WatchTVSeries

The broadcast networks

WatchTVSeries is an English guide to 156 series of the American broadcast networks, the free channels that every television in the country could receive with an antenna: ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX, the four great networks, and The WB and The CW, the networks of the young audience. The series sit on twelve shelves of thirteen, grouped in three families: ABC and CBS, with a drama shelf and a comedy shelf each; NBC and FOX, with theirs; and cartoons, youth and events, with the animated series of the big networks, The CW, The WB and the great event miniseries. Every series has an English synopsis, its seasons and episodes, the cast and a Watch now button that opens it on JustWatch, which shows where it can be watched in your country.

The guide runs from 1960, the year The Flintstones became the first animated series of prime time, to 2021, the year of Ghosts on CBS and Superman & Lois on The CW. Its 156 series hold more than a thousand seasons and 21,456 episodes, carry about 413,000 votes on TMDB, with an average rating of 7.71, and 59 of them reach a rating of 8 or more. The most voted series of the guide is Lucifer, the FOX series of the devil who opens a nightclub in Los Angeles, with about 15,700 votes, ahead of Riverdale and The Good Doctor, and three series share the best rating, an 8.6: House, The Office and The Originals. The guide Start with WatchTVSeries picks one series from each family for a first evening, and the guide How the networks were chosen sets out the rules.

The old site called itself the Watch TV Series Network, and each of its posts introduced a show with a small picture and the date on which it premiered: Premiered on September 19th, 2011, for 2 Broke Girls, a sitcom of CBS that is also on the shelves of this guide. The network is the thread of the guide. For half a century, the broadcast networks decided what America watched on a weeknight, built their schedules around a few great comedies and dramas, and ran the most successful of them for ten, twenty or thirty seasons. Each card of the guide carries the network of its series and the year of its first episode, in memory of those posts.

The three families

The first family, ABC and CBS, holds four shelves: ABC drama, ABC comedy, CBS drama and CBS comedy. It is the family of Lost and Grey's Anatomy, of the procedural dramas of CBS and of the family sitcoms of ABC, and its 52 series carry about 139,000 votes; the guide ABC and CBS sums it up.

The second family, NBC and FOX, holds NBC drama, NBC comedy, FOX drama and FOX comedy: the great comedies of NBC from Seinfeld and Friends to The Office, and the bold dramas of FOX from The X-Files to House. Its 52 series carry about 143,000 votes, the most of the three families, and the guide NBC and FOX sums it up.

The third family, Cartoons, youth and events, holds Network animation, from The Flintstones to The Simpsons and Family Guy; The CW, the network of Riverdale and the heroes of DC; The WB, the network of Buffy, Gilmore Girls and Supernatural; and Event miniseries, the stories of a few nights that the big networks once advertised for weeks. Its 52 series carry about 132,000 votes, and the guide Cartoons, youth and events sums it up.

Three more lists cut across the networks. Before 1990 gathers the eighteen series that began before 1990, oldest first, from The Flintstones to The Simpsons; Still returning gathers the fourteen series that TMDB lists as still returning for new seasons, from Grey's Anatomy and The Simpsons to NCIS and Ghosts; and Rated 8 or more gathers the 59 series with a rating of 8 or more, best first.

How the networks were chosen

A series belongs to a network in this guide when that network is the first one that TMDB lists for it. For each network, the pool held its series with that first network, reality shows, talk shows, news, daytime soaps and children's series aside, and each shelf kept its thirteen most voted series. A series counts as a comedy when comedy is one of its first two genres on TMDB, and as a drama otherwise; the animated series of ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX share a single shelf, and the series of six episodes or fewer that are dramas went to the shelf of event miniseries. The CW and The WB each have a single shelf of live-action series.

Several series of the guide moved during their lives, and the guide places them with the first network that TMDB lists, which is usually the one that first aired them; the exception is Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which began on FOX and moved to NBC, and which TMDB lists under NBC. Lucifer began on FOX before Netflix took it over for its last three seasons; Sabrina, the Teenage Witch moved from ABC to The WB; Buffy the Vampire Slayer moved from The WB to UPN; and Supernatural and Smallville passed from The WB to The CW when the two networks merged in 2006. The guide The creators lists the creators who appear most often, and the guide The casts does the same for the actors.

