(Photo by HBO)

FALL 2019 TV SURVEY: 20 TV Shows That Defined the 2010s

For Rotten Tomatoes’ annual Fall TV Survey, we asked thousands of our users what they’re most looking forward to in the coming TV season and to reflect on the best shows from seasons past.

We’re looking at TV series that were so iconic in their era that they essentially defined the decade in which they aired the majority of their seasons. (If a show aired half its seasons in one decade and the other half in another, we tended to count it toward the earlier decade.) So we asked our survey respondents which shows best represented each of the five most recent decades.

Game of Thrones stole the 2010-2019 category, garnering 74% of the vote, compared to No. 2 Stranger Things’ 56%, and The Big Bang Theory’s 45% for third place.

We also asked which TV star ruled in the decade — no surprise here: The entire cast of Game of Thrones won with 45% of the vote; followed by Benedict Cumberbatch, who snagged 9% of the vote (Sherlock showed up at No. 24 in the list of TV titles that “defined the decade”); and, in third place, Veep‘s Julia Louis-Dreyfus with 8%.

Disagree with the survey results? Tell us in the comments who you think should have made the list or have been ranked higher.

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