The 8 Most Fun TV Shows of the 21st Century

Image via Prime Video Published Sep 4, 2026, 7:54 PM EDT Jennie Richardson is a TV Features and Lists Writer for Collider, and a graduate student pursuing an MFA in Fiction Writing. In other words, she really loves stories. Sign in to your Collider account So far, the 21st century has been excellent for TV fans. The last 26 years have seen the release of some shows that have already gone down in history as television's best, from flawless dramas like Breaking Bad and The Leftovers, to terrifying horror series like Midnight Mass and From. For TV fans who are drawn in by suspenseful storylines and extremely high stakes, the last two-and-a-half decades have been full of phenomenal series to choose from. While the 21st century has been packed with riveting shows that keep fans on the edge of their seats, it has also been full of some of the most enjoyable shows ever made. For TV fans who prefer to relax and watch a show that's less intense, there are also a number of excellent and (mostly) low-stakes shows from the last 26 years that fit this description. These are the 8 most fun TV shows of the 21st century so far, ranked. 8 '9-1-1' (2018–Present) 9-1-1 is a procedural that follows a group of first responders all working in Los Angeles, including the firefighters at Station 118 and the people working at the 9-1-1 call center. Each episode, the main characters respond to a variety of calls and save every life that they can. The dispatchers take the calls, and either the 118 or Sergeant Athena Grant (Angela Bassett) respond to these calls, depending on their nature. Each season opens with a large-scale emergency that the characters have to respond to, whether that be a tsunami, a sinking cruise ship, or a tornado made up of millions of bees. 9-1-1 is often an intense and emotional show, as the first responders can't save everyone, and they often have to deal with the monumental costs of the job. That said, 9-1-1 is also one of the most fun TV shows of recent years. The series has never been afraid to embrace either its soapiness or its silliness, with the first responders regularly responding to some especially bizarre and creative calls. Some of the show's most fun episodes have seen the 118 accidentally get jinxed into having an especially wild day, and all get unknowingly dosed with hallucinogens from a tray of brownies. 7 'The Summer I Turned Pretty' (2022–2025) Image via Prime Video Based on the trilogy of novels by Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty follows Belly Conklin (Lola Tung), a teenage girl who spends every summer at a vacation home in Cousins Beach, Massachusetts. The house belongs to Susannah (Rachel Blanchard), the lifelong best friend of Belly's mother, Laurel (Jackie Chung). For Belly's whole life, she, her mother, and her brother (Sean Kaufman) have spent their summers there with Laurel and her sons, Conrad (Christopher Briney) and Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno). For pretty much that entire time, Belly has been pining after Conrad, but she's worried that he'll never see her that way. The series takes place over the course of three fundamental summers in Belly's life. It starts the summer Belly turns 16, when she starts to notice a shift in her friendships with both Conrad and Jeremiah. For three seasons, Belly is at the center of a messy love triangle between the two brothers, and it's one of the most entertaining love triangles of all time. The Summer I Turned Pretty is a fun series with the perfect summer setting and excellent romantic drama, making for a fantastic mental vacation. 6 'Psych' (2006–2014) Image via USA Network Psych is a wildly funny procedural that follows Shawn Spencer (James Roday Rodriguez), a man with a photographic memory that was encouraged and honed by his police sergeant father (Corbin Bernsen) when he was younger. Shawn is incredibly observant, but he lacks ambition and drive. When Shawn solves a crime by watching the news, he calls it in for the reward and gets arrested instead. To get out of it, Shawn pretends to be a psychic. When this goes well, he opens his own business with his best friend, Gus (Dulé Hill), and he becomes a regular psychic consultant for the Santa Barbara Police Department. The crime consultant procedural is an especially fun sub-genre on its own, because it sees normal people using their particular skills to solve crimes that even trained professionals cannot. What makes Psych especially fun and silly is that Shawn is very much not a psychic. Not only does Shawn have to solve crimes each episode, but he also has to go back and make each discovery look like it came to him from the powers that he does not possess, and the result is absolutely hilarious. 5 'Ugly Betty' (2006–2010) Image via ABC Ugly Betty is a dramedy series based on the Colombian telenovela, Yo soy Betty, la fea. The series follows Betty Suarez (America Ferrera), an aspiring writer who gets hired as the assistant to Daniel Meade (Eric Mabius), the new editor-in-chief of a prestigious fashion magazine called Mode. Daniel is definitely not the most qualified person for the job, but his father (Alan Dale) owns the company that Mode belongs to, so he gets chosen over the more deserving Wilhelmina Slater (Vanessa Williams). Betty, meanwhile, doesn't know much about fashion either, but Daniel's father hires her because he believes that she's the only assistant Daniel won't try to hook up with. At its core, Ugly Betty is about Betty's journey at Mode, as she works to prove herself to her judgmental and often unkind coworkers. At the same time, Betty's family deals with their own problems, and she also learns that the Meades are hiding dangerous family secrets. All the while, Wilhelmina hatches a detailed plan to try to take Daniel down and finally become the editor-in-chief of Mode. Ugly Betty is a fun, soapy series that constantly throws viewers for a loop with shocking twists and turns, and it's wildly entertaining from start to finish. Collider Exclusive · TV Medicine Quiz Which Fictional Hospital Would You Work Best In? The Pitt · ER · Grey's Anatomy · House · Scrubs Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television — brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant, and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out exactly where you belong. 