Katie McCormack, the female friend with whom Nolan Xavier Wells spoke on Horn Island, has reportedly been identified, as her sister, Grace, speaks about the conversation they allegedly shared.

RELATED: Ben Crump Shares Preliminary Findings Of Indep. Autopsy Report, As Teen Who Traveled To Horn Island With Nolan Wells Breaks Silence

Female Friend Whom Nolan Xavier Wells Spoke With On Horn Island Is Reportedly Identified As Katie McCormack, & Her Sister Speaks On Conversation They Allegedly Shared

On Thursday, July 23, the Daily Mail published an exclusive report, identifying McCormack and sharing quotes her sister, Gracie, gave to the outlet. Per the New York Post, Katie is 19 years old, and her 23-year-old sister “disputes the claim that Wells remained on the island to talk to [Katie].”

Per Gracie, Katie “thought Wells would have boated back to the mainland with his friends.”

“Katie had a conversation and assumed that Nolan was getting ready to get on the boat he came out on. Katie assumed the ‘friends’ telling him to get on the boat wouldn’t have left him,” Gracie reportedly told Daily Mail.

Per the New York Post, Katie was also from Wells’ hometown of Ocean Springs, Mississippi. And when she concluded her time on Horn Island, she was reportedly taken back to the mainland by her brother and his fiancée.

“We have given all the answers we can give to his mom and authorities,” Gracie reportedly concluded.

The 19-Year-Old Has Largely Remained Publicly Silent On The Matter

Per the New York Post, Katie McCormack has not spoken publicly since Nolan Wells’ disappearance and death. However, she reportedly replied to a social media post, defending herself against speculation about her involvement in any wrongdoing.

“What’s understood don’t have to be said. I love y’all. Just pray for his family and his friends,” she reportedly wrote in response. “I’m good, and all I can do is pray for healing over them. This is a terrible situation all in all.”

‼️ THE WOMAN NOLAN WELLS WAS CHATTING WITH HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED, CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS CONTINUE TO ARISE

New details have emerged about the final hours of 18-year-old Nolan Wells before he was found dead on Mississippi’s Horn Island, as conflicting accounts continue to raise… pic.twitter.com/oADyFOPNmT

— Abby Blabby (@abbyblabby11) July 24, 2026

Meanwhile, Nolan Xavier Wells’ Friend Warren Hudson Shares His Side Of What Happened With Katie McCormack

Meanwhile, part three of Officer Tatum’s interview with Warren Hudson, a teen who traveled to Horn Island with Nolan Wells on July 4, has been released via YouTube. As The Shade Room previously reported, Hudson and his mom, Chancery Judge Ashlee Cole, have alleged that he willingly stayed on the island to be with McCormack. This, before he was found dead two days later.

“The last time I saw Nolan was 3 o’clock. And Nolan was cradling a girl on his arms: Katie. And Katie — Nolan was sitting there, and the last time I saw Nolan, I looked at Nolan, and Nolan was, like, shaking his head laughing,” Hudson said.

Furthermore, he explained that “no one was getting left on the island” unless they “demanded” to be.”

“This is a very common thing… a lot of people ride out there with someone. And come back with somebody else. All the time. I’ve done it a hundred times,” he added.

Ultimately, Hudson alleged that Wells was asked “multiple times” to get on the boat. But “Nolan made a decision to stay out on the island.”

“It’s not like we just left him there… Nolan made a decision to stay on the island after my friends asked him multiple times and told him to get on the island, and he decided to stay,” Hudson said.

Lastly, he noted that even Katie McCormack saw Wells decline to get on the boat.

RELATED: UPDATE: Mississippi District Attorney Says Nolan Wells’ Autopsy Report Will Remain Sealed Until Grand Jury Review (VIDEO)

Johnny Depp made an attention-grabbing return to one of entertainment’s biggest stages by taking an unexpected swipe at President Donald Trump. The actor appeared at San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday to promote Paramount Pictures’ upcoming “Ebenezer,” but he did not walk into Hall H as himself. Instead, Depp remained fully in character as Ebenezer Scrooge and slipped a tariff joke into the elaborate performance. The political punch line drew one of the loudest reactions of the event and quickly spread online as fans celebrated Johnny Depp’s return to a major U.S. studio project.

