HBO‘s name is synonymous with prestige television, thanks to an unparalleled run of over twenty-five years of original programming content that has resonated with both critics and fans alike. When talking about “perfect” HBO shows, there are the obvious culprits that appear on every single list.
However, when you add the caveat of having “no bad episodes,” the game changes drastically. Series like The Sopranos or Curb Your Enthusiasm quickly fall by the wayside, as viewers tend to agree on certain episodes being disappointments, or just bafflingly off the usual mark. For shows that run multiple seasons, or have seasons with lots of episodes, there’s all the potential in the world to have one or two stumbles. These 7 HBO shows beat the long odds and delivered great watches all the way through.
7) Veep
HBO
Veep is the only true-blue comedy series that appears in this list, and is also the longest-running entry, spanning 7 seasons. But despite that lengthy run, Veep never missed even once; in fact, the show is only getting more perfect with age, thanks to the increasing absurdity of real-life politics. If you doubt the quality of Veep‘s run: The show was nominated in major Emmy categories for 7 consecutive years, with star Julia Louis-Dreyfus winning in the category of “Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series” for 6 of those 7 years.
The show follows fictional United States Vice President Selina Meyer (JLD), as she struggles to find relevance in her political role while also trying to pave a way to the White House. The show (run by Amanda Iannucci for four seasons and David Mandel for three seasons) was actually a vehicle for satirical commentary on the vile and often self-serving nature of politics, lampooning the politicians, lobbyists, social climbers, influencers, bureaucrats, and would-be power-players who are all in the mix. You can turn on Veep, and you won’t need to skip a single episode; before you know it, the whole series will have flown by.
6) Task
HBO
It the risk of recency bias: Task was the latest HBO series to hit the airwaves, and the latest from creator Brad Ingelsby, who already gave the network the acclaimed Emmy-winning miniseries, Mare of Easttown. And while Ingelsby’s first series was a thrilling mystery-crime-drama about Pennsylvania culture, Task was a far more refined and distilled vision of cops vs. crooks in suburban Pennsylvania.
Simply put: every single episode of Task (Season 1) is an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride, with deep character arcs and some fantastic dramatic performances from a cast that includes Emilia Jones (CODA, The Running Man) and Fabien Frankel (House of the Dragon). The story follows Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo), an FBI agent still reeling from a family tragedy, who is given minimal resources to investigate a series of violent robberies that seem to target one particular local motorcycle gang.
It turns out the crew doing those robberies is led by Robbie Prendergrast (Tom Pelphrey), a local garbageman who has a deeply troubling history with the gang and is targeting them as payback. However, when one of the bikers’ kids ends up being a witness to a robbery turned homicide, Robbie, his crew, and his family find the walls closing in as both the FBI and the biker gang slowly but surely track them down.
5) Barry
HBO
Co-created by Bill Hader (Saturday Night Live) and Alec Berg (Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Eurotrip) Barry ran from 2018-2023. The series followed a hitman named Barry (Hader), who is contracted to kill an LA actor who slept with a mob boss’s wife. Instead, Barry (tailing the target to his acting classes) ends up accidentally befriending his target as well as enrolling in acting classes run by an eccentric screen veteran (Happy Days‘ Henry Winkler). Barry’s professional detour starts an entire series of dominoes falling, which the show chronicles over 4 seasons (32 episodes) of cause-and-effect mayhem and tragic character collisions. And not a single moment of a single episode was wasted.
Barry falls for a vapid would-be actress named Sally (Sarah Goldberg); gets embroiled in several gang wars; causes friction within his own organization of crazy assassins, handlers, and middlemen, and constantly has to take drastic action to keep his true identity as a ruthless killer from eclipsing his new opportunity to be a star. Barry never got enough credit for being a reverse Breaking Bad; the story of a bad man trying to break good was arguably leaner, meaner, funnier, and more heartfelt than Vince Gilligan’s hit crime drama, with just as many weird, arthouse episodes of crime-drama prestige TV.
4) Chernobyl
hbo
Before HBO handed showrunner Craig Mazin the keys to The Last of Us TV series, he proved himself by making one of the greatest historical drama TV series of all time in 2019. Many have heard of Russia’s Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster in 1986, but no one had truly lived the experience of the event until HBO greenlit this miniseries.
