Say what you will about the state of the entertainment industry at the end of the decade, and my is it precarious, but there's no denying that the last ten years have delivered an absolutely absurd amount of the best TV ever created. From the birth of streaming services, to the fading prejudice against being a "TV star" (Meryl Streep makes TV now!), the 2010s have been a goldmine of creativity and ambitious storytelling across mediums, genres, networks, and platforms.

With the 2010s coming to a close,  the Collider Staff has selected our picks for the best TV shows of the decade -- and let us tell you, that was no easy feat. Long gone are the days when broadcast and cable waged a two-party war for your attention; this is the era of Peak TV, folks!

With that in mind, we ultimately had to cull our favorites, but here are some honorable mentions that almost made the cut: Shameless, The Handmaid's Tale, My Mad Fat Diary, Crashing (both versions), Better Things, Archer, Man Seeking Woman, Don't Trust the B-- in Apartment 23, Bojack Horseman, Big Little Lies, True Blood, Jessica Jones, I Think You Should Leave, The Good Wife, and Scandal. 

And without further ado, here are our picks for the best TV shows of the decade, from most recent to the start of the 2010s. And for more, be sure to check out the rest of our Best of the Decade coverage.

The Boys (2019 - Present)

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Image via Amazon

It’s been a while since a social satire cut so deeply into the exact time it was released like The Boys, Amazon’s dissection of what it’d be like to live in an age of actual superheroes, not just one where they rule the box office. Adapted from the Dynamite comic series by writer Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, The Boys is 2019’s Watchmen—yes, I know there is an actual 2019 Watchmen, also very good!—putting on display our near-religious devotion to superhero media and the dangers of trusting too hard in spandex-wearing gods. It’s also just like, a really freaking entertaining black comedy that pairs up an endearingly skittish Jack Quaid and a filthy-mouthed Karl Urban in a crude, bloody mystery tale. Urban kills a room full of goons with a superpowered baby. It’s a good time. Special attention must be paid to roles like Antony Starr as Homelander, the homicidal man-child with the powers of Superman, who would be the most chilling, multi-layered villain on the show if it weren’t for Oscar-winner Elisabeth Shue as Madelyn Stillwell, a corporate suit who signs lives away with a smile. -- Vinnie Mancuso

Russian Doll (2019 - Present)

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Image via Netflix

If you want to see what happens when a group of brilliant and super creative female forces comes together for one project, look no further than Netflix’s Russian Doll. Not only does the show rock a standout performance from Natasha Lyonne, a magical pairing of creators in Lyonne, Leslye Headland and Amy Poehler, and A+ direction from Lyonne, Headland, and Jamie Babbit, but the series also puts a very smart and highly entertaining twist on the time loop narrative. Russian Doll is brimming with sass and energy. It barrels through its eight-episode run with laughs, heart and one intense ticking clock, all while peeling back the layers of its main character (Lyonne) and, in a sense, exploring how to reassemble them in order to make her feel whole and move forward. -- Perri Nemiroff

Unbelievable (2019 - Present)

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Image via Netflix

From showrunner Susannah Grant and inspired by real events, the eight-episode mini-series Unbelievable is a story of unspeakable trauma and the strength and resilience that you can discover within yourself, as a result. When 18-year-old Marie Adler (Kaitlyn Dever, giving a reserved but remarkable performance) reports that she’s been sexually assaulted by an intruder in her home in 2008, everyone from her former foster parents to her friends to the investigating detectives doubt the truth of her story. Meanwhile, in 2011 and hundreds of miles away, Detectives Grace Rasmussen (Toni Collette) and Karen Duvall (Merritt Wever) find themselves investigating a pair of intruder rapes that are eerily similar to Marie’s experience, and they partner to catch what is clearly a serial rapist.