ABC and CBS

The first family of the guide holds 52 series of the two oldest networks of the guide, with about 139,000 votes and an average rating of 7.79. CBS began as a radio network in 1927 and ABC in 1943, and both moved to television after the Second World War; their shelves run from the witches and monsters of the 1960s, Bewitched and The Munsters, to the hospital dramas and crime procedurals that filled the schedules of the 2000s and 2010s.

ABC drama

The shelf ABC drama gathers thirteen series from 1990 to 2018 with about 55,000 votes and an average rating of 7.99. The most voted is The Good Doctor, of 2017, by David Shore, the creator of House, with an 8.5 and seven seasons: Freddie Highmore plays Shaun Murphy, a young surgeon with autism and savant syndrome who joins a hospital of San Jose. The longest is Grey's Anatomy, of 2005, by Shonda Rhimes, with 22 seasons and 460 episodes, still returning: the interns of a Seattle hospital, led by Meredith Grey, played by Ellen Pompeo, grow into its surgeons and its chiefs over two decades. Its spin-off Station 19, of 2018, follows the firefighters of the same city.

Lost, of 2004, by J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof and Jeffrey Lieber, with an 8.0 and six seasons, strands the survivors of Oceanic flight 815 on an island of polar bears, a smoke monster and a mysterious research project, and tells their lives before the crash in flashbacks; Twin Peaks, of 1990, by Mark Frost and David Lynch, the oldest series of the shelf, with an 8.3, sends the FBI agent Dale Cooper, played by Kyle MacLachlan, to a logging town of Washington to solve the murder of the homecoming queen Laura Palmer. Desperate Housewives, of 2004, by Marc Cherry, follows four women of Wisteria Lane after the suicide of their neighbour, who narrates the series.

The rest of the shelf mixes heroes, cops and lawyers. Marvel has two series, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., of 2013, seven seasons with Clark Gregg as the agent Phil Coulson, and Marvel's Agent Carter, of 2015, with Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter in the New York of 1946. Nathan Fillion leads two series, Castle, of 2009, as a crime novelist who follows a detective of New York, and The Rookie, of 2018, with an 8.5, still returning, as the oldest rookie of the Los Angeles police. 9-1-1, of 2018, by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, follows the emergency responders of Los Angeles, with Angela Bassett; How to Get Away with Murder, of 2014, gives Viola Davis the role of a law professor and her students caught in a murder; and Once Upon a Time, of 2011, brings the characters of the fairy tales to a town of Maine where they have forgotten who they are. The guide ABC drama sums it up.

ABC comedy

The shelf ABC comedy gathers thirteen series from 1964 to 2009 with about 13,300 votes and an average rating of 7.76; it is above all the network of the family sitcom. The most voted is Modern Family, of 2009, by Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd, with a 7.9, eleven seasons and 250 episodes, a mockumentary of three related households of Los Angeles, led by Ed O'Neill as the patriarch Jay Pritchett. The best rated is The Wonder Years, of 1988, with an 8.4, in which Kevin Arnold, played by Fred Savage, grows up in a suburb of the late 1960s and early 1970s, narrated by his adult self.

The family sitcoms of the late 1980s and 1990s fill most of the shelf. Full House, of 1987, eight seasons in which a widower of San Francisco, played by Bob Saget, raises his three daughters with his brother-in-law, played by John Stamos, and his best friend; Home Improvement, of 1991, with Tim Allen as the clumsy host of a television show about tools; Step by Step, of 1991, a blended family of Wisconsin; Boy Meets World, of 1993, with an 8.3, which follows Cory Matthews from middle school to college; and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, of 1996, with Melissa Joan Hart, which later moved to The WB. My Wife and Kids, of 2001, stars its co-creator Damon Wayans as a father of three, and The Middle, of 2009, nine seasons in Indiana, gives Patricia Heaton the role of a working mother.

The older and stranger comedies of the shelf come from the 1960s and the 1990s. Bewitched, of 1964, the oldest series of the shelf, eight seasons and 254 episodes, the most of the shelf, follows a witch, played by Elizabeth Montgomery, who marries a mortal and tries to live as a suburban housewife; Batman, of 1966, with Adam West, is the camp version of the hero, with its famous onscreen sound effects; and Dinosaurs, of 1991, from the company of Jim Henson, tells a family sitcom with puppet dinosaurs. Police Squad!, of 1982, by Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker, with Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin, was canceled after six episodes and returned to life in the Naked Gun films. The guide ABC comedy sums it up.