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Depp helped transform part of the Comic-Con festivities into a Victorian Christmas village inspired by Charles Dickens’ classic story. Dressed in full costume as Scrooge, the “Pirates of the Caribbean” actor roamed the mock village and interacted with other performers rather than participating in a traditional promotional panel.

During one moment, Scrooge began pulling decorative garlands from a gate. Johnny Depp’s character described the decorations as “poison” and argued that they needed to be kept away from children. When another performer objected, Scrooge insisted that the decorations were on his property. The exchange then became unexpectedly political as Depp shifted the character’s complaint toward taxes and tariffs.

The Actor Slips In A Donald Trump Tariff Joke

Depp joked that everyone would have to pay taxes simply because the decorations were present before mentioning “putting tariffs on the gate.” The audience immediately erupted in laughter, with many attendees interpreting the unscripted-sounding moment as a jab at Trump.

The timing gave the joke added political relevance. It came only days after Trump reignited a trade dispute with Canada by invoking a nearly century-old tariff law to place 50% duties on numerous Canadian imports. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court blocked portions of the Trump administration’s broader tariff policy.

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Although Depp did not explicitly name the president during the Comic-Con bit, the reference was clear enough for many members of the audience to connect the joke to Trump’s tariff agenda.

Johnny Depp Has Criticized Trump Before

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The Comic-Con moment was not Depp’s first time publicly mocking Trump. While promoting “Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal: The Movie” in 2016, the actor shared his interpretation of the future president’s personality during a public forum at Arizona State University.

“It’s not about being a rich kid or anything like that,” Depp told Lawrence Krauss. “I approached Donald Trump as what you see when you really watch him. There’s a pretense, there’s something created about him, in a sense of bully-dom.” Depp then offered a blunt assessment of Trump, adding, “But what he is, I believe, is a brat.”

The actor also criticized Trump’s speaking style during the discussion. “Also,” Depp added, “the absurdity of it, where his sentences might travel.” One year later, Depp apologized after making controversial remarks involving the president during the Glastonbury Festival.

‘Ebenezer’ Marks A Major Studio Return For The Actor

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Depp’s surprise appearance carried significance beyond the political joke. “Ebenezer,” Paramount’s upcoming adaptation of the Charles Dickens story, marks the actor’s return to a major U.S. studio production.

Depp’s return to a major Hollywood studio project comes several years after his highly publicized legal battle with ex-wife Amber Heard dominated headlines. In 2022, a Virginia jury found Heard liable for defaming Depp through statements connected to her 2018 op-ed about domestic abuse, although the article did not name him.

The jury awarded Depp $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages, with the punitive award later reduced under Virginia law. Heard also prevailed on one count of her countersuit and was awarded $2 million.

Johnny Depp’s Hollywood Career Includes Three Oscar Nominations

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Depp remains one of Hollywood’s most recognizable performers after spending decades taking on an array of unconventional characters. He earned Academy Award nominations for his performances in “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” “Finding Neverland,” and “Sweeney Todd.”

His extensive filmography also includes acclaimed roles in “Edward Scissorhands,” “Donnie Brasco,” “Sleepy Hollow,” and “Black Mass.” Now, Depp is adding another literary character to that list by stepping into the role of Ebenezer Scrooge.

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Oprah Winfrey has ignited a fierce debate after arguing that young people should not expect work-life balance at the beginning of their careers. The 72-year-old media mogul said recent college graduates need to “lay in the work” before earning the freedom to make decisions based entirely on what they want. While some fans praised Oprah Winfrey for sharing the work ethic that helped her build a multibillion-dollar empire, others argued that her extraordinary wealth has disconnected her from the financial and emotional pressures facing younger workers.

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Winfrey discussed her career philosophy during an appearance on the “Baby, This Is Keke Palmer” podcast. The conversation began when Keke Palmer asked, “What is for you the definition of living your best life now? What does it look like?”

“Well, it looks like freedom,” Winfrey responded. “It looks like being able to make the choices that are based on what you really want, which I think is the most important question.”

The former talk show host explained that people who are not completely free may have to make choices based on necessity rather than personal fulfillment. “You know, I think when you’re not free, not completely free, you can’t make decisions based upon what you want. You have to do what you want,” she said.

Winfrey then connected that philosophy to the advice she gives young women entering the workforce.

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Winfrey said she regularly hears recent college graduates discussing their desire to establish boundaries between their careers and personal lives.

