What year did prestige TV peak?

Could it be 2025?

Wolf Hall (2015), IMO the greatest miniseries of all time (though I’ve yet to watch the 2025 follow-up )

2023-24 was like a mini ice age that had me wondering if the prestige TV era was dead or dying. I didn’t watch much during this period save for The Bear’s terrific second season (2023) and its chaotic follow-up (2024).

And suddenly, now in 2025, I find myself without the time to catch up on series that I like (White Lotus, Black Mirror, Wolf Hall), respect (Severance), or that have yet to air (The Bear, Andor). Adolescence blew us all away.

This has me wondering what the best year in the Golden Era of Prestige TV has been. To figure that out I came up with this chart.

A few notes on my process…

• I usually don’t like to water down my argument with qualifications about how this list is “subjective,” but I have to admit that I’ve left out a lot of potentially good shows (The Leftovers, Six Feet Under, non-English speaking shows?) simply because I’ve never seen them.

• I’m including a few prestige TV shows that I’ve never fully watched (Twin Peaks, Friday Night Lights) because they’re often in the conversation as “great prestige TV shows.” I’m also including Breaking Bad for that reason, though I remain unconvinced that it was a great show.

• I’m including the greatest seasons of The Office (2 & 3) because the Jim/Pam dramedy elements, I think, elevated that show beyond a mere sitcom. And I’m including Veep because it was just spectacular and needs to be in the conversation if we’re going to be talking about peak TV.

• I’m including a few random shows that no one really talked about (Easy, High Maintenance) that I loved.

• Lastly, I’m including a few great miniseries (Fleabag, Wolf Hall, John Adams) and am only including a season or two of shows (Downton Abbey S.1, True Detective S.1) because sometimes the overall show isn’t great but a few seasons were. For instance, I’m not a huge The Crown fan but I thought season 4 with the Lady Di/Charles courtship was outstanding.

And, finally…

The most sensible answer to the question (“when was peak TV?”) is that there is no mountain-like “peak” but a series of glacial and interglacial periods, in which TV heats up and cools off.

Red line indicates a possible “peak” year

If I was forced to choose, then I’d go with 2007, when you had a terrific Sopranos final season, The Wire was ongoing (but didn’t have a season that year), The Office (S.3) was at the peak of its powers, and you had shows like Friday Night Lights ongoing and Mad Men premiering.

Or maybe it was 2016 when Game of Thrones was still terrific and when a whole bunch of great shows were debuting (Easy, Fleabag, High Maintenance, the OJ miniseries).

Have I forgotten any significant shows? Is there, to you, a clear frontrunner for best (interglacial) year?

***Below, paid subscribers get to see my reviews of Adolescence, Hard Truths (Another Mike Leigh film), A Complete Unknown, Flow (animated cat movie), A Real Pain, Gladiator II, and some readables.***