CBS drama

The shelf CBS drama gathers thirteen series from 2002 to 2017 with about 37,300 votes and an average rating of 7.86. It is the shelf of the procedural, the drama in which a team solves a new case every week: CBS built the most watched schedule in America on it in the 2000s. The most voted and the best rated is The Mentalist, of 2008, by Bruno Heller, with an 8.4 and seven seasons, in which Simon Baker plays Patrick Jane, a former fake psychic who helps the California Bureau of Investigation while he hunts the serial killer Red John, who murdered his wife and daughter.

The longest series of the shelf is NCIS, of 2003, by Donald P. Bellisario and Don McGill, with 23 seasons and 507 episodes, still returning, the investigators of the naval police led by Leroy Jethro Gibbs, played for nineteen seasons by Mark Harmon. Criminal Minds, of 2005, with an 8.3 and 19 seasons, follows the profilers of the behavioural analysis unit of the FBI; CSI: Miami, of 2002, the oldest series of the shelf, ten seasons with David Caruso as Horatio Caine, extends the forensic franchise to Florida; and Hawaii Five-0, of 2010, ten seasons, remakes the police series of 1968 with Alex O'Loughlin and Scott Caan.

The rest of the shelf mixes heroes, geniuses and soldiers. Person of Interest, of 2011, by Jonathan Nolan, with an 8.1, sets a billionaire programmer, played by Michael Emerson, and a former CIA agent, played by Jim Caviezel, to prevent the crimes that their secret machine of mass surveillance predicts; Elementary, of 2012, moves Sherlock Holmes to modern New York, with Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu as Watson; Scorpion, of 2014, with an 8.2, gathers a team of misfit geniuses for the government; and Supergirl, of 2015, by Greg Berlanti, gives Melissa Benoist the role of the cousin of Superman, before the series moved to The CW for its later seasons. Ghost Whisperer, of 2005, with Jennifer Love Hewitt as a woman who talks to the dead; Under the Dome, of 2013, from the novel of Stephen King, in which a giant invisible dome cuts a small town off from the world; SEAL Team, of 2017, with David Boreanaz; and S.W.A.T., of 2017, with Shemar Moore, complete the shelf. The guide CBS drama sums it up.

CBS comedy

The shelf CBS comedy gathers thirteen series from 1964 to 2021 with about 33,300 votes and an average rating of 7.55, and Chuck Lorre created or co-created four of them. The most voted is The Big Bang Theory, of 2007, by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, with a 7.9 and about 12,900 votes, twelve seasons and 279 episodes, the most of the shelf, in which two physicists of Caltech, Leonard and Sheldon, played by Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons, live across the hall from an aspiring actress, Penny, played by Kaley Cuoco. Its prequel, Young Sheldon, of 2017, with an 8.0, follows the childhood of Sheldon Cooper in Texas, narrated by Parsons, and Lorre also made Two and a Half Men, of 2003, twelve seasons with Charlie Sheen and then Ashton Kutcher beside Jon Cryer, and Mom, of 2013, with Anna Faris and Allison Janney as a daughter and mother in recovery.

How I Met Your Mother, of 2005, by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, with an 8.1 and nine seasons, is told by Ted Mosby in the year 2030 to his children, as the story of his friends in New York and of how he met their mother. 2 Broke Girls, of 2011, the series whose premiere the old site announced, follows two waitresses of Brooklyn, played by Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs, who save for a cupcake business; The King of Queens, of 1998, with Kevin James and Leah Remini, and Everybody Loves Raymond, of 1996, with Ray Romano and Patricia Heaton, are the family sitcoms of the shelf, and Mike & Molly, of 2010, is a love story born at a meeting of overeaters.

The best rated series of the shelf share an 8.1: How I Met Your Mother, The Nanny, of 1993, created by and starring Fran Drescher as a saleswoman of Queens who becomes the nanny of the children of a Broadway producer, and Ghosts, of 2021, the newest of the shelf, still returning, in which a young couple inherits a country house full of the spirits of people who died there over the centuries. The Munsters, of 1964, the oldest of the shelf, with Fred Gwynne as a gentle Frankenstein's monster of the suburbs, and Limitless, of 2015, a comedy of a pill that unlocks the full power of the brain, continue the strange side of CBS. The guide CBS comedy sums it up.