Throughout the case, and as more victims are discovered, you get a real sense of why it’s so hard for survivors of such crimes to come forward. You want to scream and cry for Marie, as she’s dismissed and judged by those she thought would help her. It will break your heart and make you sad and angry, again and again, but although it is difficult subject matter, it’s also really informative, compelling and necessary viewing, with a trio of incredible performances at its center. –Christina Radish

Watchmen (2019)

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Image via HBO

Full disclosure, at the time of this posting, I still haven't seen the finale episode of Watchmen. Is it a big swing to put a series on your Best of the Decade list when you don't even know how it ends? Yes. But Damon Lindelof's insane, ambitious adaptation of the celebrated comic series has earned a spot based on the measure of its first eight episodes alone. Somehow Lindelof and his creative team pulled off the impossible: a potent, timely, and gripping new world built from the events of the source material, that's just as existentially ponderous and unabashedly bizarre as Alan Moore's original story. Gorgeous on a technical level, acted to hell and back (put Jean Smart in everything, you cowards), and featuring some sublime writing, Watchmen isn't just one of the best series of the decade, it's one of the series that best expressed what it felt to live through it, just with a lot more squids. -- Haleigh Foutch

Chernobyl (2019)

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Image via HBO

From creator/writer Craig Mazin and director Johan Renck, the five-part HBO miniseries Chernobyl explores how the 1986 nuclear accident becomes one of the worst human-made catastrophes in history. After the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine suffered a massive explosion that released radioactive material across Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, and as far as Scandinavia and western Europe, countless brave men and women sacrificed their own lives, both knowingly and unknowingly, in an attempt to save Europe from unimaginable disaster.

Chernobyl is masterful in its storytelling, as it shines a spotlight on the domino effect of what happens when a government values their own agenda over human lives. As the viewer witnesses the role that truth and lies played in the outcome of this terrible disaster, you also get to see the incredible strength and courage that was displayed by so many. It has a phenomenal cast with no weak links and includes stand-out performances from Jarred Harris, Stellan Skarsgård, Emily Watson and Jessie Buckley. There are tragic images throughout that will haunt you long after seeing them, like the moment on the Bridge of Death in Pripyat. –Christina Radish

When They See Us (2019)

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Image via Netflix

Created, co-written and expertly directed by Ava DuVernay, the four-part Netflix limited series When They See Us chronicles the notorious case of the five teenagers of color from Harlem – Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise – who became labeled the Central Park Five, after being accused of a violent rape in New York in the spring of 1989. After being questioned as teenagers and pressured to confess, they were convicted and sentenced and served between 6 and 13 years in prison before their exoneration in 2002.

Watching their journey is an undeniable gut-punch that will break your heart, turn you into a sobbing mess who’s angry at the injustice of it all, and inspire hope. What these men went through when they were still just boys is unconscionable, and the fact that they are a beacon of light today, now known as The Exonerated 5, is truly a miracle, but they went through it and even though it is, at times, painful to watch, it’s also important to witness and understand why their story is still so relevant today.– Christina Radish

Barry (2018-Present)

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Image via HBO

I’ve already written rather extensively about how incredible Barry is, but I can’t really say it enough: this is one of the best shows on television. Showrunners Bill Hader and Alec Berg turned a fairly basic premise—a hitman wants to become an actor—into one of the most compelling, emotional, and funniest shows on television. The writing is whip-smart, the performances are strikingly nuanced, and the direction is purposeful and motivated. To the latter point, Barry is oftentimes more cinematic and visually satisfying than many other so-called prestige dramas currently on TV. That’s a testament to Hader’s talent as a director (see: Season 2, Episode 5), and the filmmaking team’s dedication to meticulous storytelling. Barry isn’t strictly a comedy, but it’s not really a drama either. It’s completely, entirely, uniquely human, complete with all the best and worst qualities that descriptor entails. – Adam Chitwood

The Haunting of Hill House (2018 - Present)

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Image via Netflix

Equal parts emotionally traumatic and turn-the-lights-on scary, Mike Flanagan's The Haunting of Hill House adaptation delivers an ambitious update on the classic Shirley Jackson novel, spinning the seminal haunting tale into a gripping ghostly melodrama about the Crane family. Featuring phenomenal performances from an ensemble that includes Carla GuginoVictoria PedrettiKatie SiegelOliver Jackson-CohenElizabeth ReaserTimothee Hutton, and McKenna Grace, the series skips back and forth in time, exploring the Crain family's harrowing move into the poisonous grounds of Hill House, and how that trauma continues to terrorize them decades later.

