Sun, September 27, 2026 at 11:04 AM UTC
A quirk in the eligibility rules is the sole reason why “The Sopranos” is missing from The New York Times’ new ranking of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/arts/television/best-tv-shows-21st-century.html” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>the 100 best TV shows of the 21st century. The show many critics still call the greatest drama ever made didn’t crack a list built to define its own era.
The Times released the full ranking on Friday, rolling out 20 titles a day over the course of a week. The paper’s Upshot data team didn’t rely on its own critics. Instead, it sent ballots to hundreds of actors, showrunners, writers and other television professionals, asking each to name up to 10 shows they considered the best of the century so far. The eligibility rules were broad. Shows could come from any language or format, including reality competitions and documentaries. Only two restrictions applied; a show needed more than a single episode, and it had to premiere on or after January 1, 2000.
That second rule is what knocked out “The Sopranos.” The HBO drama debuted on January 10, 1999, just nine days before the cutoff. 73 of the show’s 86 episodes actually aired after 2000, meaning the vast majority of its run falls squarely inside the window the list covers. Meanwhile, “Gilmore Girls,” which premiered in October 2000, made the ranking at No. 99. The date on a calendar (not the quality of the work) is the entire difference.
Forbes contributor Erik Kain argues the Times could have written a better rule. Rather than a hard date cutoff, he suggests eligibility based on where the majority of a show’s episodes aired. That approach would have let “The Sopranos” onto the list, along with other transitional shows like “The West Wing” and “Futurama” (a personal favorite), while still keeping genuine 1990s holdovers such as “The Simpsons” out of the running. The series finale of “The Sopranos” aired June 10, 2007, capping an eight-year run that helped define the exact era this list was built to celebrate.
“The Sopranos” wasn’t the only notable absence. Not a singleTaylor Sheridan series made the cut, even though “Yellowstone” ranks among the most watched and culturally influential shows of the last decade. Its prequels, “1883” and “1923,” fared no better. Unlike “The Sopranos,” Sheridan’s shows had no eligibility issue standing in their way. Voters simply left them off their ballots.
Lists like this one are designed to spark exactly this kind of argument. The Times built its ranking from the collective taste of more than 500 people working in television, which guarantees disagreement and debate. While there will be few arguments about the show that landed at No. 1, which turned out to be “Breaking Bad,” there’s bound to be a lot of grumbling over what didn’t make the cut. And for a show as massive as “The Sopranos” to get whacked just because of a few weeks of pre-cutoff airtime? Fuhgeddaboudit.
This story was originally published byParadeon Sep 27, 2026, where it first appeared in theNewssection. Add Parade as aPreferred