NBC and FOX

The second family of the guide holds 52 series of NBC, the oldest network of American television, and FOX, the youngest of the big four, with about 143,000 votes, the most of the three families, and an average rating of 7.84. NBC gave the guide its most famous comedies, the Thursday nights of Seinfeld, Friends and later The Office and Parks and Recreation; FOX, launched in 1986, made its name with dramas and comedies that the older networks would have found too odd or too rude, from The X-Files to Married... with Children.

NBC drama

The shelf NBC drama gathers thirteen series from 1966 to 2021 with about 33,700 votes and an average rating of 7.9. The most voted is Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, of 1999, by Dick Wolf, with 27 seasons and 594 episodes, the longest drama of the guide and still returning: the detectives of the special victims unit of New York, led by Mariska Hargitay as Olivia Benson, who has played the role since the first episode. Dick Wolf also made the Chicago series of the shelf, Chicago Fire, of 2012, and Chicago P.D., of 2014, both with an 8.4, the best rating of the shelf, and both still returning.

The oldest series of the shelf is Star Trek, of 1966, by Gene Roddenberry, three seasons in which Captain Kirk, played by William Shatner, and Mr. Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy, explore the galaxy aboard the Enterprise. The fantasy and horror of NBC follow: Grimm, of 2011, with an 8.3, in which a detective of Portland discovers that he descends from hunters of fairy-tale monsters; Hannibal, of 2013, by Bryan Fuller, with an 8.3, three seasons with Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter and Hugh Dancy as Will Graham; Heroes, of 2006, ordinary people who discover powers; Constantine, of 2014, a single season with Matt Ryan as the occult detective of DC; and Manifest, of 2018, and La Brea, of 2021, the newest of the shelf, two mysteries, of a plane that lands five years late and of a sinkhole that opens onto the distant past.

The Blacklist, of 2013, ten seasons and 218 episodes, gives James Spader the role of Raymond Reddington, a master criminal who gives himself up to the FBI and offers to help it catch the criminals on his own list; Blindspot, of 2015, follows a woman found naked in Times Square, her body covered in tattoos that hold clues to crimes; and This Is Us, of 2016, by Dan Fogelman, with an 8.2 and six seasons, follows the Pearson family across several decades at once, with Milo Ventimiglia and Mandy Moore. The guide NBC drama sums it up.

NBC comedy

The shelf NBC comedy gathers thirteen series from 1983 to 2016 with about 36,400 votes and an average rating of 7.96. The most voted is Friends, of 1994, by Marta Kauffman and David Crane, with an 8.4, about 9,500 votes, ten seasons and 228 episodes: six friends of Manhattan, played by Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer, share their twenties and thirties in two apartments and a coffee house. The best rated is The Office, of 2005, by Greg Daniels, with an 8.6, the best rating of the guide with House and The Originals: the American version of the British mockumentary, in which Steve Carell plays the cringe-making regional manager Michael Scott of a paper company of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Michael Schur has three series on the shelf, one of them created with Greg Daniels: Parks and Recreation, of 2009, with Amy Poehler as the relentless public servant Leslie Knope of Pawnee, Indiana; Brooklyn Nine-Nine, of 2013, with an 8.2, with Andy Samberg as a detective of a precinct of Brooklyn, which NBC saved after FOX canceled it; and The Good Place, of 2016, with Kristen Bell and Ted Danson, a comedy about the afterlife and moral philosophy. Seinfeld, of 1989, by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, with an 8.3, nine seasons about the small things of life in New York, and Frasier, of 1993, eleven seasons and 264 episodes, the most of the shelf, with Kelsey Grammer as the psychiatrist of Seattle who came from Cheers, are the great comedies of the 1990s.

The rest of the shelf spans four decades of NBC. The A-Team, of 1983, the oldest series of the shelf, follows four veterans of Vietnam who work as soldiers of fortune, with George Peppard and Mr. T; ALF, of 1986, brings an alien puppet from the planet Melmac into a suburban family; The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, of 1990, with Will Smith as a teenager of West Philadelphia sent to live with his rich relatives in Bel-Air; Community, of 2009, by Dan Harmon, a study group of a community college; My Name Is Earl, of 2005, a petty criminal who sets out to make amends for every bad deed on his list; and Chuck, of 2007, a computer repairman who downloads the secrets of the CIA into his brain. The guide NBC comedy sums it up.