Combining technical mastery (I'm still blown away by the impact and sheer volume of the hidden ghosts) with heartfelt storytelling, Flanagan created a gripping soapy drama that's peak binge-worthy and also happens to be legitimately terrifying. Flanagan has made a career of spinning scary stories out of emotional tales of trauma, but The Haunting of Hill House is his most impressive (and nightmare-inducing) yet, stirring up that sickening, deeply scary pot of fear inside us all -- fear of mortality, loneliness, disfigurement, self-destruction, loss, grief and heartbreak -- and giving it the horrifying faces that haunt Hill House. -- Haleigh Foutch

Killing Eve (2018 - Present)

Phoebe Waller-Bridge has one of the sexiest, most surprising voices in the industry right now (hence her spot on our breakout storytellers of the decade list,) but she never loses sight of her characters' humanity no matter how many wide curve-balls she throws at them. That was true in Fleabag and Crashing, but Waller-Bridge elevated her style to the heights of genre indulgence with the assassin thriller Killing Eve.

Jodi Comer and Sandra Oh are impeccably matched as a fashionably alluring and utterly psychopathic international assassin (Comer) and the contrasting blue jeans and steady home life FBI agent trying to hunt her down (Oh). Then they start to fall for each other, each enraptured in the thrill of the chase, and the results are violently delicious and never, ever predictable. Season 2 was still entertaining, but you can't top that first batch of episodes and the absolute head-rush of cheeky carnality in Waller-Bridge's vision. -- Haleigh Foutch

Succession (2018 - Present)

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Image via HBO

“It gets good X number of episodes in” is the death-knell of any TV show in 2019, at a time when we’re inundated with too much content. But those who weren’t first struck by HBO’s Succession understood by the third, fourth, or fifth episode (depending on your temperament) that this was something special, and with the show’s recently aired second season, it solidified its place as one of the best TV shows to ever air on HBO.

Loosely inspired by the Murdoch family, the show chronicles the wheelings, dealings, and backstabbing of a wealthy media family whose patriarch suffers some health issues in the pilot. The various sons, daughters, and cousins come out swinging with their own separate tactics, but Succession understood halfway through the first season that the show is at its best when the entire ensemble is together in the same room, hashing it out and throwing expletive-laden insults to hilarious results. So that’s where Jesse Armstrong took the series, which is darkly comedic but also wildly compelling, doling out plot twists with the impact of an atom bomb. It’s addictive, supremely satisfying TV at its best. – Adam Chitwood

The Terror, Season 1 (2018)

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Image via AMC

Adapted from Dan Simmons' spectacular historical horror novel of the same name, the first series of The Terror follows the crewmen of a tragically and terrifyingly ill-fated British naval expedition to find the Northwest Passage. Stacked with a cast of top-notch dramatic actors, led by Jared Harris and Tobias Menzies, The Terror treats its horrors with all the class and prestige of a BBC drama, while leaning into the visceral terrors and madness of survival, with just the right hint of adventurous awe. It's a beautiful, haunting and elegantly contained horror series that captures some of the best moments of dread in recent memory and boasts award-worthy performances, direction, and writing -- oh and there's a giant snow monster too. Basically, you can't go wrong with this gorgeous, gruesome character drama, which taps into the darkest regions of our human tendency towards duplicitousness, self-destruction, and greed; and how none of it matters at all in the stark face of nature, biology, and those forces we can't explain. -- Haleigh Foutch

Maniac (2018)

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Image via Netflix

Maniac wanted us to feel less alone in the world and, considering its deeply auteur approach to the material (which I loved!), it succeeded. Directed by Cary Fukunaga and starring Jonah HillEmma StoneJustin Theroux, and Sonoya MizunoManiac took an empathetic look at mental health, trauma, friendship, love, and the power of therapy while packaging in in a visually enticing, well thought-out world that was a much a feast for the eyes as it was for the mind.

