Top 10 Best HBO TV Shows of All Time

I grew up without cable, so HBO was not a station I could regularly see, except at sleepovers, where chances are we kids were trying to watch Taxi Cab Confessions , but that's for a different list.

So, when I got to college and found out you could rent DVDs from the library...I went a little wild. I gobbled up all the HBO shows I missed, and then when I became an adult and was in charge of my own bills, I paid for HBO and have been a loyal customer since.

"It's not TV, it's HBO" wasn't just a marketing slogan; it was a mission statement.

And their best shows changed storytelling, careers, and what we expect from any screen, big or small.

So, what are the best HBO TV shows of all time?

Let's dive in.

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1. The Sopranos (1999–2007)

Created by: David Chase

Cast:

• James Gandolfini
• Edie Falco
• Lorraine Bracco
• Michael Imperioli
• Steve Van Zandt
• Tony Sirico
• Dominic Chianese

James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano is the most fully-realized character in the history of American television. And I don't think you can argue otherwise. This show follows a New Jersey mob boss juggling panic attacks, therapy, and his family... both the one at home and the one made up of mafia members. David Chase took the gangster genre and turned it inside out. The final scene of The Sopranos is still being debated. It always will be.

1. The Wire (2002–2008)

Created by: David Simon & Ed Burns

Cast:

• Dominic West
• Idris Elba
• Lance Reddick
• Wood Harris
• Michael Kenneth Williams
• Clarke Peters
• Wendell Pierce

Yeah, dude, we're doing two number ones. The Wire is the closest thing television has ever produced to a novel, and it's absolutely breathtaking. Each season takes on a different institution: the drug trade, the docks, city politics, the school system, the press, and dissects all of them with the patience of a classy Baltimore surgeon. Somehow, this show never won an Emmy. That still pisses me off. If you haven't watched this series, stop reading and go fix that right now. You will come out a better person. I truly believe that.

2. Band of Brothers (2001)

Created by: Steven Spielberg & Tom Hanks (based on the book by Stephen E. Ambrose)

Cast:

• Damian Lewis
• Ron Livingston
• Donnie Wahlberg
• Shane Taylor
• Neal McDonough

Do you ever just sit around and consider the sacrifices the Greatest Generation made so we could be free? This show will make that happen! It's a ten-part miniseries that follows Easy Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, from D-Day to V-E Day. These men say it all, and many of them gave their lives to make sure the person next to them lived. It was one of the most expensive TV productions ever made, and every dollar is on screen. Spielberg and Hanks managed something difficult: an epic war story that never loses its intimacy.

3. Succession (2018–2023)

Created by: Jesse Armstrong

Cast:

• Brian Cox
• Jeremy Strong
• Sarah Snook
• Kieran Culkin
• Matthew Macfadyen
• Nicholas Braun

This is a Shakespearean family drama wrapped in power suits and private jets. Succession follows the Roy family, and they're all kind of terrible people, and somehow makes you care about every single one of them. Jeremy Strong's Kendall Roy is one of the great tragic figures of modern TV, and maybe he also deserves it. The writing on this show made me want to quit, and also deeply inspired me.

4. Game of Thrones (2011–2019)

Created by: David Benioff & D.B. Weiss (based on the novels by George R.R. Martin)

Cast:

• Emilia Clarke
• Kit Harington
• Peter Dinklage
• Lena Headey
• Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
• Maisie Williams

Look, we all know how it ended, but I didn't hate that as much as everyone else did. I was ay too into Westeros at that point. But for seven seasons, Game of Thrones was the biggest show on the planet for a reason. It did what fantasy TV had never managed: it made you believe the dragons were real and killed your favorite characters without warning. You had to watch it live, or you would miss so much. It was so fun to be part of a massive community tuning in.

5. Deadwood (2004–2006)

Created by: David Milch

Cast:

• Timothy Olyphant
• Ian McShane
• Molly Parker
• Brad Dourif
• Powers Boothe
• John Hawkes

Deadwood is what happens when you take a Western and give it room to develop. You get this sweeping literary experience where it feels like you're living in a dirty world. David Milch's dialogue is unlike anything else on television. It was a strange, anachronistic blend of Shakespearean cadence and frontier profanity, you hooplehead. It was canceled too soon. The 2019 movie gave us some closure, but not enough. We should have had even more of this show, but I am so happy we got what we got.

6. True Detective Season 1 (2014)

Created by: Nic Pizzolatto

Director: Cary Fukunaga

Cast:

• Matthew McConaughey
• Woody Harrelson
• Michelle Monaghan
• Michael Potts
• Tory Kittles

In just eight episodes, Pizzolatto brought noir back to the mainstream, and we all were suddenly Googling Southern Gothic ideas and spouting theories about what would happen next. Fukunaga shot the Louisiana bayou like it was its own character, and the single six-minute tracking shot in episode four is the kind of filmmaking that gets studied in classrooms. And revisited time and time again.

7. Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000–2024)

Created by: Larry David

Cast:

• Larry David
• Jeff Garlin
• Cheryl Hines
• Susie Essman
• JB Smoove
• Richard Lewis

I don't know, this could have been number three, but I just got so caught up on adding dramas that I forgot one of the greatest comedies of all time. It's sort of run for like 24 years, over twelve seasons. We get Larry David playing a version of himself, navigating the social contract of modern life and rubbing everyone the wrong way the whole time. Built on improvisation, it feels alive in a way scripted comedies rarely do.

8. Chernobyl (2019)

Created/Written by: Craig Mazin

Director: Johan Renck

Cast:

• Jared Harris
• Stellan Skarsgård
• Emily Watson
• Paul Ritter
• Jessie Buckley

I can't believe this show was only five episodes, but they pack so much into that limited series. Chernobyl tells the story of the 1986 nuclear disaster and the people who fought to contain it. Many of them paid for this with their lives. Craig Mazin wrote this thing like a horror movie, because it is one. The production design is so accurate that it feels like a documentary. This is what happens when every single element of a production locks in at the same time and delivers. This felt like a show that could only be on HBO.

9. Sex and the City (1998–2004)

Creator : Darren Star

Cast :

• Sarah Jessica Parker
• Kim Cattrall
• Cynthia Nixon
• Kristin Davis

Before anyone was talking about prestige TV,Sex and the City was rewriting what a show about women could look like on cable. Carrie Bradshaw and her three best friends navigate love, sex, and New York City with a frankness that network television would never have allowed. It made HBO feel essential for a whole new audience, and the show has lived on with the next generations of women.

10. Barry (2018–2023)

Created by: Bill Hader & Alec Berg

Cast:

• Bill Hader
• Sarah Goldberg
• Henry Winkler
• Stephen Root
• Anthony Carrigan

On the surface, a show about a hitman who tries to become an actor in Los Angeles should be shallow, but this wound up being one of the deepest meditations on life and death ever on TV. Over the course of a few seasons, it slowly becomes one of the most unsettling explorations of violence, guilt, and self-delusion. Bill Hader directed most of it, and the guy has a genuine cinematic eye. And Henry Winkler's Gene Cousineau is a flat-out career-redefining performance.

Summing It All Up

HBO built a library that TV will be measured against for the next fifty years. These are the ten shows I keep coming back to — but I know your list looks different.

Let me know what you think in the comments.