions I wanted, and it wasn’t meant to. However, it did help me shift my focus away from dwelling on the past and wondering ‘what if.’ It forced me to accept that some things simply don’t have explanations, and honestly, there’s a sense of peace in that realization.

If you have a different opinion about the greatest TV show ever, share your thoughts in the comments!

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2025-11-21 21:59