Maniac followed Hill's Owen Milgrim and Stone's Annie Landsberg, two at-sea 30-somethings participating in a clinical trial meant to find a new, therapeutic way to heal an individual's deep-seated mental health concerns. As Owen and Annie go through the trial, they are thrust into different scenarios cooked up by machines and computer programs designed meant to help them grow and move on. As you travel with Owen and Annie, it dawns on you that Maniac has a lot on its mind as it chews on whether or not technology can actually be our friend and whether it can actually foster stronger bonds with other humans rather than dividing and targeting us with malice. The final scene of Maniac will answer those ponderings beautifully, leaving you with the immediate desire to rewatch, rethink, and re-experience it. -- Allie Gemmill

Mindhunter (2017 - Present)

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Image via Netflix

David Fincher’s series about FBI agents interviewing serial killers is about as close as we’re ever going to get to Zodiac: The Series. While the first season spent more time with the killers and had the central theme of “When you touch evil, evil touches you back”, season two worked as a soft reboot of sorts, taking the narrative pressure off Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and spreading it out to his co-workers Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) and Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) while adding a more tragic tone. In its second season, the show was confident enough to back off being about “Interesting Serial Killer of the Episode” and show the sad irony of a group of people who are devoted to understanding criminal behavior but fail to understand the people in their own lives. With Fincher’s cold, cynical style at its core, Mindhunter is an absolutely brilliant bit of procedural TV. – Matt Goldberg

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017 - Present)

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Image via Amazon Prime

The world is a better place with more Rachel Brosnahan in it - as Midge Maisel but also in general. Brosnahan is an extremely active philanthropist and all-around bright light in this world. But Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel certainly is another source of Brosnahan joy. She’s downright electric as Midge Maisel, a 1950s New York City housewife who opts to do the unthinkable (at the time) - become a stand-up comedian. Midge has that special spark and it’s infectious. Mrs. Maisel is loaded with laughs but creator Amy Sherman-Palladino never shies away from diving into the tricky complexities of Midge’s situation. She’s a woman trying to make it in a man’s industry, she’s feeling the pressure from her parents to settle down with a nice Jewish man and she has to raise two children with a husband who cheated on her. Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is entertainment wizardry with stunning production and costume design, extremely well crafted lengthy takes with a very mobile camera, an utterly delightful ensemble you’re bound to fall for, and loads of laughs, heart and inspiration. -- Perri Nemiroff

Dear White People (2017 - Present)

Image via Netflix

The Netflix series Dear White People is a satirical look at America that weaves together the universal story of finding one’s own identity while forging your own unique path, set against the backdrop of a predominantly white Ivy League university where racial tensions are always simmering just below the surface. It is a hilarious and heartfelt look at social injustice, cultural bias, political correctness and activism, and what that means in the millennial age, and it explores it all with such brutal honesty that you’ll sometimes want to look away while you’re laughing.

