The show's S4 premiere reached 5.9 million viewers, more than double the show's previous best. Maybe AMC marketing couldn't get a massive fan base for a show about a chemistry teacher selling meth, but-whether it was word of mouth or critical recommendations driving it-Netflix seemed up to the task. The star of that deal at the time was, of course, The Walking Dead, but Breaking Bad quickly became the big benefactor. That's when Netflix reached a deal with AMC Networks to exclusively carry the network's programming for a bit. ![]() Though this is the lone series on this list to start outside of the 2010s, most fans likely didn't see it until after 2011. And it features immensely clever applications of science and tech both on-screen ("Science, bitch!") and off.īut Breaking Bad should perhaps be remembered just as much for how influential it was in changing the way TV worked for many of us. Its fourth season featured perhaps TV's greatest villain. What more can you say about Breaking Bad at this point? It delivered the most anti-anti hero of a Golden Age of TV riddled with such characters. Tech on TV: Better Call Saul (with some Breaking Bad bonus insight). Instead, the following shows are some combination of stuff from the last decade that changed what we think of as "TV" and stuff we'll certainly be thinking about and returning to in our maybe-cable-less future. And to make things slightly simpler, we only considered scripted TV (so no Tidying Up or The Grand Tour, but no Last Week Tonight, United Shades of America, or Parts Unknown, either ). Many undeniably great things (Justified, Mad Men, The Crown, Parks & Rec, Insecure, Treme, Veep, Mindhunter, et al.) do not fall within our narrow wheelhouse of science, technology, and genre fare. How do you compare some 10-episode, 12-minute sketch comedy show on a streaming service to something on traditional cable drama with 10 seasons and many, many hours of thought put into it? Well, you probably can't in any authoritative or comprehensive way-but that won't stop us from trying.įor an Ars-y Best TV of 2010s list, know up front this isn't an all-encompassing "best" exercise. The breadth of what's available is also at an all-time high. When even Facebook consistently debuts original "TV shows" at this point, keeping up with everything may literally be impossible. To start, there's simply more stuff than ever before. And that makes trying to piece together a Best Of list for the 2010s extremely difficult. Perhaps more than any other entertainment medium, TV has really changed a lot in the last decade. Most American households, for instance, still defaulted to cable, and we watched on dedicated sets (even if the push for multi-screen experiences and laptops/computers as primary consumption devices had already started). ![]() It's hard to imagine, given what makes for TV news these days, but just 10 years ago no one had heard of Netflix originals, Amazon Prime series, YouTube TV, Apple TV+, Disney+, or even HBO Go.
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