“This is what I say to my girls, you know, graduating from college and starting their first jobs and they’re talking to me about, you know, work-life balance,” Winfrey said. “At this point, I go, ‘you ain’t had no work life balance at 22… It’s not there. You’re not supposed to have it. You’re supposed to lay it in. Lay in the work.’”

According to Winfrey, the ability to decline unwanted opportunities and pursue only personally meaningful work must be earned over time. The billionaire said she has now reached a stage where her decisions come from “the purest part of myself.”

“I only do what I want to do and I’ve earned the right to do that because there was lots of times I had to do what I had to do,” she explained.

Winfrey added, “A lot of people think ‘oh I just want to do what I want to do.’ You got to work to be able to do what you want to do. You have to do what you have to do, until you can do what you want to do.”

Critics Say Oprah Can No Longer Relate To ‘Normal People’

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Winfrey’s comments quickly divided social media users, with some arguing that her billionaire status makes her advice difficult to apply to ordinary workers.

“Don’t take advice from billionaires,” one critic wrote. “They can’t relate to normal people’s lives and give advice based on real-life struggles. She became a millionaire at 32-years-old and has been living with financial freedom for a few decades now.”

Someone else expressed, “That’s right, keep working your life away so the rich can have a few more airplanes in their hangar.” A third wrote, “Work-life balance right now means you need to work hard enough to pay your bills. That’s the balance.”

“No one listens to her anymore and it’s time for her to stop preaching to everyone,” another said.

Fans Challenge The Culture Of Chronic Overworking

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One social media user described Winfrey’s perspective as part of a “generational” tendency to “chronically overwork.”

Another fan argued that the absence of work-life balance is not simply an individual problem that can be overcome by working harder. “I disagree on this take! Love Oprah down but she more than anyone can speak to/understand that it’s a systematic reason why we aren’t able to have work life balance,” the user wrote.

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Winfrey’s advice comes from her own decades-long rise through the entertainment industry. She began working in media at 17 and became the host of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 1986. She reached millionaire status in 1989 and became the first Black female billionaire by 2000.

According to Forbes, Winfrey has an estimated net worth of $3.4 billion, built through television, brand deals, production, and real estate. She founded Harpo Productions in 1986 and launched the cable channel OWN in 2011. Her property portfolio reportedly includes $200 million in real estate, including a 66-acre Montecito estate featuring a 23,000-square-foot mansion.

Winfrey has also directed a portion of her wealth toward charitable projects. She established Oprah’s Angel Network in 1998, provided more than 400 scholarships to Morehouse College, and donated $12 million to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2013.

By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated 15 seconds ago

Right now, Christopher Nolan is on top of the world. Despite all the concerns that it would flop (mostly from people who think Citizen Vigilante is the best movie ever made), The Odyssey has proven to be a massive success in its first weekend. Unlike Odysseus himself, it looks like the film has some smooth sailing ahead of its voyage to earning (with the blessing of the gods) at least a billion at the box office. Considering how this literary epic is so different than his previous works (which focused on everything from Batman to Oppenheimer), fans all have the same question: what will Nolan do next?

Now, it seems we have an answer … sort of. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he discussed how large portions of The Odyssey essentially function as a horror film and that each scary scene in that film “whets my appetite for more.” It seems the Dark Knight director is interested in making his own horror movie, and he went so far as to praise Curry Barker for turning Obsession into a microbudget success story. As a huge horror fan myself, I’m crossing my fingers Nolan transforms the genre with the exact opposite: a macrobudget film that stretches the boundaries of cost as much as it stretches the boundaries of imagination.

Christopher Nolan’s Newest Obsession

Have you ever wondered why there are so many new horror movies each year? It comes down to basic math. It doesn’t take much money to make a movie where young, virtually unknown actors die in gruesome ways, making these films a safe gamble for the studios. Their goal is the kind of success that happened with Obsession, a movie made for $750,000 that has earned over $443 million at the box office. When you have a chance to get that kind of insane return, you better believe studio execs are happy to roll the dice on horror.

That particular cinematic success story seriously impressed Christopher Nolan. In his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Nolan indicated a desire to direct his own horror movie, but he doesn’t want to rush into anything. “I’ve always believed that horror as a genre has to be approached very carefully from a conceptual point of view. In other words, you have to have an amazing idea,” he said. “When you go see a film like Obsession, that’s an amazing idea. That movie works like a motherf*cker. It’s not about the technical side. It’s not about what technical itches I would have to scratch. It’s about story. So I’m always looking.”

