This Is The Greatest TV Show Of All Time

This Is The Greatest TV Show Of All Time - Prove Me Wrong leftovers

In an expansive medium that encompasses many modes of storytelling, one television show stands above the rest to be the greatest.

By Graeme Guttmann Published 43 minutes ago Graeme Guttmann is the Deputy News Editor for ScreenRant, overseeing the News and Interview & Events team for film and television. He began at ScreenRant in 2020 as a freelancer. He has interviewed talent from various films and series, including Jennifer Coolidge, Mikey Madison, Emma Roberts, and more. Additionally, Graeme is a critic for ScreenRant, having attended film festivals like Sundance, Toronto International Film Festival, SXSW, and Cannes. You can reach him at [email protected] and read his criticism here: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/critics/graeme-guttmann/movies Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Thread 1 Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap

Hi! I'm Graeme Guttmann, ScreenRant's Deputy News Editor. I've spent months (maybe even years) of my life consuming media, much of which has been in the television space. I love pop culture so much, and I was fortunate enough to build a career in it. The ways these various artforms can be an escape as much as they can be a lens through which to look at life is something I find especially powerful. When picking the greatest television show of all time, I chose something that channels both escapist entertainment and a deeper, philosophical lens on some of life's greatest questions. If you don't agree with my opinion that The Leftovers is the greatest television show of all time, you can, quite frankly, argue with a wall, or me, by leaving a comment below defending your own choice.

Television has always been part of my life. Some of my fondest memories growing up in Baltimore are the nights my mother and I would sit down to watch the new episodes of Desperate Housewives and LOST. Why I was watching these shows when I was nine-years-old is a question only my mother can answer, but without her, I wouldn’t be here writing this piece.

Since then, I’ve watched just about every kind of television ever produced. I keep up with the Real Housewives universe as fervently as the most rabid MCU fan. I watch “guilty pleasure” TV every time I visit home, making sure my mother has seen the latest airport-book-turned-miniseries. If it’s on TV, there’s a high likelihood that I will watch it.

It’s why I believe shows like The Hunting Wives and Andor, two of my favorites from this year, can share the same space. Not because they are equal in quality, story, or any other metric, but because television can encompass so much. It can thrill and educate and seduce and force us to think about questions we don’t want to ask ourselves in our everyday lives.

The Leftovers, my pick for the Greatest Television Show of All Time, does that and more in only three seasons and 28 episodes. But, for me, The Leftovers is more than just a television show - it became a destination to process grief during different stages of my life, one that the experience of visiting only became richer as I advanced into adulthood.

The Leftovers Came At A Pivotal Time For Television

The Leftovers arrived at an interesting time for television. In the midst of Peak TV and as streaming began its meteoric rise, HBO was still pumping out stone-cold classics. Game of Thrones, Girls, Veep, True Detective, Westworld, Insecure, and Big Little Lies all premiered during The Leftovers’ run. All on the same network.

Based on the Tom Perotta novel of the same name, The Leftovers begins with a world-changing event: 2% of the population around the globe all disappear in an instant with little to no fanfare. There are no explosions, no particles of dust left behind by those who vanished. It just happens.

Dubbed the Sudden Departure, this event kicks off a global reckoning with the very fabric of existence and the meaning of life. Perotta’s novel and the HBO show’s first season focus on the small upstate New York town of Mapleton and how it has dealt with a wave of existentialism after the Sudden Departure.

Cults have sprung up, people from every walk of life have spiraled into mental crises, and some just continue on, acting as if nothing happened. The first question that The Leftovers forces us to ponder, then, is what would we do if faced with this sort of unexplainable loss, a giant void of grief where there may never be answers?

Then, what would we do if the whole world around us went into a mass psychosis of grief in response to this seemingly unavoidable trauma? If that makes The Leftovers sound like a “difficult” or “challenging” watch, well, you wouldn’t be the only person to think that way. Much of the criticism levied against the show’s first season was about this aspect of the series.

For those who could get through that “challenge”, or in my case, didn’t find it that “difficult” at all, the second and third seasons presented an undeniable optimism that, while couched in the rigorous questions and grimdark drama the series had become known for, became a beacon of hope that guided the series to an achingly poignant series finale that still makes me cry to this day.

Along the way, The Leftovers bucks almost every convention of storytelling while inventing new ways to spin them. It’s a masterclass in world-building, subtly showing the ways in which the Sudden Departure would change the world with a matter-of-factness that feels almost nonchalant if it weren’t supporting the weight of immense loss.

The series, created by LOST mastermind Damon Lindelof along with Perotta, also refuses to give us an easy out. There are no answers to what really happened. The Sudden Departure isn’t explained away as a scientific phenomenon or religious event. It just happened. The answers we yearn for while watching this show are not handed to us in the way so many shows spell things out for audiences these days.

We are left to sit with the unexplainable, forced to reckon with the mystery and horror, using that as a foundation to build a new consciousness, a new way to live in a world where understanding does not come easy, if it comes at all.

The Leftovers Features An All-Time Great Performance

Across the board, The Leftovers contains some of the greatest performances on television in the 2010s, but one stands above the rest and is one of the greatest of all time in any medium.

