82 Teen Drama TV and Streaming Series by Tomatometer

Updated April 20, 2020

Teen dramas, like the very audience they’re reaching, have always had an uphill climb to be taken seriously. They are beloved, but do critics actually think they’re any good? While Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars are often cited as series that impacted critics’ formative years and have high Tomatometer ratings, others are dismissed as nothing but guilty pleasures.

Then along come titles like Freeform’s Cruel Summer, which is Fresh at 90% on the Tomatometer; Shadow and Bone, which is Fresh at 87% and comes from streamer Netflix; and The CW’s hit Riverdale.

Rotten Tomatoes has gathered the scores of these and many others in the genre to determine which show wins the title of best-reviewed teen drama. Where the Tomatometer scores are tied, we’ve listed those with the higher number of reviews higher on the list to reflect that more critics weighed in, and then alphabetically for those that have the same score and the same number of reviews. There are several series listed with a 100% Tomatometer score, for example, but Recovery Road has only six reviews for its first, and only, season and is therefore ranked at the bottom of that section.

A number of teen dramas like Beverly Hills 90210, Dawson’s Creek, The Wonder Years, and The Vampire Diaries/Originals spin-off Legacies currently do not have enough Tomatometer-eligible reviews across their seasons to receive a series-level score. We will update this list if and when such titles receive a score.

Disagree with the results? Tell us in the comments which series you think should have been ranked higher (or lower).