FOX drama

The shelf FOX drama gathers thirteen series from 1993 to 2020 with about 54,500 votes and an average rating of 8.1, the best of any shelf of the guide, and nine of its series reach 8. The most voted series of the whole guide is here: Lucifer, of 2016, by Tom Kapinos, with an 8.4 and about 15,700 votes, in which Tom Ellis plays Lucifer Morningstar, the devil, who leaves hell to run a nightclub in Los Angeles and becomes a consultant of the police beside the detective Chloe Decker, played by Lauren German; FOX aired its first three seasons before Netflix took over. The best rated is House, of 2004, by David Shore, with an 8.6 and eight seasons, in which Hugh Laurie plays Gregory House, a brilliant and bitter doctor who solves medical mysteries like a detective.

The science fiction of FOX is the strongest of the guide. The X-Files, of 1993, by Chris Carter, the oldest series of the shelf, with an 8.4 and eleven seasons, sends the FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, played by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, after aliens, monsters and a government conspiracy; Fringe, of 2008, by J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, with an 8.1, follows a division of the FBI that investigates the experiments of a parallel universe; and Firefly, of 2002, by Joss Whedon, with an 8.4, canceled after eleven episodes and later continued in the film Serenity, follows the crew of a small spaceship in a frontier future, led by Nathan Fillion. The Gifted, of 2017, follows a family of mutants of the X-Men world on the run.

The thrillers of the shelf are just as famous. 24, of 2001, nine seasons in which each season tells a single day in real time, with Kiefer Sutherland as the counter-terrorist agent Jack Bauer; Prison Break, of 2005, with an 8.1, in which an engineer, played by Wentworth Miller, has himself imprisoned to break out his brother, sentenced to death; and Lie to Me, of 2009, with Tim Roth as an expert in the faces of liars. Bones, of 2005, twelve seasons and 246 episodes, the most of the shelf, pairs a forensic anthropologist, played by Emily Deschanel, with an FBI agent played by David Boreanaz; Gotham, of 2014, tells the young years of James Gordon and the future villains of Batman; and the hospital of The Resident, of 2018, with an 8.4, and the firefighters of 9-1-1: Lone Star, of 2020, the newest of the shelf, with Rob Lowe, close it. The guide FOX drama sums it up.

FOX comedy

The shelf FOX comedy gathers thirteen series from 1987 to 2017 with about 18,000 votes and an average rating of 7.38. The most voted and the best rated is Malcolm in the Middle, of 2000, by Linwood Boomer, with an 8.5 and seven seasons: Frankie Muniz plays Malcolm, a gifted boy in a loud working-class family, with Bryan Cranston and Jane Kaczmarek as his parents. The oldest is Married... with Children, of 1987, eleven seasons and 258 episodes, the most of the shelf, one of the first great successes of FOX: Ed O'Neill plays Al Bundy, a miserable shoe salesman of Chicago, with Katey Sagal as his wife Peggy.

Arrested Development, of 2003, by Mitchell Hurwitz, with a 7.9, follows the Bluth family after its patriarch is arrested, with Jason Bateman as the only sane son, in a narrated comedy dense with running jokes; FOX canceled it after three seasons, and Netflix later revived it. That '70s Show, of 1998, eight seasons, follows six teenagers of Wisconsin in the late 1970s, with Topher Grace, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher; New Girl, of 2011, with Zooey Deschanel as a teacher who moves in with three men; and The Mindy Project, of 2012, created by and starring Mindy Kaling as an obstetrician of New York, are the romantic comedies of the shelf.

The rest of the shelf is the bold side of FOX. Glee, of 2009, by Ryan Murphy, Ian Brennan and Brad Falchuk, six seasons of a high school glee club of Ohio, with Lea Michele; Scream Queens, of 2015, by the same creators, a horror comedy of a sorority; The Orville, of 2017, by Seth MacFarlane, a loving parody of Star Trek with MacFarlane as captain; The Last Man on Earth, of 2015, with Will Forte as perhaps the last survivor of a virus; Ally McBeal, of 1997, by David E. Kelley, with Calista Flockhart as a young lawyer of Boston; Raising Hope, of 2010, by Greg Garcia; and The Mick, of 2017, with Kaitlin Olson. The guide FOX comedy sums it up.