🚨The Pitt 🏥ER 💉Grey's 🔬House 🩺Scrubs FIND YOUR HOSPITAL → 01 A critical patient comes through the door. What's your first instinct? Medicine under pressure reveals who you actually are. AStay completely present — block everything else out and work through it step by step, right now. BTriage fast and delegate — get the right people on the right problems immediately. CTrust my gut and move — I work best when I stop overthinking and just act. DAsk the question everyone else is ignoring — what's the thing that doesn't fit? ETake a breath, make a joke to cut the tension, and then get to work — panic helps no one. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Why did you go into medicine in the first place? The honest answer says more about you than the one you'd give in an interview. ABecause I wanted to be where it matters most — right at the edge, when someone's life is actually on the line. BBecause I wanted to help people — genuinely, one patient at a time, in a system that makes it hard. CBecause I was drawn to the intensity of it — the stakes, the drama, the feeling of being fully alive. DBecause medicine is the most interesting puzzle there is — and I needed a problem worth solving. EBecause I wanted to make a difference — and also, honestly, I didn't know what else to do with my life. NEXT QUESTION → 03 What do you actually want from the people you work with? Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are. ACompetence and calm — I need people who don't fall apart when things get bad. BTrust and reliability — I want to know that when I pass something off, it's handled. CConnection — I want colleagues who become family, even if that gets complicated. DIntelligence and the willingness to be challenged — I have no interest in people who just agree with me. EFriendship — people I actually like spending twelve hours a day with, because those hours are going to happen either way. NEXT QUESTION → 04 You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it? Every doctor who's worked a long shift has had to answer this question. AI carry it. All of it. I don't look for ways to put it down — that weight is part of doing this work honestly. BI process it and move — you have to, or the next patient suffers for the one you just lost. CI feel it deeply and lean on the people around me — I don't think you're supposed to handle that alone. DI go back over every decision — not to punish myself, but because I need to understand what I missed. EI grieve it genuinely, find some way to laugh about something unrelated, and try to be kind to myself — imperfectly. NEXT QUESTION → 05 How would your colleagues describe the way you work? Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image. AIntense and completely present — no small talk during a shift, but exactly who you want there. BSteady and dependable — not the flashiest in the room but never the one who drops something. CPassionate and occasionally chaotic — brilliant on the hard cases, prone to drama everywhere else. DBrilliant and difficult — right more often than anyone else, and everyone knows it, including me. EWarm and self-deprecating — not the most intimidating presence, but genuinely good at this and easy to like. NEXT QUESTION → 06 How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure? Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice. AProtocol is the floor, not the ceiling — I follow it until the patient needs something it can't provide. BI respect it — the system is broken in places, but the structure is there for a reason and I work within it. CI follow it until my instincts tell me not to — and my instincts are usually right, even when they cause problems. DRules are for people who haven't thought hard enough about when to break them. EI try to follow it and mostly do — with a few memorable exceptions that still come up in meetings. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What does this job cost you personally? Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What's yours? AEverything outside these walls — I've given this job my full attention and the rest of my life has gone around it. BMy idealism, mostly — I came in believing the system could be fixed and I've made a complicated peace with that. CStability — my personal life has been as chaotic as the OR, and that's not entirely a coincidence. DMy relationships — I am not easy to know, and the people who've tried to would probably agree. EMy sense of gravity — I use humour as a coping mechanism, which not everyone appreciates in a hospital. NEXT QUESTION → 08 At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back? The answer to this question is the most honest thing about you. AThe fact that it's real — that nothing else I could be doing would matter this much, right now, today. BThe patients — individual human beings who needed something and got it because I was there. CThe people I work with — I have walked through impossible things with these people and I'd do it again. DThe next unsolved case — there's always another puzzle, and I'm not done yet. EBecause despite everything — the exhaustion, the loss, the absurdity — I actually love this job. REVEAL MY HOSPITAL → Your Assignment Has Been Made You Belong In…Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for. The PittYou are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown — one that puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn't let you look away. You need your work to be real, not romanticised — meaning over drama, honesty over aesthetics. You find purpose inside the work itself, not in the chaos surrounding it. You've made peace with the fact that this job takes from you constantly, and gives back in ways that are harder to name. Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center demands exactly that kind of person — and you would not want to be anywhere else. ERYou are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential. You show up, do the work, absorb the losses, and come back the next day without needing the job to be anything other than what it is. You care about patients as individual human beings, not as cases to solve or dramas to live through. You believe in the system even when it fails you — and you understand that emergency medicine is about holding the line just long enough. ER is television about endurance. You have it. Grey's AnatomyYou came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door. You feel things fully and form deep attachments to the people you work with. Your personal and professional lives are permanently, chaotically entangled — and that entanglement drives both your greatest disasters and your most remarkable saves. You understand that extraordinary medicine often happens at the intersection of clinical skill and profound human connection. It's messy at Grey Sloan. You would not have it any other way. HouseYou are drawn to the problem above everything else — the symptom that doesn't fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one. You're not primarily motivated by the patient as a person — though you are capable of caring, even if you'd deny it. You work best when the stakes are highest and the standard answer is wrong. Princeton-Plainsboro exists to house one extraordinary, impossible mind — and everyone around that mind is there because they're smart enough to keep up. The only way forward here is to think harder than everyone else in the room. That is exactly what you do. ScrubsYou understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure — and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time. You are warm, self-aware, and funnier than most people in your field. You use humour to get through terrible moments — and at Sacred Heart, that's not a flaw, it's a survival strategy. You lean on the people around you and let them lean back. The laughter and the grief are genuinely inseparable here. Scrubs is a show about learning to become someone worthy of the job. You are still very much in the middle of that process — which is exactly right. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 4 'Gilmore Girls' (2000–2007) Image via The WB Gilmore Girls follows Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel), a mother and daughter who are best friends. They live in a cozy small town called Stars Hollow, Connecticut, where you can't go anywhere without bumping into a familiar face. At the start of the series, Rory is 16, the same age Lorelai was when she had her. To have the best shot of getting into her dream college in a couple of years, Rory is preparing to transfer to a local private school called Chilton. To pay for it, though, Lorelai will have to get back into regular contact with her estranged parents, Emily (Kelly Bishop) and Richard (Edward Hermann). Gilmore Girls is such a fun and relaxing series to watch. It has the best TV setting in Stars Hollow, a town made up of the quirkiest and most entertaining cast of characters, that has messy town hall meetings and bizarrely specific festivals and events. Lorelai and Rory are both very compelling leads, and each of them has their own entertaining storylines that have to do with their jobs, classes, friends, and love lives. Together, though, Lorelai and Rory are always eating great food and bantering, and it's always a whole lot of fun. 3 'Pushing Daisies' (2007–2009) Image via ABC Pushing Daisies is a cozy procedural with a delightful fairytale-inspired aesthetic. It follows Ned (Lee Pace), a man who has the power to revive the dead with a single touch. Of course, his power has its limitations: he can only keep the dead person alive for one minute, or someone else dies in their place. Ned owns his own pie shop, but on the side, he uses his power to help Private Investigator Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) solve murders. When the latest murder victim is Ned's estranged childhood sweetheart, Chuck (Anna Friel), Ned can't bring himself to touch her back to death after asking who killed her. Thus, Chuck sticks around, and she helps Ned and Emerson solve murders every episode. The murders are all outlandishly ridiculous and over-the-top, and each murder mystery is a lot of fun for viewers to watch and try to solve. The show also has a sweet and beautiful love story in the romance between Ned and Chuck. After almost two decades, the two easily re-enter each other's lives. The only problem is, they can never touch, or Chuck will go back to being dead forever. Community is a sitcom that follows Jeff Winger (Joel McHale), a successful Colorado-based lawyer who faked his college degree. When Jeff's lie is exposed, he has to attend the local Greendale Community College and finally get a degree the right way. Jeff just wants to do the bare minimum for the next four years. He tries to manipulate his professor friend (John Oliver) into helping him cheat, and he starts a fake Spanish study group to get the attention of his classmate and new crush, Britta (Gillian Jacobs). What starts as a means to an end becomes something else entirely when Jeff strikes up an unlikely bond with the six other members of his fake study group. They all quickly become extremely close, spending more time gossiping and meddling in each other's lives than actually studying Spanish. Community is absolutely hilarious and entertaining, but it also has an excellent setting in Greendale, a strange community college that hosts schoolwide paintball competitions and has classes like "Baby Talk" and "Ladders." 1 'New Girl' (2011–2018) Image via FOX New Girl is a hangout sitcom that follows Jess Day (Zooey Deschanel), an optimist who was cheated on by her long-term boyfriend. Now in need of a new place to live, Jess moves in with a group of guys she met on Craig's List: Nick Miller (Jake Johnson), Winston Bishop (Lamorne Morris), and Schmidt (Max Greenfield). This arrangement is a bit of an adjustment for all of them, but against all odds, Jess quickly starts to feel at home in the guys' loft. There is no 21st-century show that is more fun to watch or rewatch than New Girl. Every episode is absolutely hilarious, due to the sharply funny writing and uniquely quirky characters. The dynamics between each of the main characters are very funny and entertaining, and the show is constantly mixing the pairings up for excellent results. Best of all, the loftmates have their own traditions, rituals, and shorthand that make the loft one of the all-time best TV settings. New Girl Release Date 2011 - 2018-00-00 Network FOX Showrunner Elizabeth Meriwether