Beer Taste On A Champagne Budget

That means all you horror fiends can mark down Nolan as being tentatively interested in crafting his own spooky movie. His praise of Curry Barker is both sweet and charming; it demonstrates that Nolan (who is reportedly a huge fan of lowbrow comedies like Talladega Nights) is no snob, and he’s impressed with what the younger director could do on such a shoestring budget. While I’m confident Nolan could deliver a similarly thrilling film on a similarly tiny budget, I’d like to see him go in another direction. That is, I’d like to see him make a horror movie with an Odyssey-sized budget!  

Traditionally, horror movies have been made on the cheap for the reasons I outlined earlier. It’s one thing for a studio to gamble on a microbudget film, and it’s another for them to gamble on a blockbuster. Of course, this wouldn’t be just any blockbuster scary movie; it would be one from Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan, whose critical and commercial success rate is undefeated. As both a fan of Nolan and the spooky genre, I can’t help but wonder how cool it would be if he got to film a lavish horror movie in IMAX, replete with special effects and the most famous working actors, all of whom want to star in one of his pictures.

We Deserve Better Big Budget Horror

Beyond my fanboyism, the main reason I want to see Nolan tackle a horror movie is that big-budget spooky films are rare, and the ones we get are usually pretty bad. Like, that awful Van Helsing movie cost $160 million to make, and the deeply disappointing World War Z cost $190 million. Most genre fans can acknowledge those movies are forgettable trash. But what if Nolan, the most ambitious modern director, used that kind of money to bring the scariest story he can think of to life? It could do more than scratch his proverbial itch; it might, in fact, transform the horror genre into something else entirely.

Until he makes any official announcements, the idea of Christopher Nolan directing a horror movie remains a beautiful (or, at least, beautifully bloody) dream. But it’s a dream worth having. This guy just turned a 3,000-year-old poem that 99 percent of the world hasn’t read into a blockbuster nobody can stop talking about. He’s already transformed the tired superhero genre and the bland biopic genre. Why not go for the hat trick and transform scary movies, too? At the very least, Nolan would give spooky fans something to argue about other than their favorite subject: whether “elevated horror” is the best thing ever or the stupidest marketing term ever created.

Fans of the classic mecha anime Mobile Suit Gundam have a lot to look forward to. Not only will Sydney Sweeney and Noah Centineo star in a live-action Gundam movie for Netflix, but a new anime series is on the horizon. New details about the series were revealed at San Diego Comic Con this week, and they’re taking the franchise in a whole new direction.

The long-running franchise has had a good run in recent years. Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury saw the series take on corporate greed and social stratification, while Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX went down the road not travelled in the original Mobile Suit Gundam, exploring a universe where the Principality of Zeon triumphed over the Earth Federation. Meanwhile, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe, the sequel to 2021’s well-received Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway, hit theaters earlier this year, and a third film to complete the trilogy is in the works.

Now, Gundam is rocketing into 2027 with Mobile Suit Gundam RG XARX-ZERO. The new series will be directed by Kenji Kamiyama. Best known for the acclaimed Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Kamiyama recently directed the animated feature The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. He is also the director of the Star Wars Visions short The Ninth Jedi, which is being expanded into a full series. The new series will take place in a totally new Gundam timeline; after humans ventured beyond the solar system, they discovered technological advancements that led to a golden age of peace and prosperity. However, before long, an unstoppable interstellar force rendered Earth uninhabitable, leaving the survivors on the Moon and offworld colonies to pick up the pieces. Now, 45 years after the apocalpyse, a new hero arises from the ashes: Azumi Ray, who will pilot the anti-apocalypse Gundam ZERO mobile suit.

What Is the RG Project?

The Mobile Suit Gundam RG XARX-ZERO is only the first part of the RG Project that will lead Gundam into the future. A new video game, Gundam: Rogue Orbit, is also in development; set in the same universe as RG XARX-ZERO, but 100 years into its future, it promises to take gamers into the cockpit of a mobile suit like never before.

Mobile Suit Gundam RG XARX-ZERO and Gundam: Rogue Orbit will launch in 2027. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.