Cartoons, youth and events

The third family of the guide holds 52 series that sit outside the evening grid of drama and comedy, with about 132,000 votes and an average rating of 7.49. It gathers the animated series of the big networks, which grew from the family cartoons of the 1960s to the satires of FOX; the two networks made for teenagers and young adults, The WB, from 1995 to 2006, and The CW, born in 2006 from the merger of The WB and UPN; and the event miniseries, the stories of two, three or four nights that the networks advertised for weeks before they aired.

Network animation

The shelf Network animation gathers thirteen series from 1960 to 2020 with about 28,900 votes and 2,992 episodes, the most of any shelf: nine are from FOX, three from ABC and one from CBS. The most voted is The Simpsons, of 1989, by Matt Groening, with an 8.0 and about 11,100 votes, 38 seasons and 808 episodes, the longest series of the whole guide and still returning: the yellow family of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie in the town of Springfield, voiced by Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright and Yeardley Smith. Groening's second series, Futurama, of 1999, with an 8.4, the best rated of the shelf, sends a pizza delivery boy, Fry, a thousand years into the future.

Seth MacFarlane has three series on the shelf: Family Guy, of 1999, with 24 seasons and 456 episodes, the Griffin family of Rhode Island and its talking dog and baby; American Dad!, of 2005, 22 seasons and 401 episodes, a CIA agent and his family, which later moved to cable; and The Cleveland Show, of 2009, the spin-off of Family Guy, with a 5.9, the lowest rating of the guide. King of the Hill, of 1997, by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels, 15 seasons in the Texas town of Arlen, and Bob's Burgers, of 2011, 16 seasons of the Belcher family and its hamburger restaurant, complete the satires of FOX, and Duncanville, of 2020, by Amy Poehler, is the newest of the shelf.

The older and the younger cartoons of the shelf come from the morning schedules as well as the evenings. The Flintstones, of 1960, by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, the oldest series of the guide, is a family sitcom of the Stone Age with Fred and Wilma; Spider-Man, of 1994, with an 8.3, is the animated series of Fox Kids that adapted the great stories of the comics; and Gargoyles, of 1994, with an 8.1, Darkwing Duck, of 1991, and The Mask: Animated Series, of 1995, are the action and comedy cartoons of the 1990s. The guide Network animation sums it up.

The CW

The shelf The CW gathers thirteen series from 2007 to 2021 with about 71,000 votes, the most voted shelf of the guide, and an average rating of 7.84. Seven of its series come from the comics of DC, most of them from the producer Greg Berlanti, who built on the network a shared world of heroes called the Arrowverse: Arrow, of 2012, eight seasons with Stephen Amell as the archer Oliver Queen; The Flash, of 2014, nine seasons and about 11,800 votes, with Grant Gustin as Barry Allen, the fastest man alive; DC's Legends of Tomorrow, of 2016, a team of misfits who travel through time; Batwoman, of 2019; DC's Stargirl, of 2020; and Superman & Lois, of 2021, the newest of the shelf, with Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch as the parents of two teenage sons. iZombie, of 2015, from a comic of the DC imprint Vertigo, follows a young doctor turned zombie who eats the brains of murder victims to solve their cases.

The most voted series of the shelf is Riverdale, of 2017, by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, with an 8.4 and about 13,800 votes, the second most voted of the guide, which turns the cheerful teenagers of Archie Comics into a dark mystery of murder in a small town. The vampires of Mystic Falls hold three places: The Vampire Diaries, of 2009, by Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson, with an 8.3 and eight seasons, the love triangle of Elena and the vampire brothers Stefan and Damon; its spin-off The Originals, of 2013, with an 8.6, the best rated series of the shelf, the first vampire family in New Orleans; and Legacies, of 2018, a school for young witches, vampires and werewolves. The 100, of 2014, seven seasons, sends a hundred young offenders from a space station down to a ruined Earth, and Gossip Girl, of 2007, the oldest of the shelf, follows the privileged teenagers of the Upper East Side of Manhattan through the posts of an anonymous blogger. The guide The CW sums it up.

The WB

The shelf The WB gathers thirteen series from 1996 to 2005 with about 22,400 votes and an average rating of 7.48. The WB lived for only eleven years, but in that time it made the series that defined the teenage drama of the late 1990s and early 2000s, many of them about young people with secret powers. The most voted and the best rated is Supernatural, of 2005, by Eric Kripke, with an 8.3, 15 seasons and 327 episodes, the most of the shelf: the brothers Sam and Dean Winchester, played by Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, drive across America in a black 1967 Impala hunting ghosts, demons and monsters, a journey that continued on The CW until 2020.

