How the 2000s TV Shows bracket works
Rank 2000s TV shows without dragging anything into rows. You get one matchup at a time — The Wire or Lost? The Office or Breaking Bad? — and after 23 picks the bracket has a champion, with everything else placed by how far it got. A straight list invites you to hedge. A matchup does not, and that is what makes the final 24-deep order worth screenshotting.
This bracket runs 5 rounds at the default 24-slot size (Round of 24, Round of 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship), with every one of the 24 shows in the field. 24 is not a power of two, so 8 of them draw a first-round bye — spread evenly across the draw rather than handed to whoever happens to land at the top of it. The field is reshuffled on every play, so the same show can meet a different opponent in round one and finish somewhere else entirely. You can also play it at 8 or 16 slots for a shorter or longer run.
23 picks, 5 rounds
- Round of 248 matchups
- Round of 168 matchups
- Elite 84 matchups
- Final Four2 matchups
- Championship1 matchup
Roughly 2-3 minutes start to finish.
All 24 entrants
All 24 entrants are listed below, including The Wire, Lost, The Office and Breaking Bad.
The Wire
2002-2008
Lost
2004-2010
The Office
2005-2013
Breaking Bad
2008-2013
Mad Men
2007-2015
Dexter
2006-2013
The Shield
2002-2008
Arrested Development
2003-2006
How I Met Your Mother
2005-2014
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
2005-present
Scrubs
2001-2010
24
2001-2014
House
2004-2012
Grey's Anatomy
2005-present
Six Feet Under
2001-2005
Curb Your Enthusiasm
2000-2024
Deadwood
2004-2006
Battlestar Galactica
2004-2009
30 Rock
2006-2013
Friday Night Lights
2006-2011
The O.C.
2003-2007
Gossip Girl
2007-2012
Heroes
2006-2010
Prison Break
2005-2017
Would rather group them than rank them? Open all 24 in the tier list maker and sort them into S, A, B, C, D and F tiers instead — same entrants, no matchups.
How everyone else ranked them
Aggregated from 2 completed 2000s TV Shows brackets. Win rate is the share of head-to-head matchups each entrant has won across every play.
- 1
The Office
4W - 0L · won 1 bracket
100%
win rate
- 2
Mad Men
5W - 1L · won 1 bracket
83%
win rate
- 3
Six Feet Under
3W - 1L
75%
win rate
- 4
The Wire
3W - 2L
60%
win rate
- 5
How I Met Your Mother
3W - 2L
60%
win rate
- 6
Heroes
3W - 2L
60%
win rate
- 7
Curb Your Enthusiasm
2W - 2L
50%
win rate
- 8
Gossip Girl
2W - 2L
50%
win rate
- 9
Prison Break
2W - 2L
50%
win rate
- 10
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
1W - 1L
50%
win rate
Getting a ranking you actually agree with
- 1Judge the whole run, not just the best season, or every prestige show wins by default.
- 2The default run puts all 24 shows in the draw. Short on time? Drop to 16 slots — a quicker run over a random 16 of them.
- 3Undo exists for a reason: an early-round mistake propagates all the way to the final, and there is no shame in taking it back.
2000s TV Shows bracket FAQ
How many shows are in the 2000s TV Shows bracket?
The pool holds 24 shows. A default run puts all of them in the draw and takes 23 picks across 5 rounds: Round of 24, Round of 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship. 8 entrants start with a first-round bye, spread evenly through the draw. Other field sizes are available too — 8, 16, 24 slots.
Which shows are included?
The Wire, Lost, The Office, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Dexter, The Shield, Arrested Development, How I Met Your Mother, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Scrubs and 24, plus 12 more. Every entrant is listed further down this page with its artwork.
How long does the rank 2000s TV shows take?
About 2-3 minutes — 23 choices at the default size, or 7 if you drop to a 8-slot bracket. No account is needed, and you can abandon a run at any point without losing anything.
Can I turn the result into S/A/B tiers?
Both are here, and the bracket is closer to a tier list than it looks. It ends with a champion, a runner-up and then every other show grouped by the round it went out in — which is exactly a set of tiers, decided by 23 direct comparisons rather than by your first guess at a layout. What it deliberately does not do is claim a precise gap between two shows that never met. If you would rather place the shows into S through F rows yourself, the tier list maker loads all 24 of them at bracketranker.com/tier-list-maker.
Can I compare my order with other people's?
Every completed bracket feeds the 2000s TV Shows community results page, which aggregates win rates across all plays and tracks how often each of the 24 entrants takes the title. It updates continuously, so it moves as more people play.
What if a show I wanted is missing?
Use the bracket maker: add your own shows, name it, and share the link so other people play the same field. That is the route to take when this pool of 24 is missing something you would have picked, or when you want a version scoped to one era, label or franchise.