The first episode was an edge-of-your-seat disaster movie all on its own, which conveyed with chilling clarity just how a nuclear power plant could experience the failures that lead to calamity. However, where Mazin and Co. truly rise to greatness is in using the remaining episodes to examine the fallout of the event, literally and figuratively. It wasn’t just a show, but a timely history lesson about how politics, money, and agenda often trump environmental and human safety concerns, as well as championing some key figures (and science in general) for facing the world’s biggest problems and coming up with solutions, even at the cost of their own lives.
2) Succession
HBO
There are plenty of shows that come out of the gate strong, but most of them lose steam as the seasons and revolving series of interpersonal conflicts play out. Succession stands out as the exception: a modern Shakespearean drama about wealth, power, ambition, and family that plays perfectly as a televised masterpiece, which would’ve been worthy of the world’s finest stages.
Like Barry, Succession ran 4 seasons from 2018 through 2023, becoming the pop-culture phenomenon of the moment in its final seasons, with no less than three Golden Globes for “Best Television Series” and three Primetime Emmy Awards. The show follows the Roy family, whose Patriarch, Logan (Brian Cox), owns the major media conglomerate Waystar Royco (a satirical flip on Fox News and its owners, the Murdoch family). As political tides shift and big tech companies begin to eat up the market, Logan Roy considers his own life, legacy, and possible retirement.
The issue is that the king of media sees flaws in all of his possible bloodline successors: eldest son Connor (Alan Ruck) is an aloof playboy still milking Logan’s divorce from his mom; second son Kendall (Jeremy Strong) is recover headcase and addict; middle-child Roman (Kieran Culkin) is a forked-tongued mischief-maker, who takes nothing serious, while youngest child (and only daughter) “Shiv” Roy (Sarah Snook) is so serious and determined to outdo the boys that she’s bought into her own ice queen facade. Caught in the middle of the family drama are the executives and romantic partners who often become collateral damage, as the Roy father and children constantly try to scheme against and power play one another.
Succession didn’t get all those awards for no reason: every single episode is both a standalone teleplay with an arc, theme, and deeper subtext, and an evolution of characters and relationships leading to a high-stakes finale that actually delivered. Simply put: it’s one of the best TV viewing experiences there is.
1) The Wire
HBO
You’ve heard it a hundred times before, so at this point, if you don’t know it for yourself, firsthand, the real question is: why aren’t you pressing play on arguably the best show of the century?
The Wire ran from 2002 – 2008 and was the magnum opus of writer David Simon, based on years of being a beat reporter in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. It starts as a simple “cops vs. crooks” case, where a loose cannon cop named Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) sets his sights on ruthless West Baltimore drug kingpin Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) and his business-minded partner, Stringer Bell (Idris Elba). However, that one case exposes the complicated gray areas of crime and law enforcement, and the surprising complexities of the people on both sides (or caught in the middle of) America’s drug war.
If that perfect first season wasn’t enough, Simon uses Seasons 2 – 5 of The Wire to expand his searing insights into how dock workers and unions aid in international organized crime, and how those foreign mobs and cartels supply America’s streets with drugs (Season 2); how politicians manipulate crime, policing, and stats to affect elections (Season 3); how lack of funding for schools and youth care programs create fresh new crops of wayward youth-turned-criminals (Season 4), and how the news media (at the time) was struggling between internet sensationalism and actual journalism to maintain the fourth estate (Season 5).
What makes The Wire more and more perfect with time is the tragic irony of it all. Every social issue that David Simon was ringing alarm bells about has only gotten more drastic. And this show, which has never, ever, been acknowledged or rewarded by any of the major TV awards, introduced a treasure trove of talent we now know and love, from Dominic West and Idris Elba, to Michael B. Jordan, Seth Gilliam, Sonja Sohn, Wood Harris, and Jamie Hector; modern meme legends like Hassan Johnson’s Wee-Bey and Isiah Whitlock Jr.’s Senator Clay Davis; and brilliant talents we’ve since lost, like Lance Reddick (John Wick), and Michael K. Williams (Lovecraft Country). The Wire is the most comprehensive snapshot of America’s slow cultural erosion, and one of the greatest large-ensemble dramas ever made. Every episode was a movie, and quite a few of them will impact you in a way you never thought TV could.
You can stream all of these series on HBO Max. Let us know your favorite HBO series over
on the ComicBook Forum!