Carrie Coon’s Nora Durst is the show’s most tragic figure. Prior to her role in the series, Coon was a memorable standout in David Fincher’s Gone Girl and had minor roles in shows like The Playboy Club and Law & Order: SVU. But The Leftovers put Coon on the map and, for my money, she is maybe one of the most robbed actresses in Emmy history (insofar as awards matter - after all, even without a trophy, we can still bask in the brilliance of Coon’s performance).

Nora Durst is a unique figure in the world of The Leftovers, having lost her entire family - two children and her husband - on Departure Day. Nora spends much of the first season in isolation, her story intersecting briefly with that of Kevin Garvey’s (Justin Theroux), the police chief of their town who is dealing with his own crises in the face of the Sudden Departure.

Coon’s ability to balance humor - “Fuck your daughter,” she tells Kevin when asking why he can’t go on a spontaneous trip to Florida with her - with searing pain is a masterclass in emotional contrasts existing in one space.

In The Leftovers season 1, episode 6, we finally get to spend a full hour with Nora. The episode begins with an unexplainable scene - Nora hires a sex worker to shoot her in the chest while she wears a bullet-proof vest - and ends with one of the most devastating hugs in history from a man who swears he can take away her pain with just a touch.

Coon does things with her performance here - and in many other moments - that are seemingly impossible. Confusion, trust, anger, sadness, and hope all flash across her face in an instant. And ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether she really believes in Holy Wayne, the man who claims he can take away people’s pain with a simple hug.

What matters is that she opens herself to the possibility of becoming whole again, becoming free of the pain that she has felt since her family disappeared. And that’s ultimately what The Leftovers is about - not what’s real and true in the tangible sense, but what we believe, whether it’s a story told by a loved one we haven’t seen in decades or a legend sprung up in the wake of an unexplainable event, passed on by a man who spends most of his days at the top of a tower in the square of a magical Texas town.

There Are Many Other Reasons To Love The Leftovers

Beyond Coon, the cast of The Leftovers is equally formidable, from Ann Dowd’s menacing cult leader to Theroux’s broken father-figure and Christopher Eccleston’s blindly chaotic faith in a higher power.

Max Richter’s score - all mournful strings and delicate piano - soundtracks the devastation and hope, somehow bringing these disparate feelings together in melodic harmony. Some of television’s greatest directors - Mimi Leder, Craig Zobel, Michelle MacClaren, Lesli Linka Glatter - helm all-time great episodes.

And, finally, beyond that, The Leftovers takes its source material and transforms it into something monumental. Season 1 adapts all of Perotta’s novel, with minor changes made to various characters and plot points. Seasons 2 and 3 go beyond that story and the small town of Mapleton, taking Kevin and Nora to Texas and, eventually, Australia.

It’s a globe-trotting, universe-traversing epic that encompasses every genre and human emotion, and still, it finds a way to land in a wholly unexpected but deeply affecting place that reminds us that despite all of life’s unanswerable mysteries and devastating moments of grief, there is still a reason to live.

The Leftovers Is A Personal Journey, Different For Everyone

I, like many others, am no stranger to loss. In quick succession, my mother lost her father, mother, and brother when I was in elementary school. My parents had me when they were older, which meant much of their extended family wasn’t in my life for too long. Instead, I saw most of those who were left at funerals and wakes, both for my mother's immediate family and for those beyond it.

The loss wasn’t unexplainable - my grandparents both died of old age and my uncle passed from complications due to Parkinson’s. But, for a child, the specter of grief hovered nonetheless. When I first read The Leftovers and then watched the television show, it was like someone put into words and images what I was so desperate to understand, both in the deaths that had become somewhat commonplace in my childhood and my mother’s response to them.

Then, six years after The Leftovers ended, my best friend of fifteen years died. We had watched the show together, parsed through its mysteries, debated theories, and praised Coon’s show-stopping performance.

The kind grief so accurately depicted in The Leftovers was not something I actively had to deal with until then. To cope, I watched The Leftovers again, starting with my favorite episodes before going back to the beginning.

I can’t sit here and say that the show gave me the answers I was looking for. It’s not designed to. But it helped me to stop focusing on the “why” and the “what could I have done better” and made me reckon with the fact that some things I’ll never understand. I think there’s comfort in accepting that.

If you think there's a case for a better TV show of all time, feel free to make one in the comments!

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Challenge My GOAT Article Type Op-Ed Description What's the greatest movie of all time? Which TV show remains peerless? Who's acting has yet to be topped? Screen Rant's "Greatest of All Time" series asks experts to pick the very best in entertainment and challenges anyone to try to prove them wrong. Website Screenrant.com

What's the greatest movie of all time? Which TV show remains peerless? Who's acting has yet to be topped? Screen Rant's "Greatest of All Time" series asks experts to pick the very best in entertainment and challenges anyone to try to prove them wrong.

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16 8.7/10

10/10

The Leftovers

10 stars 9 stars 8 stars 7 stars 6 stars 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Like Follow Followed TV-MA Drama Mystery Supernatural Thriller Release Date 2014 - 2017-00-00 Showrunner Damon Lindelof Writers Damon Lindelof, Tom Perrotta

Cast

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Justin Theroux
Amy Brenneman

Genres Drama, Mystery, Supernatural, Thriller Powered by

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Atlas Atlas Atlas #LH036704 Member since 2023-10-19 0 Reviews 0 Ratings Following 0 Topics 0 Users Follow Followed 0 Followers View
The greatest is actually AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER!!!!
2025-11-21 12:06:47 Upvote Downvote Reply Copy