Joss Whedon gave the network its most admired series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, of 1997, with an 8.1 and seven seasons, in which Sarah Michelle Gellar plays a high school girl chosen to fight vampires above the Hellmouth of Sunnydale, and its spin-off Angel, of 1999, with David Boreanaz as the vampire with a soul in Los Angeles. Smallville, of 2001, by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, ten seasons, tells the youth of Clark Kent, played by Tom Welling, before he becomes Superman; Charmed, of 1998, with an 8.2, follows three sisters who discover that they are witches; and Roswell, of 1999, hides three alien teenagers in a high school of New Mexico.

The family dramas of the shelf are just as loved. Gilmore Girls, of 2000, by Amy Sherman-Palladino, seven seasons, follows a young single mother, Lorelai, played by Lauren Graham, and her studious daughter Rory, played by Alexis Bledel, in the small town of Stars Hollow, in some of the fastest dialogue of television; 7th Heaven, of 1996, the oldest series of the shelf, eleven seasons and 243 episodes, follows the large family of a minister; Everwood, of 2002, by Greg Berlanti, a famous surgeon who moves his family to a small town of Colorado; and One Tree Hill, of 2003, nine seasons, two half-brothers on the basketball team of a town of North Carolina. Reba, of 2001, with the country singer Reba McEntire, What I Like About You, of 2002, with Amanda Bynes, and Birds of Prey, of 2002, a single season of the heroes of Gotham, complete the shelf. The guide The WB sums it up.

Event miniseries

The shelf Event miniseries gathers thirteen miniseries from 1977 to 2002, six of ABC, five of NBC and two of CBS, with 38 episodes in all. They come from the decades when a network could stop the country for a few nights with a single story, and seven of the thirteen come from the books of Stephen King. The most voted is It, of 1990, with about 3,400 votes and two parts, in which Tim Curry plays Pennywise, the clown who haunts the children and then the adults of Derry, Maine; The Stand, of 1994, four parts, follows the survivors of a pandemic toward a final battle of good and evil, with Gary Sinise and Molly Ringwald; and Salem's Lot, of 1979, directed by Tobe Hooper, the oldest of the King adaptations, brings vampires to a small town of Maine.

The Langoliers, of 1995, adapts his novella of a plane whose passengers wake up in an empty world, and King wrote three of the later miniseries for television himself: The Shining, of 1997, a second version of his novel of the haunted hotel, closer to the book than the film of Stanley Kubrick; Storm of the Century, of 1999, a stranger who arrives on an island of Maine during a blizzard; and Rose Red, of 2002, the newest of the shelf, a group of psychics in a haunted mansion of Seattle.

The other events of the shelf go back further. Jesus of Nazareth, of 1977, the oldest of the shelf, by Franco Zeffirelli, four parts with Robert Powell as Jesus; Shōgun, of 1980, five parts from the novel of James Clavell, with Richard Chamberlain as an English navigator in feudal Japan and Toshirō Mifune as a warlord; V, of 1983, by Kenneth Johnson, an invasion of seemingly friendly aliens who hide reptiles under their human skin; and Lonesome Dove, of 1989, with a 7.9, the best rated of the shelf, from the novel of Larry McMurtry, a cattle drive from Texas to Montana led by two old Texas Rangers, played by Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones. The Odyssey, of 1997, by Andrei Konchalovsky, with Armand Assante as Odysseus, and Merlin, of 1998, with Sam Neill as the wizard, close the shelf. The guide Event miniseries sums it up.

The creators

Greg Berlanti is the creator of the guide, with six series: the heroes of The CW, Arrow, The Flash, DC's Legends of Tomorrow and Superman & Lois, the first season of Supergirl on CBS, and Everwood, the family drama he made for The WB in 2002. Chuck Lorre follows with four comedies of CBS, The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, Young Sheldon and Mom; Seth MacFarlane with four series of FOX, Family Guy, American Dad!, The Cleveland Show and The Orville; Joss Whedon with four, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel on The WB, Firefly on FOX and Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on ABC; and Ryan Murphy, with Brad Falchuk, with four, Glee, Scream Queens, 9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Lone Star. Greg Daniels and Michael Schur have three each, and Stephen King is credited on five of the miniseries. The guide The creators lists them.

