IGN's State of Streaming 2023 is currently underway here at IGN and one of our biggest projects was the challenging yet fun adventure of deciding, with a bunch of our critic friends from across the entertainment industry, what the 100 best TV shows of all time are. However, we didn't want to stop there, so we created a Face-Off based on our list and asked you, the IGN audience, to let us know your favorites so we could see how they compared to ours.
So, after thousands and thousands of match-ups like The Office vs. Seinfeld and The Sopranos vs. The Wire, your greatest TV Show of all time has been decided. Drumroll please...
With an 80.7% win percentage, Walt and Jesse's adventures in Breaking Bad have secured the ultimate prize worth way more than any amount of Blue Sky. Our views on this show weren't too far off as the IGN team placed Breaking Bad at #3 just behind The Simpsons and The Wire (which took #1).
"The sordid saga of Walter White, a cancer-stricken high school chemistry teacher who turns into the meth kingpin Heisenberg, gripped audiences as his moral erosion violently and cruelly escalated over the course of five seasons," we wrote in our top 100 TV shows.
Game of Thrones took second place and was so close to claiming the Iron Throne for itself but its 76.9% win percentage just wasn't enough to take down the dragon that was Breaking Bad. It did, however, manage to surpass The Sopranos, The Simpsons, and Seinfeld.
For comparison, the IGN team ranked Seinfeld at #15, Game of Thrones at #9, The Sopranos at #6, and The Simpsons at #2.
Rounding out the top 10 were The Office, Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul, South Park, The Wire, and The X-Files. The IGN readers weren't too far off from the IGN list, as the latter top 10 were Parks and Recreation, Game of Thrones, The Twilight Zone, Mad Men, The Sopranos, Twin Peaks, The X-Files, Breaking Bad, The Simpsons, and The Wire.
The Face-Off ranked Parks and Recreation at #14, Mad Men at #22, The Twilight Zone at #23, and Twin Peaks at #41, the latter of which was the biggest difference.
On the other side of the TV landscape was I May Destroy You, a wonderful show you can watch now on Max that... well... may destroy you for placing it so low! Following I May Destroy You on the bottom of the Face-Off results were Living Single, My So-Called Life, The Prisoner, The Larry Sanders Show, Sex and the City, Pushing Daisies, Survivor, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Friday Night Lights.
For comparison, IGN ranked Living Single at #95, The Prisoner at #94, Pushing Daisies at #93, The Larry Sanders Show at #84, My So-Called Life at #83, Survivor at #81, Sex and the City at #70, Friday Night Lights at #40, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show at #31. We were a little more divided on these ones, but still not too far off!
Are you wondering where your favorite TV show landed, like The Golden Girls? (It ranked criminally low at #62!) For all the rankings, you can check out the full list of where all 100 TV shows that competed in the Face-Off ended up.
There is so much more to check out from IGN's State of Streaming 2023, including updated reviews from Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, Paramount+, Apple TV+, and more. We also looked at how streaming needs to evolve or die, how Star Trek: The Animated Series helped save Star Trek, and how streaming became the new frontier for horror.
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