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Release Date

1979 – 1980

Network

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Nagoya TV

Directors

Yoshiyuki Tomino, Ryoji Fujiwara, Shinya Sadamitsu

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Writers

Kenichi Matsuzaki

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  Hirotaka Suzuoki

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  Gihren Zabi (voice)

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  Tôru Furuya

  Degwin Sodo Zabi (voice)

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Maybe there was a time when TV was seen as inferior to cinema, and maybe overall, it still is (it does kind of depend on what you’re after, entertainment-wise), but there are undoubtedly shows now that rival movies. Some shows rival great books, too, which might be the better medium to compare television to, since a book – or a series of books – can take hours upon hours to get through, and the same goes for a multi-season-long TV show.

Some of the following shows helped further the idea of television being great/cinematic art, beyond something more disposable that you might’ve tuned into weekly for light entertainment. These all rank among the most ambitious TV shows ever made, and while that’s not exactly the same as singling out the best TV shows ever made, there is, undeniably, quite a bit of crossover between two such rankings.

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‘Deadwood’ (2004–2006)

Image via HBO

There probably isn’t a Western series better than Deadwood, though calling it a TV Western and leaving it at that is also doing it a disservice, since it works as a fantastic crime/drama series as well (one that just so happens to be set during Old West times. It has some basis in history, with Deadwood being a real town and many of the characters being based on people who actually lived there in the 1870s.

Of course, that’s far back enough that not everything was documented, so Deadwood isn’t – and doesn’t try to be – 100% historically accurate. It’s fantastically written and acted, and then on a technical front, it’s also very impressive, putting that HBO money/production value to good use (and it’s definitely not going to be the only HBO show mentioned here).

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’24’ (2001–2010)

Image via FOX

24 ran for eight full-length seasons, each 24 episodes long, and each one of those episodes covered an hour in real-time… for the most part. Commercial breaks meant the episodes weren’t literally an hour long, but whenever it would cut to commercials, the events of the show would continue playing out, albeit off-screen. And so much would happen within every single season/day.

There was a ninth season called 24: Live Another Day, and that was 12 episodes long, but still retained the real-time storytelling, just with a time skip right near the season’s end. 24 was also pretty boundary-pushing in terms of its content, being very violent and dark for a network TV show, and also surprisingly willing to bump off major characters who weren’t Jack Bauer (he was kind of the only person with permanent plot armor) at just about any time.

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‘The Rehearsal’ (2022–2025)

Image via HBO

It’s a bit hard to summarize The Rehearsal, even more so than was the case with Nathan Fielder’s Nathan for You, which is similarly funny and clever, but not nearly as mind-bending. The Rehearsal is about as good as meta comedies have ever gotten, at least on television, with the second season (about airline safety… just go with it) being especially mind-blowing.

The first season of The Rehearsal felt a bit looser, like the direction of it was sort of made up as things went along, but the second season does feel more purposeful, albeit in a way that still feels spontaneous, at least at times. That’s very in line with Nathan Fielder, to not know whether you’re seeing something scripted, completely real, or in the middle somewhere, but The Rehearsal (and especially the second season) has him pushing all that to extremes that really do feel quite groundbreaking.

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‘Twin Peaks’ (1990–1991, 2017)

Image via ABC

The history of Twin Peaks, in terms of how and when it aired, is quite unconventional, which is fitting, considering the sort of show it was. Twin Peaks is noted for being an initial phenomenon, despite being – or maybe because it was – unlike anything else on TV at the time, owing to the whole thing being surreal, dark, sometimes funny, and ambitious with how many characters it followed.

There was a strong mystery that likely hooked a lot of people, and then that mystery was resolved effectively, but too soon, and then the show was canceled after two seasons… all before being brought back for a third season, dubbed Twin Peaks: The Return, over a quarter of a century later. And Twin Peaks: The Return really is one of the most out-there and groundbreaking pieces of television ever, feeling like pure undiluted David Lynch (plus Mark Frost, who was the co-creator of the show who sometimes gets overshadowed by Lynch), for better or worse.

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‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ (1997–2003)

Image via The WB

As far as special effects went, Buffy the Vampire Slayer did its best, for the time and with the money it had. It’s not as technically dazzling as many of the other shows being mentioned here, but it having a go at bringing so many different supernatural creatures to life, pretty much weekly, counts for something. But in any event, it’s really what Buffy the Vampire Slayer was going for narratively and thematically that makes it stand out as notably ambitious.

