Over 60 Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of Thought-Provoking TV Shows That Stick With You After They End
Voting Rules
Vote up the TV shows that just won't leave your mind.
Beyond entertainment, a great television show can really change the way that its audience views the world. If a show sticks the landing, it can live as a beloved gem forever in the hearts and minds of its fans. If it doesn't, its reputation remains less sterling.
Certain shows transcend the limits of their plot machinations, structure, or finales enough to stay with viewers for an entirely different reason. These shows provoke thought long after one's done watching them, thanks to intriguing thematic concerns, deep moral questions, or fresh approaches to otherwise tired material.
In that spirit, take a look at this selection of thought-provoking TV shows that are sure to stick with you long after they're finished.
Black Mirror is a 21st-century take on The Twilight Zone formula from creator Charlie Brooker which weaves complex one-shot stories that examine modern (and future) technology, and its place in our lives and culture. Using the anthology format as a launching pad, Black Mirror’s stories examine social, societal, and emotional issues with its trademark bleakly satirical tone, and each new installment ends up provoking much discussion among fans.
Though Brooker's program can often be surreal and impressive, it's no awe-struck portrait of the future; it's a warning shot across the bough of a social media-obsessed, connection-deficient, technologically-dependent society convinced of its own immortality. More often than not, Black Mirror reminds its viewers that life-changing innovations such as the Internet and smartphones can be just as harmful as they are helpful, if we are not careful with how we use them.
Rod Serling's science-fiction masterwork The Twilight Zone ran for five seasons in its original incarnation. Since its 1959 debut, it has proven to be a totemic piece of entertainment culture, and a massive influence on many major storytelling voices in the subsequent decades. An anthology series, each episode tells a unique story based in fantasy or science fiction, often featuring a surprise ending.
While The Twilight Zone is chock full of great one-off episodes, shocking twists, and compelling premises, the things that allow it to maintain such an important place in the culture are its deeply sardonic, yet humanistic worldview, and empathetic thematic concerns. The Twilight Zone uses its larger-than-life trappings to illuminate (sometimes uncomfortable) truths about humanity and its place in the universe in a way that makes it feel timely even several decades after it went off the air.
The Good Place begins as a clever high-concept sitcom, centering on “Arizona dirtbag” Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) as afterlife Architect Michael (Ted Danson) welcomes her to the “Good Place” - which seems unusual, given her less-than-pleasant behavior in life. She recruits her assigned “soulmate” Chidi Anagonye (William Jackson Harper), an ethics professor, to help her learn to become the sort of person who deserves to be in the “Good Place” before she is discovered and kicked out.
With multiple notable twists, The Good Place successfully evolves beyond its initial premise and remains entertaining while ruminating on what exactly the concept of the afterlife means to humans. With each episode's conflict having a foundational basis in ethics and philosophy, The Good Place examines many age-old and unanswerable questions with a humorous touch, like the nature of good and evil, or even the meaning of life itself.
The Wire is a common pick for many critics and audiences as the best television program to ever grace the small-screen. HBO's epic drama details the drug trade in Baltimore on both sides of the law. But, beyond that, it becomes a stirring and heartbreaking portrait of the effects of poverty, greed, and bureaucracy at all levels on normal people.
From the street-level drug dealers, unassuming civilians, would-be public servants, and local government, The Wire trains a piercing gaze on the humanity of all those involved and affected by the drug war, gang culture, and political corruption in modern America. It's a show that must be reflected upon long after one is finished watching to fully let the layers of its story sink in.
Itself a remake of an older ABC sci-fi show, SyFy’s Battlestar Galactica follows the remains of humanity as they do interstellar battle against an enemy android species known as the Cylons, all while searching for the long-lost planet Earth. With stellar performances from Edward James Olmos, Katee Sackhoff, and Mary McDonnell (among others), it remains a sci-fi drama with incredible heart and emotion.
The show's investigation of faith, humanity, and political philosophy in general make for some dense source material, particular in its depiction of religious conflicts between the multi-theistic and monotheistic rivals. However, it's Battlestar Galactica's shocking twist ending that indicates its real perspective: a hopeful take on the nature of human potential.
In Netflix’s Russian Doll, co-creator Natasha Lyonne also stars as Nadia, who finds herself caught in an unfortunate time loop on the night of her 36th birthday party. No matter what she does, Nadia repeats the same night over and over, with each evening ending in her eventual and unavoidable demise, only to start the entire process over again following her death.
What starts as a more directly comedic view of the circumstances quickly becomes an empathetic portrait of depression and anxiety, the cyclical nature of generational trauma and mental illness, and the immense difficulty in breaking out of those (sometimes decades-long) loops of self-destruction and self-loathing. Russian Doll's philosophical questions only expand further with the introduction of Alan (Charlie Barnett), who is stuck in a similar loop as Nadia, and again with Season 2's expansion into reliving the lives of ancestors.
