How the TV Dramas bracket works
Rank TV dramas without dragging anything into rows. You get one matchup at a time — Breaking Bad or The Wire? The Sopranos or Game of Thrones? — and after 31 picks the bracket has a champion, with everything else placed by how far it got. Nobody can hold 32 shows in their head at once, but everybody can answer "this one" — so the order you end up with is one you will actually stand behind.
This bracket runs 5 rounds at the default 32-slot size (Round of 32, Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship), with every one of the 32 shows in the field. Because the draw is shuffled, two people playing the same bracket rarely face the same matchups. You can also play it at 8 or 16 slots for a shorter or longer run.
31 picks, 5 rounds
- Round of 3216 matchups
- Sweet 168 matchups
- Elite 84 matchups
- Final Four2 matchups
- Championship1 matchup
Roughly 2-4 minutes start to finish.
All 32 entrants
All 32 entrants are listed below, including Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Sopranos and Game of Thrones.
Breaking Bad
2008-2013
The Wire
2002-2008
The Sopranos
1999-2007
Game of Thrones
2011-2019
Succession
2018-2023
Better Call Saul
2015-2022
The Handmaid's Tale
2017-present
Mad Men
2007-2015
The West Wing
1999-2006
The Last of Us
2023-present
House of the Dragon
2022-present
The Americans
2013-2018
Downton Abbey
2010-2015
Lost
2004-2010
Dexter
2006-2013
Yellowstone
2018-present
Peaky Blinders
2013-2022
The Walking Dead
2010-2022
Grey's Anatomy
2005-present
This Is Us
2016-2022
Mr. Robot
2015-2019
The Leftovers
2014-2017
Six Feet Under
2001-2005
Friday Night Lights
2006-2011
The Shield
2002-2008
Boardwalk Empire
2010-2014
The Boys
2019-present
Stranger Things
2016-2025
Shogun
2024
Severance
2022-present
Slow Horses
2022-present
The White Lotus
2021-present
Would rather group them than rank them? Open all 32 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 5 completed TV Dramas brackets. Win rate is the share of head-to-head matchups each entrant has won across every play.
- 1
Game of Thrones
11W - 4L · won 1 bracket
73%
win rate
- 2
The Walking Dead
11W - 4L · won 1 bracket
73%
win rate
- 3
Breaking Bad
13W - 5L
72%
win rate
- 4
The Wire
8W - 4L · won 1 bracket
67%
win rate
- 5
Mad Men
8W - 4L · won 1 bracket
67%
win rate
- 6
Succession
9W - 5L
64%
win rate
- 7
The Americans
7W - 4L · won 1 bracket
64%
win rate
- 8
The Sopranos
8W - 5L
62%
win rate
- 9
Dexter
8W - 5L
62%
win rate
- 10
Mr. Robot
6W - 5L
55%
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 32 shows in the draw. Short on time? Drop to 16 slots — a quicker run over a random 16 of them.
- 3Use undo the moment you regret a pick. One reflex answer in an early round can knock out a favourite before it gets going.
TV Dramas bracket FAQ
How many shows are in the TV Dramas bracket?
The pool holds 32 shows. A default run puts all of them in the draw and takes 31 picks across 5 rounds: Round of 32, Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship. Other field sizes are available too — 8, 16, 32 slots.
Which shows are included?
Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, Succession, Better Call Saul, The Handmaid's Tale, Mad Men, The West Wing, The Last of Us, House of the Dragon and The Americans, plus 20 more. Every entrant is listed further down this page with its artwork.
How long does the rank TV dramas take?
About 2-4 minutes — 31 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 31 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 32 of them at bracketranker.com/tier-list-maker.
Can I compare my order with other people's?
Every completed bracket feeds the TV Dramas community results page, which aggregates win rates across all plays and tracks how often each of the 32 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 32 is missing something you would have picked, or when you want a version scoped to one era, label or franchise.