The casts

Network series keep their actors for years, so the most frequent faces of the guide appear in only three series each, counted on the cast lists of TMDB. David Boreanaz moved from the vampire Angel, in Buffy and then Angel, to the FBI agent of Bones and the soldier of SEAL Team; Nathan Fillion from the captain of Firefly to the crime novelist of Castle and the rookie of The Rookie; Amy Acker from Angel to Person of Interest and The Gifted; Adam Rodriguez from Roswell to CSI: Miami and Criminal Minds; and Seth MacFarlane voices characters in Family Guy and American Dad! and stars in The Orville. Ed O'Neill led two families twenty years apart, the Bundys of Married... with Children and the Pritchetts of Modern Family. The guide The casts lists them.

The long runners

The networks ran their successes for as long as they could. Six series of the guide passed 400 episodes: The Simpsons, with 808 episodes and 38 seasons, the longest series of the guide; Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, with 594; NCIS, with 507; Grey's Anatomy, with 460; Family Guy, with 456; and American Dad!, with 401. All six are still returning. At the other end, the miniseries of the guide hold two to five parts each, and Police Squad! ended after six episodes. The guide The long runners lists the longest series.

The series by decade

By decade of their first season, the guide holds five series of the 1960s, two of the 1970s, eleven of the 1980s, 35 of the 1990s, 44 of the 2000s, 53 of the 2010s and six of the 2020s. The 1960s are the decade of the fantasy sitcom, with Bewitched, The Munsters and Batman, and of Star Trek; the 1980s and 1990s belong to the family sitcom and to the great comedies of NBC; the 2000s to the procedurals of CBS and the teenage dramas of The WB; and the 2010s to the heroes of The CW and the hospital and emergency dramas of ABC and NBC. Of the 156 series, 112 have ended, 30 were canceled and 14 are still returning.

WatchTVSeries in figures

The 156 series of the guide hold more than a thousand seasons and 21,456 episodes and carry about 413,000 votes on TMDB, with an average rating of 7.71; 59 of them reach 8, led by House, The Office and The Originals with an 8.6 each. The most voted are Lucifer, with about 15,700 votes, Riverdale, The Good Doctor, The Big Bang Theory, The Flash and Grey's Anatomy. By shelf, the best rated is FOX drama, with an average of 8.1, and the most voted The CW, with about 71,000 votes; the lowest rated series is The Cleveland Show, with a 5.9. The guide The figures gathers every number.

The look of WatchTVSeries

The design follows the home page of watchtvseries.tv as the Internet Archive kept it on 23 April 2012: a WordPress blog on the Copyblogger theme of StudioPress, whose style sheet survives in the archived demo of the theme. A black header carries the title in white and a tagline in italic grey Georgia, above a red bar, #BA1A00, with white bold links that darken under the mouse; the page is a light grey, #EEE, the posts sit in white columns framed by a thick border of #E5E5E5, the headings are a deep red, #A41600, and the sidebar widgets sit on grey. Each show of the old home page had a small picture, its title and the words Premiered on; here each poster carries the network and the year of the first episode, and the twelve shelves sit in a The Networks widget on the right. The guide The look of WatchTVSeries explains each colour.

Where to begin

For a first evening, start with one series from each family: Lost for ABC and CBS, The X-Files for NBC and FOX and Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the young networks. Then try the best rated series of each shelf: The Good Doctor, The Wonder Years, The Mentalist, The Nanny, Chicago Fire, The Office, House, Malcolm in the Middle, Futurama, The Originals, Supernatural and Lonesome Dove. Anyone who likes a long evening can start The Simpsons from the first season, and anyone who likes a short one can watch the six episodes of Police Squad!.

How to use WatchTVSeries

The home page opens with the introduction, the twelve shelves in the wide column and The Networks in the right column. Each entry of The Networks shows the family, the shelf and its number of series, and leads to its post; each shelf holds twelve posters and a link that opens the full shelf. The menu in the red bar leads to the three families, and the search box finds any series by its title; the guide Search tips explains how. Each poster carries the network and the year of the first episode, and under it come the title, the first genre and the number of episodes.

The series page has the English synopsis, the seasons and episodes, the cast and the genres. The Watch now button opens the series on JustWatch, which shows the services that offer it in your country, and the button Add to My List keeps it in My list, stored in your browser. The guide How to use WatchTVSeries explains each part, and the guide The Watch now button explains how JustWatch works.

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