It’s a show that initially took place in high school, and then had its characters graduate, with the show’s back half being about young adulthood. So, it’s a coming-of-age narrative that spans more time than most coming-of-age stories, and then it touches upon a huge number of topics throughout, all the while balancing so many genres all at once. Honestly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was pretty much every genre, at one point or another, across seven seasons, and the balancing of all that stuff throughout was immense.

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‘Cowboy Bebop’ (1998–1999)

Image via Toonami

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Speaking of shows that can count themselves as part of every genre, at one point or another, here’s Cowboy Bebop, which manages to do all that genre-hopping within a single season of 26 episodes. It’s about a crew of bounty hunters traveling throughout the Solar System, essentially, so with every new target, there is the chance to go somewhere fresh and mix things up tonally, but Cowboy Bebop does manage to have an overall narrative at the same time.

There are character arcs and one central antagonist, and that main storyline – though not touched upon in every episode – is incredibly compelling, and balanced well against some amazing episodes of a more standalone nature. Cowboy Bebop really does feel ideal in terms of having single episodes that stand out and an amazing ongoing storyline, and that it does all that while having incredible (and varied) animation/music alongside homages to so many different genres and types of movies out there really does make it an all-timer, whether you want to judge it among anime or all TV shows more generally.

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‘Lost’ (2004–2010)

Image via ABC

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Twin Peaks, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and 24 were all incredibly groundbreaking by the standards of network television, but it was Lost that arguably pushed what you could do on a non-cable show to its absolute limits. It began as a TV show about people trapped on an island after their plane crashed there, though before too long, it turned out Lost was about much more than just survival in a Lord of the Flies kind of way.

Lost had fantasy/supernatural elements, increasingly complex science fiction ideas, mysteries that kept piling upon mysteries, and all the while, it was thrilling as an action/adventure series, too. It was also bold in how it told its progressively wilder story, with flashbacks, flash-forwards, time travel, and eventually some “flash sideways” too. And then it also looked tremendously cinematic, and balanced a greater number of important characters than the majority of long-running TV dramas out there, too.

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‘The Sopranos’ (1999–2007)

The Sopranos is an obligatory pick here, and not really the kind of show that feels like it needs much of an introduction. That introduction, if it has to be given, can’t help but contain information you probably already know. It ran for six seasons. It was about the mob, therapy, and family drama. It was sometimes very funny. It was extremely creative and surprising. It ended in a way that people still talk about and debate. It has gabagool.

And then lots of other things. It’s a towering TV show, and it has to be brought up in a ranking like this because it really helped push forward television as a medium and method of storytelling. Almost nothing in The Sopranos dates it, and the fact that it felt groundbreaking when it was being made – and continues to hold up as something truly special, as far as television is concerned – is very much worth emphasizing.

2

‘The Wire’ (2002–2008)

Image via HBO Max

Though it’s not a mystery show like Lost was, The Wire is another show from the 2000s that gets noticeably larger in scope with every passing season. It’s also comparable to Lost because its premise is a lot simpler than what ultimately happens throughout, because the earliest season of The Wire is mostly about members of the Baltimore Police Department taking part in an operation that aims to take down a drug-dealing organization.

The members of both those groups remain relevant beyond season 1, but then each season beyond the first adds a new area of Baltimore that gets explored, in effect, as The Wire grows to also deal with the docks, the political sphere, the education system, and then the media. The Wire does get compared to a great novel, sometimes, but that’s a fair comparison to make, because what it achieves really does go beyond the bounds of most television (HBO or otherwise).

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‘Game of Thrones’ (2011–2019)

Image via HBO

It didn’t even have to finish all that well to find itself at the end of a ranking like this. Game of Thrones went all-out in terms of often looking better than a good many genuine blockbuster movies, building a unique world as well as Deadwood, but on a much bigger scale. There’s a lack of a protagonist and dozens upon dozens of characters, like with The Wire, but on a bigger scale than “just” a city, as was the case with that HBO series.

Also, though it’s got more to do with the source material paving the way, Game of Thrones is bold on a narrative front, and it establishes itself early on as a show where just about anything goes. It might well have overextended itself, leading to a final couple of seasons that weren’t amazing, but even without a smooth landing, what Game of Thrones did right is enough to make it feel about as ambitious as a TV show has ever felt.