The series has an exciting cast of actors who have all delivered, above and beyond, as they’ve gotten the opportunity to working with material that is biting and witty in its social commentary while also being pushed to their emotional limits. And while it could just keep doing what it does best and that would be great, the fearless storytelling has allowed for an evolution that continues to feel new and fresh. –Christina Radish

Glow (2017 - Present)

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Image via Netflix

GLOW is, simply put, the best original series Netflix has ever produced. Created by Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, the dark comedy somehow combines the bone-crushing pageantry of professional wrestling with the achingly personal stories of the people who do it for a living. Alison Brie essentially stars as Ruth Wilder—a consistently not-called-back actress who turns to a fledgling wrestling show for a chance at fame—but GLOW has morphed into such a strong ensemble that it’s impossible to pick just one main-eventer. Clearly, though, Betty Gilpin is the show’s rock in the role of Debbie Eagan, a former soap star with ambition to spare and a child at home who joins the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling right after discovering her husband’s affair...with Ruth. Funny, physical, and honest, GLOW is the finest example of the way a “fake” sport like pro wrestling tells the realest stories. -- Vinnie Mancuso

Santa Clarita Diet (2017 -2019)

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Image via Netflix

Created by the mind behind the tragically short-lived and outrageously funny Better off TedSanta Clarita Diet is a laugh-out-loud funny zany comedy anchored by killer comedic performances from Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant. But don't let that fool you, because this horror-comedy is also dripping in blood, body parts and bile each and every episode. Victor Fresco leans into that unrated Netflix freedom and serves up some seriously deranged imagery in his zombie comedy, with slowly-unfolding mythology to match, but he never loses sight of the heart of the series (and not just the still-beating hearts ripped from the chests of Shiela's victims). Underneath the blood spatter and raucous comedy, Santa Clarita Diet is one of the best family comedies on TV, featuring the kind of supportive marriage most people would, well, kill for. -- Haleigh Foutch

American Vandal (2017-2018)

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Image via Netflix

Like the search for Keyser Soze, finding out who drew the dicks in American Vandal Season 1 was all I could focus on for a solid weekend. It felt easy to write off American Vandal when the first trailer dropped because it revealed the show was basically, "What if Christopher Guest was a Gen-Zer and made a super-bingeable half-hour true-crime mockumentary series?" How could we possibly take American Vandal seriously when it was poking fun at the popularity surge of true crime as things like Serial and Making a Murderer took over pop culture in recent years?

The first season starred bro comedian Jimmy Tatro as Dylan Maxwell, a suburban California teen known for his pranks who believes he was wrongfully suspended after an incident at his high school involved someone spray-painting dicks on every teacher's car. Underclassmen Peter (Tyler Alvarez) and Sam (Griffin Gluck) launch a documentary to investigate whether Dylan is truly culpable or if his history as a practical joker had left him wrongfully labeled a permanent repeat offender.

While American Vandal leaned hard on its absurdly comedic turns, its masterstroke — and what makes it one of the best of the decade — what its surprisingly heartfelt insights into the growing pains and paralyzing confines of being a young adult. American Vandal was a comedy with soul, a reprieve from all of the self-serious projects it was making fun of. -- Allie Gemmill

Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)

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Image via Showtime Networks

I'm still not even quite sure how Twin Peaks: The Return exists, let alone how to define it. From the ineffible David Lynch came a return to one of the most bizarre and debated series in TV history, decades later, offering answers to questions that turned into even greater mysteries and unknowable existential oddities. It was a mind-fuck, okay? A total face-melter that only further established Lynch as one of cinema's great unique voices and unknowable minds. His works are strange, unknowable, and intoxicating, and Twin Peaks: The Return is some great other in its own right. -- Haleigh Foutch

The Crown (2016 - Present)

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Image via Netflix

Peter Morgan’s epic chronicle of Queen Elizabeth II is a bit slow to start, but once the show finds its rhythm in the fourth or fifth episode the first season, it’s an absolute juggernaut that eschews a voyeuristic look at the royal family and instead examines the tension between duty to the monarchy and personal desire. While more of the Peak TV era dramas seem to be chasing serialized storytelling, The Crown goes the other direction, leaning into episodic conflicts that speak to the overarching themes of the story, which makes for a richer experience. Even changing up the cast in its third season hasn’t halted The Crown’s momentum, and the show has firmly established itself as one of the best original series Netflix has to offer. – Matt Goldberg